The Person Who Does That…

I’m going to throw a quite common scenario at you. You’re at your office in North America, and you’re about to go on your yearly vacation to see all the severed whale wieners you can imagine. You set your “out of office” notification on your email, informing anybody who may try to contact you that you’ll be away, but there’s an alternate person who can help them out. Same with your voicemail. Now, your customers can still get what they need, and even though you secretly hate all your colleagues because they’re stupid and lazy to a mind-numbing degree, they’ll at least KIND OF cover for you while you’re away.

It’s a real thing. Because Iceland is a terrible, terrible place. (Source)

Sound familiar? Of course it does, because it makes sense. But South Africa doesn’t make sense. It’s a wonderful, wonderful place filled with all kinds of amazing things and people. But it doesn’t make sense.

In a deliberate move intended to confound foreigners, South Africans love to have people in their offices who each do one job. One. And if that person happens to call in sick, or has gone on vacation, nobody else knows how to do that person’s job because that would throw off the balance of everything. If somebody did somebody else’s job, all of the sudden the person who is covering would have two jobs, which would cause a country-wide meltdown due to the natural order of things being disturbed.

I first witnessed this when I went to go get my Traffic Registration Number, a piece of paper that allows you to purchase a vehicle here. I’m still too traumatised to talk about the entire process, but I first went in (well, first, second, and third went in, as each time a different person told me I needed various different documents, none of which were listed on the official government website) in early September of 2016. Once I had all the documents in order, I was approved and told to come back exactly 30 days later- not 29 or 31, 30- before 11am. On the appointed day, I dutifly went back and asked which queue I should stand in to collect my Traffic Registration Number. I went where the official pointed and waited for about two hours (I wish I was exaggerating, but I’m not). When I got to the front of the line, the SAME guy who told me what line to stand in when I specifically told him I was there to collect my Traffic Registration Number informed me that “the person who does that sort of thing isn’t in today.”

Me: “Is there somebody else who can help me?”

Guy: “No. Only one person does that, and she’s not here.”

Me: “Was she in earlier? Like maybe 2 hours ago?”

Guy: “No. She didn’t pitch today.”

Me: “So when I told you what I was here for, and when you told me to stand in this line, you knew she wasn’t here?”

Guy: *blinks

Me: “OK, but I took the day off work to come here because this form tells me to be here on this specific day. I’m pretty sure the certificate is ready. Is there somebody else, maybe one of the dozens of other people working here, who can open the filing cabinet and get the document for me? It should be listed alphabetically under my name.”

Guy: “She’s not here.”

Me: …

Guy: …

Me: “What should I do now? Do I make another appointment?”

Guy: “Maybe try again tomorrow.”

I did eventually get my Traffic Registration Number, but ten months later, I still haven’t recovered from the experience.

Here’s the thing though- that’s not an isolated incident. Not by a long shot. I thought the whole “the person who does that isn’t here” thing was a one-time experience. But it’s EVERYWHERE in South Africa. Tom Cruise help you if you started doing business with one person, but he/she is sick or on leave. You’ll first phone and email several times and wonder why you’re not getting a response, because letting people know you’re not in the office for whatever reason is for sissies, apparently, and you’ll have no indication whatsoever that the person you’re trying to contact isn’t there. Then, if you ARE fortunate enough to speak to someone else, he/she will have no idea what you’re talking about because the first person left no sort of note, nor did they enter it into the system. You’ll be stuck in productivity purgatory, and you have no choice but to wait for the first person to return, whenever that may be.

Sure, there are exceptions to this. There are exceptions to everything. But it happens to me often enough for me to write about it, and while South Africans have become so used to this they probably think I’m moaning about nothing, all you expats know EXACTLY what I’m talking about.

But to be fair, if everything in South Africa ran exactly as it should, I’d have exactly nothing to write about, so I don’t really have reason to complain.

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About the Author

I’ve been many things. A university English instructor, a picker upper of dead bodies, a musician, and a sales guy. My work brought me and my family from Vancouver, Canada to Pretoria, South Africa in September 2016, and I’m still wondering how that happened. I started this blog mostly because my friends back in Canada kept asking me how things were in South Africa, and posting about my experiences seemed more efficient than repeating myself hundreds of times. Maple and Marula is a way for me to make sense of my new surroundings as an expat who has no idea what I’m doing.

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12 Comments

    1. Thanks Sandra! It doesn’t look like South Africa is going to stop giving me stuff to write about, so I might as well keep going! Thanks for taking the time to read.

  1. I lived in SA for over 40 years and left permanently for the US 20 years ago – have been back to visit and each time am ambushed by nostalgia and homesickness, BUT couldn’t trade life here, where I can leave stuff out in the garden indefinitely and it never disappears, where I’ve almost gotten past my old patterns of hypervigilance, and where I’ve fallen in love with a different and lovely natural world and a robust and free society – well, that sentence has gotten out of hand but, in short, I wouldn’t trade here for there despite occasional attacks of nostalgia. Your enjoyment of SA is, I would think, at least partly colored by your knowing you’ll be going home one day and are not permanently locked into the larger SA reality beyond your office and home — I came here knowing I could never go back, and that speeds up adjustment to and appreciation of your new country wonderfully.

    1. Thanks for the comment, Kathy. You’re quite right- it’s impossible for me to see the country through the eyes of a South African because my stay is only temporary. I can only speak to my own experiences. I’m glad you’re loving the US though! My brother moved there from Canada and is now a US citizen- I love it there as well!

  2. I read your article while experiencing real trauma and horror … because I too have been through a similar mind blowing / boggling experience. I live in Vancouver but used to live in Jo’burg. I went through the most excruciating frustration when I tried to get some money that was mine, from Liberty Life, it took me a year to accomplish, started the process in Canada and realized that I would HAVE TO GO to SA to maybe see this through. I went with the thought in my mind that I would – perhaps – never see the money. And remember it WELL … to the point that I’m pleased I don’t have to go through it again. So, my 2 cents … SA: amazing country, and people … BUT, visit, never stay.

    1. Hi Gavin- yes, the “customer service” here is definitely not for the faint of heart! I’ve learned to laugh at it, but I may have burst several blood vessels in my first few months here. I hope you’re loving my home city! I definitely miss it.

  3. Thank you for the article Sandra
    I had a good giggle which brought about a few tears. Also in Pretoria, I’ve survived standing from when the moon was still up, till 3:30 in the afternoon to try and get a car licence. The actual biometric process took a total of 3 minutes. And despite the 16 staff members guzzling coke and fisting handfulls of KFC into their maws, only one person bothered to spend half an hour of every two or so hours, manning ONE of the 8 biometric stations.
    God forbid that one person was off on the day I stood for 7 hours in the bitter cold of winter during one of my rare leave days.
    Granted we had ample time to bond over our grievances, bemoaning that ANY other country must be better at it than ours, and we should all go together in search of some semblance of efficiency.
    If only it were possible to experience Canadian’s Government service, I am sure everyone of those 120 people who were with me that day would hop on the very first plane across the pond.

    1. Hahahahaha! Beata, that’s such a relatable story! Thanks for sharing it- it made my morning!

      To be fair, the Canadian government is pretty talented at being painfully inefficient as well, but at least they PRETEND to care, and I think that’s the difference.

  4. Hey
    Thank you for your great blog….
    I really want to immigrate to Manitoba with my wife, I am 30 years old and she is 25 both qualified in our fields of work. I am an Optician and she is a teacher (Elementary School).

    I am wanting to live a life without fear and stress about civil war regarding the politics in this country.
    Would you recommend Canada is a better way of living and raising children there?

    One last question how would we survive the winters as i heard it gets up to -40C (brrrrr) How do you find the weather here compared to Canada?

    Kind Regards

    1. Hi Jehan,

      To be quite honest, I find the quality of life to be much better here in SA. Here, there exists the very bad, but also the very good. Canada is safe(ish), but it’s insanely expensive, and I find it rather boring compared to SA.

      That being said, Canada is a great country, and I’m sure you’ll be happy there. Re: the cold- not to worry. I grew up in the interior of British Columbia (very cold), and I’ve never experienced being cold like I have in SA! The difference is in Canada, we dress for the weather, and all the buildings have central heat. So you go from your heated home to your heated car to your heated office. If you choose to be outside for an extended period of time, you have the clothes for it. In SA, we freeze inside in the winter and have gas heaters and blankets.

      Best of luck if you do end up moving- sometimes a change of scenery is nice.

      1. Life in Canada is on average, much better. The baseline that the society has is established to be very high compared to median baseline in SA. In SA, every comfort you can get, such as health care, security, banking, automobiles, etc are all “bubbles”. One can not help but to look up at the tall, concrete or steel fences with electrified cables atop to remind oneself that we’re all living in literal bubbles, afforded by our relatively exceptional incomes in SA. That feeling is terrible. I can never identify with such a segregated and bimodal society and having the thought that everything that I have, everything my family exists in – is a bubble. There is no societal baseline that will protect my family, should I fail to provide even for a short period. There is no safety for my family outside of these tall electrified fences. Life here in SA for some is like a fading mirage in a desert, one never gets the comfort of being surrounded by a lush community of trustworthy strangers and provisions of a high-functioning society like that in Canada.

        In the prairies like Saskatchewan and Manitoba, you can go for a long time before seeing any sort of fencing around people’s properties. In fact, in the few years I was there, locking the back doors in a small town was entirely optional. That level of trust is nowhere to be found in SA, even in heavily guarded and gated communities. Looking through my heavily barred windows in SA reminds me that I am a prisoner of my own economic status. Sure, SA has a lot of interesting animals and landscapes, but none of those are necessary conditions for a great society, and none of those I can reliably depend on, should the fences fall and the bubbles burst.

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