Pao­lo Ker­na­han

Re­cent­ly I had some busi­ness to do at a gov­ern­ment of­fice and thought it best to get there ear­ly to avoid the usu­al traf­fic snarl and night­mare park­ing of Port-of-Spain. I walked up to the front desk, where two peo­ple were seat­ed, one a se­cu­ri­ty guard and the oth­er a shab­bi­ly dressed young man."Good morn­ing, I'd like to de­liv­er a pack­age to the min­istry," I said.Both of them had their faces buried in their cell phones.

"You could give it to him," the se­cu­ri­ty guard mum­bled, sit­ting shoul­der to shoul­der with the per­son to whom she is sug­gest­ing I hand the pack­age.The young man hur­ried­ly says, "It have no mes­sen­ger here."I sup­pose at 8.30 am it is a bit of a stretch to ex­pect peo­ple to be at work in a gov­ern­ment of­fice."Well can I leave it with you so that it gets to the rel­e­vant de­part­ment?""I nut at­ta­rize to col­lect nut­tin' here, you go ha' to come back when de mes­sen­ger reach."

This seemed pe­cu­liar. Nei­ther par­ty would re­ceive the pack­age, nor would they "at­ta­rize" me to go up­stairs to de­liv­er it my­self. Their re­luc­tance to do any­thing that might even come close to ren­der­ing as­sis­tance ob­vi­at­ed the need to have them at the front desk at all.

Ihttp://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers