Phones and Parks

Yesterday we spent more time than we planned to at the EE Store (mobile provider) to get SIM cards for our phones. The guy helping us was having some issues with the process, so it was taking longer than expected. At one point, a man walked into the store and our guy was like "Now what?" in a fairly light-hearted tone. The man starts complaining that his phone won't hold a charge. Then the manager very firmly says, "He's helping a customer right now, you need to wait." This made the man pretty mad, and they quickly just started yelling at each other. Highlights include the customer shoving a counter display at the manager and asking him to take their argument outside, to which the manager responded by going outside and yelling "WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO? I'M OUTSIDE NOW. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?!" The customer was yelling about how evil and shitty EE was and the manager was trying to throw him out, yelling about how his behavior was unacceptable. The guy finally left, and an older woman called the manager out on being terrible at his job. Manager was just like, "This guy comes in every day and harasses my staff, you don't know him...sorry you had to see that." This whole time the other employees are just trying to go about their transactions with their non-enraged customers, and after the  man left our guy was like, "He comes in every day. I think he drinks a bit and then comes in to complain." So...I feel like when dealing with the mentally ill you should not scream and make a scene in your own store, but nobody asked me.

Then our customer service guy accidentally gave Jon a 25 pound package instead of the 15 pound one we asked for, and apparently it's a pain in the ass to undo that set-up. He was in a hurry to get somewhere, so his solution was to shrug at us and go, "Extra 10 pounds?" Um, NO, you screwed up dude, we're not paying for your mistake. Then he goes to his co-worker, "I'm just going to give it to them," as if we're the assholes for not wanting to give the company an extra 10 pounds for no reason.

So, this experience just goes to show that mobile providers being terrible at customer service is a universal truth.

Our evening was much better. We went to Clapham Commons, which is right outside our flat.

Here's a gazebo thing!

Here's a Jonadams!

We sat by a pond for a while (that's a dog in the water who was playing fetch with her owner--she liked to swim!)

We also encountered this absolutely horrifying bird.

That evening, we ate at a delicious French restaurant. This whole no tipping thing is so weird to me; even though I intellectually understand that it's not expected, I still feel like a jerk when we only leave a couple pounds on the table instead of adding 20% to our receipt. Also, whenever we use a credit card we're asked for our PIN and we have to be like "Uh buh we don't have a PIN for our credit cards in the US, I don't think, oh God do we??"

After dinner we saw Jurassic World. We enjoyed it; it's pretty much everything you need that movie to be. We also did not find it terribly sexist, even though a lot of the internet is up in arms about it's egregious sexism. Kind of odd, because we think everything's sexist. Maybe we're missing something.

Tonight we are going to eat some Indian food and then see Bad Jews on the West End! (Is that the proper preposition? At the West End? In the West End?) Tomorrow we will find ways to celebrate Independence Day without being too obnoxious (apparently there are actually restaurants that celebrate the holiday...)

Some Britishisms we've enjoyed so far:
-They call pulp "bits." As in "orange juice with no bits" and "featuring extra juicy bits!"
-Q-tips are "cotton buds."
-They have TJ Maxx, but here's it's called "TK Maxx." We don't know why.
-You can buy cider for less than 4 pounds that comes in like a 2 Liter plastic bottle (that's a fun thing about vacationing in another country, even just walking through the grocery stores is entertaining).

xo

Hannah