I have a short fuse, generally. But my irritability today has nothing to do with my fuse.
It’s about my short bowel – and the absence of public facilities in an important public facility.
I’m down at the Receiver’s Chapel Street, Port Elizabeth, offices to sort out a wad of paperwork and outstanding taxes.
I remember this place. In a former life the service hall was an arcade with some arbitrary boutiques, a couple of eating houses and maybe even a pawn shop. It took SA Revenue Services some effort to use this space effectively, although any change from the Nationalist-inspired architectural motif of the permanently congested building in St Mary’s Terrace would have been a positive one.
Since last I was here in Chapel Street, they’ve brought in more cubicles and chairs. The reception counters, queuing ticket dispenser and plasma screens are further improvements, clearly aimed at increasing throughput.
Maybe simple, easy- to-read signage and a couple of sussed ushers permanently directing people on the floor would be a better solution than the hi-tech innovations which face the hard-of- hearing, short-of-sight and just plain psyched-out majority of us who must endure the pain of coming to sort out our affairs here.
I get to the queue shortly before 9am and I’m issued with ticket number 324. I don’t think there are 323 people ahead of me in the queue, but there are enough for me to take note when the guy next to me says it will probably be many hours before we make our way to a counter.
He’s an observant wag. First, he says, pointing to the trail of no-show numbers at the bottom of the plasma screens, they keep calling people’s numbers but nobody moves to a counter.
Maybe those are yesterday’s ticket numbers they’re calling out, he suggests.
I ask him if he’s never heard of ghost clients. It’s one up from ghost employees.
Yes, he says immediately, that’s how they increase their productivity, put ghost numbers that belong to nobody into the system.
And then he points out that some of the counter numbers on the screen to which people are being sent don’t exist, certainly not on this floor. Maybe ghost counters?
It’s at that moment I realise I have to go. There’s a sod’s law for this, I know. You’re forced to go at the most inconvenient moments. I’ve known this law since the bulk of my bowel was removed a few years ago.
Where are the toilets, I ask a security guard. Oh, you must go outside, down Chapel Street to Mutual building, he says, there are no toilets here.
I think he must be mistaken, so I appeal to a Sars official who happens to be walking past. No, she confirms, we don’t have public toilets, you must go to Mutual.
But, you’re a key facility servicing the public, you must have public toilets, I say, in a frenzy now and not because of the short fuse, you understand.
And when she persists that this building has no toilets and Sars and/or the owner are not obliged to provide such, I berate her on the illegality of government departments not providing facilities to relieve oneself.
I’m not going outside to Mutual, I insist. I realise the illegality argument may be tenuous, but it’s either raise a constitutional stink or risk losing a load in the most unceremonious of circumstances.
Later, I consider that perhaps it’s not as tenuous. There may well be building regulations which are being flouted by SARS and its landlord.
For now, it seems the look of sheer desperation on my face and the mumbled reference to a medical condition, get through. Come with me, she says, escorting me past a security guard to a staff toilet.
Back in the queue, the ghost toilets are a hot subject of discussion among the many sitting or standing who very badly need to go.
So, this is a free tip for Bra Prav Gordhan: bring on the toilets, chief.
You can even get us to pay for the privilege of spending a penny.
Could be a nice little income stream which will fill a hole in the Budget somewhere, I’m sure.
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