A fight with the receptionist

You may remember I have mentioned the “friendly” woman who works at our local Matnas [community centre]. You know the older lady that wears ridiculously high heels, ski pant trousers and leopard print blouses. Cleavage to boot. Anyway, it seems this woman is the most unpopular woman in Karmiel. She manages to annoy literally everyone. 

Last week I missed one week of Jojo’s chug (word for activity, usually of a creative nature) and my friend passed on a message from the facilitator that I should come along this week instead. So we came along. I knew the moody receptionist would probably whinge at me for money and sure enough after about 10 minutes in she struts.

“You need to pay for December.” She informs me, interrupting the activity, loudly.

“er, no I don’t. I am here coz I didn’t realise I had one more week.”

“Well if you skip a week that’s your problem” she snorts at me. “Anyway you need to pay for this month.” (bear in mind this is a community centre, idea being to serve the community, I have been here only 4 months and have 2 children, one of them brand new, they should be falling over themselves to get me to their events)

“I have told you I am not coming to any future chugim here until someone gets back to me about my new olim discount. Its been 3 weeks. And I have paid for this session in my opinion.”

“That is not up to us. You still need to pay.”

At this point I am really annoyed, she is making out as if I am short-changing a non-profit organisation. She is lucky we have anything to do with them after the way that place is run. She clearly has no idea who she is dealing with. And its starting to get on my wick.

“Can I talk to you?” I asked her.

“Yes”, she motions me towards the door and starts walking outside.

Oh my god she has nooo brains.

“No I can’t come outside” I explain, “because my ONE YEAR OLD is currently balancing on a beam BY HIMSELF.” (Meanwhile one of my friends assists Jojo.)

She is still standing by the door at this point waving papers at me and motioning for me to join her outside where she gets to sit behind her big desk.

So I lost it with her.

“Can I ask you” (I switched to english, I just can’t be saracastic in hebrew yet) “How did you get your job?”

“What” she says.

“How did you get your job?” I repeated. “Who employed you. And more importantly, WHY?”

“Oh, I just apply” she says.

“Right.” I told her. “Well I am guessing you were the only person who did. Let me explain something. I have been to a lot of community centres in my time. And the person sitting behind reception should be a person with a permanantly big smile on their face. Someone who loves people preferably. Are you aware that nobody likes you? That people have STOPPED COMING HERE because they don’t want to deal with you?”

At this point I think I lost her because she started flailing around asking if someone could translate. Only nobody could because they were all too busy trying not to laugh. One of my friends told me to abandon nutcase receptionist and only talk to the manager.

“I am not coming to any future chugim until your useless manager gets back to me about my discount.” I told her.

“Well its not our fault we are waiting to hear back about it.”

“Great,” I told her. ” But in the meantime you could ask her to stop ignoring me, or maybe even give me the benefit of the doubt?”

Anyway she eventually flounced off in her monstrous heels. And it was clear from the reaction of everyone around me that I am not the first person to want to shoot her. They say her crazy money-grabbing mentality is due to her being Moroccan. PersonallyI think anyone who wears such uncomfortable shoes can’t possibly think straight. In my experience most women who live in stupidly high heels are not the most rational.

The most tragic thing about this big barn of a place is it really is a beautiful building (albeit a slightly impractical design with no consideration for the disabled or mums with buggies) yet its empty most of the day. It’s actually quite creepy walking around seeing the names of rich Americans who have put their names to big blocks of jerusalem stone (obviously imagining a thriving hub of the jewish community) whilst in reality its just a shell. I always wondered how they could struggle to fill it, it’s a nice place with virtually no competition (there is nothing else going on in Karmiel believe me) and it should be buzzing from dawn til dark. 

I asked who the program coordinator was, expecting it to be someone who perhaps works part-time that I hadn’t met and nearly died when I heard… yes you guessed it….its crazy moroccan lady!!! Choosing and running the programmes for the place is this nutty woman. No wonder it’s doing so badly. I have never met somebody as bad at their job (I think I actually told her this), her main aim seems to be taking money and losing customers. As for implementing new and innovative programmes she has no clue. There appears to be no Hebrew equivalent to the word “jobsworth” so I was at a loss as to how to explain this to her.

Watch this space…