Living for Disco

I spotted the taxi driver as he came around the corner. He was still out of sight of the gaggle of school kids that last week were responsible for my 40 minute wait in the boiling heat with a supermarket carrier bag full of dairy produce. They were, by all accounts, also responsible for beating up one of my colleagues and stealing her cellphone and all of her money, but that’s not why I was lurking out of sight.

It’s impossible to get a taxi from Maerua Mall at lunchtime at the moment. Exam time means that the kids are always there. No matter how many of them leap into taxis, there seems to be a never ending supply of blue clad, notebook wielding teenagers. It’s as if, when one disappears, an identical one is created out of thin air in a bizarre realisation of a Doctor Who episode.

Being British, I am a firm believer in the value of queuing. It’s just right. I have an in-built hatred of queue jumpers that leads me to do that arms-folded-foot-tapping-tongue-tutting-stare-balefully-at-the culprit-in-the-hope-that-they-will-feel-absolutely-ashamed-of-themselves-and-piss-off-to-the-back-of-the-queue thing that you always see British people doing in check-in counters at airports.

So last week, my queuing gene compelled me to wait until the kids had all gone before trying to get a taxi. After 20 minutes I realised that this was futile, so I started extending my arm at passing cabs to indicate that I was looking for one, in case just standing there in the scrum looking desperate and hot wasn’t obvious enough.

It made no difference. I actually did manage to get into a cab at one point, about 26 minutes in, but had to get out again when four kids hijacked me by jumping into the back, and instructing him to go to Katutura.

So, today, unwilling to go through this rigmarole, I put into practice my new belief that queuing is for losers and sissies, and came out of the back exit to nab the cabs before they made it round to the front. Clever, no? It worked. Hallelujah.

I was less impressed when my taxi driver deliberately cut up an ambulance, despite the presence of flashy lights and sirens, and then drove slowly in front of it for a few agonising minutes while the driver gesticulated wildly at him to get out of the way. My driver trundled along in second gear, looking in his rear view mirror, chewing a bit of twig like a man deprived of gorm, while some poor bastard no doubt bled to death in one of Namibia’s regular horrific road accidents. And it was my fault.

Queues are there for a reason. I understand that now.

It’s time to go through the CVs for our receptionist post. There are millions of them. They slide in drifts off the desks, and pile up on the floor. We need snow shoes to navigate the office. An entire rainforest has expired in order to supply the paper we are now sifting through.

I’ve been involved in selecting candidates for interview before, and so was quite prepared for a mammoth endeavour, reading each CV in detail and marking them according to the job description. Ability and experience is everything – age and sex irrelevant.

Not here. Oh no.

On the chuck pile go:

*Anyone over 25 (We’re a young organisation)
*Women with children (Kids are always sick or have problems at school)
*Married women (ditto)
*People who live more than 50k outside Windhoek (Will have to stay with relatives, which won’t work out, so they will go home)

I paled. It just seems so wrong. But then, when we have over 500 CVs, and our shortlist must not exceed five candidates, it does seem like a good way, if unfair, to get rid of the ones who won’t get anywhere anyway. I must confess to having come round to this way of thinking after dutifully reading over 30 CVs.

So, in the spirit of efficiency, I have added the following to the chuck pile criteria:

*People who staple their CVs in a way that causes me to injure myself when I open the envelope
*People who write their motivation letters on scrappy bits of stained paper with badly torn edges
*People who can’t spell ‘receptionist’, ‘typist’ or the name of the organisation
*People who fill in application forms for other positions and use that as their CV
*People who enclose every single certification they have ever earned, even if it’s in swimming.

It’s making a huge difference.