The Toll Booth

bydavebux

1.5K followers

2 years ago

Hiya everyone. Hope you are all well.

I see the website was down again today, which reminded me of a blog I promised to write.

A few years ago, I was driving to see some friends in Normandy. It was a good six hours drive from the village in the Loire valley. I hadn’t seen Geoffroy and Alicia for over a year and there was a significant amount of wine to be consumed over the weekend. But, as long I was back in Suevres for Monday afternoon, all would be well. There were enough people working on the mill that they wouldn’t notice me being missing for an hour or two.

So off I set, after breakfast on Friday morning. About 5 miles up the D road and then auto routes nearly all the way. I made great progress to Tours and up to Le mans and then headed north on the A28 towards Alencon. Hardly any traffic and a nice steady 80/85 mph and the sat nav would ping when I came close to a speed camera but the limit is about 80 anyway.

At Alencon there is a toll booth, well, several toll booths, about 6 or 7 of them, but the traffic was quiet, very quiet and as it was now lunch time, only one booth was open in each direction, it was down to single file, but they were coping with the light traffic, no problem at all.

And then I arrived, or rather the builders van in front of me arrived. Monsieur Plombier leant out of his window, handed over his life savings to the toll booth operator and waited for the barrier to rise.

And waited, and waited some more. Then he leant out of his window, muttering something along the lines of – “oh, my little darling, please tell me why the barrier hasn’t opened”

The young mademoiselle in the booth could be seen pressing buttons and flicking switches, she kept looking at the barrier and the barrier kept looking back – “I’m staying shut!”

By this time a long line of cars and trucks had developed behind me and several irate motorists were gathering around the builder’s van. So I joined in. It transpired that the computer had had a glitch, having happily accepted the builder’s money, it would not open the barrier and the only way to open the barrier was to pay again. There was no way to over-ride the system. Having already parted with a lot of money, the builder was not paying again.

Well get someone from the office shouted a driver.

They are all on lunch monsieur and do not like to be disturbed.

Builder number two then gets out of the passenger side of the van, shouting some sort of Gallic obscenity. He careered around to the back of the van, swung the doors open and extracted a toolbox. Unstoppable in his rage he lurched towards the barrier and started to dismantle the offending arm.

At which point, lady toll booth operator leans out of the pay window.

It is alright now monsieur, it is two o clock and the manager has finished his lunch. He is on his way with the key.

Said manager arrives, a Galloise cigarette dangling from his lips.

What appears to be the problem.

Problem, someone shouted in French, problem. Take a look at all these cars and see if you can work out what the problem is - Monsieur

He waddled over to the pay booth, inserted his magic key and the barrier opened. Life returned to normal in minutes.

But what I have always found worrying is why didn’t he come when he first knew of the problem and continue his lunch afterwards. Aren’t managers supposed to manage situations. Or why not open a second pay lane to ease the congestion.

Some people just will not think outside the box. Their brains runs on rails and will not deviate from the work-a-day norm. I arrive at 9, I have lunch from 1 to 2 and I go home at 5. Thank goodness everybody is different and we don’t meet this type every day. How would they have stood up to the unpredictability of on-line entrepreneurship I wonder.

And the weekend, brilliant.

Bux