So it’s to be May 6th is it? The UK General Election. We won’t be in the country and mindful of Tony Benn’s remark to a constituent who told him that he hadn’t voted, which was something along the lines of, “So that means that I haven’t got to listen to you or take any notice of anything you ever say,” we decided to get a postal vote.
Hah! What a joke! It’s virtually impossible. It’s certainly not worth the time and effort to go to all the trouble of voting for someone who should probably be ineligible for the simple reason that he or she actually wants to be an MP in the first place. There must be something dodgy about him or her.
Those people in the UK who are wannabe MPs are in the same category as the Clubs that Groucho Marx wouldn’t join if they would consider having him as a member and the few girls who ever agreed to go out with me. Incidentally, that made my teenage years a time of troubled angst.
I used to look at those girls and think:
a) Why are you doing this?
b) What’s your problem?
c) What’s wrong with you?
d) Can’t you find someone better?
I suspect the answers were:
a) I was really, really bored.
b) Too many to list.
c) You really don’t want to know that.
d) Obviously not, Idiot! Don’t you think I’ve tried?
We have a much nicer and dignified level of corruption here. In Cayman, if someone fiddled his expenses to buy a duck house, it would be for a constituent’s pond and not his own. Votes here are literally bought.
Our helper rang me one morning last May to tell me that she would be a bit late because a particular Party’s office (Caymanians reading this will know which one) didn’t open until 9:00. When she arrived she was brandishing a brown envelope containing $200.
The next day she only got $75 from the other Party. I never asked how she had voted as that would have been rude.
Everyone knew it was going on. It was the lead story on the evening news and there was film of women, always women, leaving the building clutching an envelope. They were quite happy to show its contents and tell where it had come from.
The Party were asked to comment and a spokesman readily admitted it. “Yes of course,” he said. “It’s an expensive time of the month – phone bills, electricity bills, cable TV subscription and the suchlike. We’re just trying to help.”
Getting a postal vote or a vote by proxy is so difficult and complicated that I have come to really respect the 80+ Asians living in a single room in Blackburn or Leicester who took the hours and hours necessary to register their votes at the last election. Good luck to them! Election fraud? Don’t you believe it.
These are the kind of characters who should be governing us. Not middle class white people with greed in their veins and chips on their shoulders. Those persevering Asians with unlimited stamina and dogged endurance would provide us with great service and that brings me, after a long and tiring ramble, to the point:
Customer Service - I know nothing about it except that when I am the recipient, I know whether it is good or bad. There must be courses for people employed in the various service industries.
Someone, somewhere, in the fairly recent past, must have encouraged attenders on a course to urge their future customers to, “Have a nice day.” I hope it was the same person who suggested, “Come back soon, missing you already,” as a suitable parting remark. It was called after me when I left a store in Boca Raton in Florida last year. Thank God that hasn’t caught on but I suppose there’s always the danger that it might.
I’m going off on another ramble now: Are people on courses attenders or attendees? I have just seen that the spell check on my Mac has underlined ‘attenders’ as being a spelling mistake but ‘attendees’ remains pristine and clear. A few months ago, Dugald, a friend here in Cayman, raised the same point. I didn’t give it much thought at the time as I was busy preparing perfectly roasted potatoes but now I have.
I have looked up ‘attenders’ in two online dictionaries. One of them tells me that there is no such word while the other informs me that it is an incorrect form of attendee which is defined as, “a person who attends a conference or other gathering.”
I’m going to get into trouble here and probably write something daft, but here goes:
(Grammar Police are you ready?)
A mentor advises and guides a person who is a mentee.
A tutor teaches someone who is a tutee.
An interviewer talks to an interviewee.
An employer gives work to an employee
I have even heard that the f***er, f***s a f***ee.
But who does what to an attendee?
Therefore, people who attend courses are not attendees. They are attenders, or attendors or even perhaps, attendists, but attendees they ain’t!
A mentER, a tutER, an interviewER and an employER would obviously cause confusion as sounding too similar or even identical to the person providing the service. The -ee suffix removes uncertainty but that’s not the reason for it. It’s probably something to do with the dative case but I am not rambling along that path! Not when I’m only wearing flip-flops!
I’ve probably provided you with an open goal here, Monique. Don’t squander it! – (Monique is a Superintendent in the Grammar Police)
Incidentally, the POWs who got away from Colditz were escapees. When the Escape Committee was formed and they discussed plans, they would have talked about the escapERS. When did they stop being escapers and become escapees? I think that it was probably the moment they were free from the confines of the castle.
Anyway, back to the point.
I went into a business today and met two of its employees. As I walked in I was greeted by a woman who gave me a lovely smile, wished me a good afternoon, told me that her name was Marjorie and offered me a drink of ice-cold water. Then she asked me what she could do for me.
“I am thinking of shipping my car to the UK,” I said. “Could you help me please?”
“Of course, we can,” she said keeping up the dazzling smile. “Will you follow me, please? Mr Bodden will help you.”
She led me along a corridor to an office door, gently knocked on it, opened it and then stood back to allow me in. I entered and saw a man sitting at a desk, eating a sandwich.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“I’m thinking of shipping a car to the UK. Could you give me a quote please, port to port?”
“No,” he said. “I’m having my lunch. Come back in half an hour.”
I may be wrong but I suspect that Marjorie has been on the course and I expect and hope that Mr Bodden is going soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment