A British
friend of the Whisperer had one of those small victories for the ordinary working expat as he waited
patiently for his number to come up at the bank counter.
Image the scene; there were three windows, one teller working furiously through the bank full of
customers, another empty and the last one with a bored looking employee slowly shuffling through piles
of paperwork and not appearing to be doing much of anything apart from yawning endlessly.
Grasping ticket number 98 in his hand our man waited … and waited. For the past 50 minutes the only
working window had been dealing with number 97, a gentleman who arrived with a large plastic bag
crammed full of dinars for counting and depositing.
Finally the Number 98 flashed on the screen above the counter and a chap stepped forward, pushed in
front, handed over a bank slip and dived into a deep conversation with his pal behind the screen.
Stepping forward, the brave Brit interrupted the proceedings and politely apologised profusely to
the gentlemen about his surprise that the bank could have the audacity of dishing out exactly the same
number to both of them.
He asked: how could this possibly have happened? The teller interrupted his transaction, grabbed
the ticket and proceeded to deal with our hero, much to the annoyance of the red-faced queue-
jumper.