Digital Ink

The other day I went to the German Consulate to apply for a new passport. When disregarding the queue, which snaked all the way through the room, the hall, the metal detector and down the stairs, the process was quick and pain-free. I handed in my birth certificate, application forms and photos and then pressed my fingers into a digital reader to have my prints taken. The friendly lady apologised several times for the inconvenience. Then I paid, got some quite useful information and left the Consulate. Altogether, it probably took me ten minutes, twenty when taking queuing into account (fortunately I didn’t have to queue in the mega one).

In addition to a new passport, I also need a new South African work permit. So the other day I started collecting supporting documents for this and – oh joy – had to go back to a place I was so impressed with on my first visit, that I blogged about it: The Central Police Station.

But first, I had to go to the South African Police Services, where I queued to get information about where to go, queued to be told that I could not be helped and queued to pay for receiving no service at all. Then I went to the Police Station to get my fingerprints taken. It took me about five minutes of convincing that I needed, wanted and deserved to have this service provided by the “Fingerprint Office” (as indicated by a sign on the door). Rather reluctantly, a grumpy man put some black paint on a metal board, rolled it out with an 18th century state-of-the-art tool and then pressed my hand onto it – twice. He then pressed each finger on a piece of paper carefully making sure that he put the small finger of my right hand into the field that was labelled “left thumb”. When he was done, the whole paper was covered with ink and I had severe doubts that anyone would be able to use these prints for anything.
The “fingerprint officer” then squeezed some liquid soap into my black hands, passed me two paper tissues and pointed me to the bathrooms - down the hall, then left, past the broken cupboard and to the last door on my right. So off I went and scrubbed my hands for ten minutes trying to get at least some ink off – with very little success. By the time I got back to the Fingerprint Office, I found it closed with my prints locked in inside. Apparently the office closed at 4pm, which is clearly why it had to shut at 3.35pm and refused new clients shortly after I had arrived at 3.20pm...

Surprisingly, even though my experience with South African officials was a lot worse than the one with the Germans, I value it higher. Having achieved two out of three steps towards applying for a police clearance form within 1 ½ hours seemed like an amazing achievement. On the other hand, queuing for ten minutes at the German

Consulate even though I had an appointment struck me as appalling.

Sometimes, it seems, customer service marginally better than terrible can actually lead to higher customer satisfaction than efficient one...