I guess I've become too old to be in a situation to see incompetence without getting ticked off. This happened yesterday (as it did the other times) when the Mint distributed the new Lincolns. I got a ride to the subway which cut my commute shorter than anticipated. I arrived at Union Station at 8:15 a.m. where I was the 28th person in line waiting for the 10:00 a.m. opening. Slowly people started lining up behind me and some of those in front of me were sitting on the floor and one bright individual borrowed a chair from a restaurant that wasn't open while a few brought their own folding chairs. All went well until the Union Station Security folks came around at 9:00 a.m. and laid down the law. There would be no sitting on the floor, there would be no sitting on restaurant chairs and there would be no sitting on the folding chairs that you brought with you. You were to stand - no if's, and's or but's about it. Sometime after 9:00 a.m. a Mint employee arrived behind the Kiosk and stood around talking as she had nothing to do because the older gentleman in charge of bringing the LP4's to the Kiosk didn't arrive until 9:45 a.m. The older gentleman then proceeded to open some of the boxes the LP4's come in while the older lady was taking her time putting 6 rolls in plastic mint bags. Right around opening a young girl showed up. Let's back up to 9:30 a.m. when there were a couple hundred people in line and where the security people must of thought to themselves that people that were coming into the station didn't have an easy time getting to the trains because of a line of a couple hundred people waiting for coins. So they bring out the ropes and metal poles so people can wait in an orderly fashion. Not having enough of these they snaked the remaining people around so not to interfere with the train customers. Of course we all went through this same thing the last time and the time before that. Of course the wheel had to be invented again instead of someone remembering what happened the last couple of times new coins were to be distributed. Now we are at 10:00 a.m. with hundreds of people in line. So what are our three mint employees doing in the Kiosk? The old guy is slowly opening boxes, the older lady is putting six rolls in a bag and collecting our money and giving back change while the young girl has a Sharpie and putting a mark on your hand to indicate you already came through. I see this as total incompetence. When a super market or other private industry has a big event they make sure the merchandise is on hand and more importantly they add personnel to handle the people rush they know is going to come. The mint should have added more employees or the three Kiosk employees should have started at 9:30 a.m. stuffing 6 rolls in each bag to hand out when 10:00 came. Because they didn't do this, it took one hour and ten minutes for the last person in line to get his bag of 6 rolls. Now we are at 11:20 and everyone (mint employees and us coin people) except the old man are just hanging around doing absolutely nothing. We're just standing there wondering why. Fifteen minutes later we find out why. The old man went somewhere and came back with a cart with more boxes of LP4's. Again incompetence. Why didn't he realize early on that with hundreds of people in line we are gong to need more LP4's and I should go and get some. Sometimes it is really hard to figure out why people do not have any initiative. I left Union Station and went to the Mint building where they are set up to pass out the LP4's in the foyer. There were no lines. I walked right in and got my 6 rolls. They must have given out a lot as there were cardboard coin boxes overflowing the trash can. At Union Station, if you ask for a box they will gladly give you one. At the Mint I asked for a box but was shocked at what they gave me. Unlike Union Station where the old guy opened the boxes so that the top is intact, the people at the Mint just tear open the tops so what they gave me was a box with a bottom and four sides. I don't want to say this procedure is incompetence, but rather a disservice to the customer by clueless mint employees. They could have very easily recycled these boxes by keeping the lid intact and by giving them to us coin people rather than throwing them away. It was an enlightening experience to say the least.
Wow, I'm glad that I'm ordering on-line. I'm not sure if I could take that kind of punishment. It sounds almost as absurd as people waiting in line for an H1N1 shot. I think to myself, why would someone wait around for hours in a line with people wanting a flu shot? It sounds like you want to get sick. I have to believe that some of those folks already have the flu. So you wait in a long line for hours and get the flu that you were trying not to get. Ok, they are the same folks buying lottery tickets as part of their 401k plan.
