The good news is that G managed to get her seconf vacccine yesterday. The bad news is the abso-bloody-lutely unbelievable shambles that is still unfolding at the vaccine centre.
I had vaguely hoped that the previous experience at her first "jab", with long queues and delays, was down to "teething-problems" as they moved the vaccinations from three locations down to one.
Wrong.
It was actually worse yesterday.
... stand in the sun for 25 minutes before reaching the shade (but only for a while)
G had an appointment for 11:01. How pointless is that when the only thing they seemingly use the appointment time for is to be able to find you on the computer. And if that is their only use for it, then they need to give the computer operators lessons in how clocks work. Once G eventually was seated and sleeve rolled-up, it took the girl about 3 or 4 minutes to find her (enough time for three other people to be vaccinated at the adjacent seat by the "jabber" who was handling two seats). She had her TIE number and card; she had her paper with her name, the appointment date and time. But said operator still pratted about on the system, while my needle-phobic wife went whiter and whiter....
Now if you look at that and think "well, that jabber was doing about 3 or 4 people in that time, so they are doing an average of about one person per minute - and that isn´t too bad", you´d be correct - however, there are about 7 or 8 of these "stations"with one jabber to two computer clerks in the "dance hall", so basic arithmetic says you should be processing about 480 people per hour - and that can´t be at all bad.
Wrong.
We joined a queue - which I estimated to be about 75 people strong - 25 minutes before our due time.
75 people should take about 10 minutes if all the stations are working at "peak".
But that wasn´t the case and it actually took 75 minutes of waiting (so nearly 8 times as long as you might hope)
Oh, and for half that time, the queue was having to stand out on the June sun (at about 27º in the shade).
OK, I should mention that the queueing system is actually split into two lanes, one for Las Lagunas and one for the rest of Mijas. We only knew thai as we´d been there before, not from any assistance.
Everyone was in the "rest" queue - and the very occasional Las Lagunas resident just walked past everyone and straight in.
Now if I were charitable (and I am bloody not in these cases), I might say that half of the jabbing-bays were for the other (empty) queue. But that still means the workers on "our" queue should manage 240 per hour. Give them a 50% "slow rate" for their inability to use computers and that´s 120 per hour, thus a queue time of about half that we experienced. What the hell are they up to?
Well, there was no one obviously in charge, just a couple of people on the door, telling people when to move forward to the "ready" area.
No-one at the start of the queue to tell people which queue to use.
No signage at the start of the queu to tell people which queue to use.
No water or chairs.
No help whatsoever.
Oh, but a brilliant pair of signs toward the middle of the queuing area, showing arrows to the entrance (but in in opposite directions)
In fact the queue management was so bad, that one of the door-dollies came out a couple of times and asked the people near the door whether the queue members were all "La Cala and the Pueblo". The odd poor sod from Las Luganas who had inadvertently got into the only visible queue, and which snaked back around near that entrance, might just hear and was then taken out and fast-tracked.
No shade - well, not quite true. The queues were in shade for about 30 metres, but of course one queue was empty. There was space for another queue in the shade, but the exit-door dollies were sitting in that space.
After ther shade, there was another 10 metres in the sun, before a couple of awning near the entrance door (presumably for the staff).
There was one vague poiutive.
While in that second sunny area, G was feeling hot enough for it to show and for the door person to tell her to move over to the the unused (yes, Las Lagunas) shadier side.
Very solicitous, but she had previously shown more concern for a sodding dog that some moron had brought - and let the guy past the queue to get it some water for it.
Bottom line should be "just be grateful for getting it done"
We are - but that doesn´t stop me fuming at their sheer bloody incompetence
PS, one thing they did to speed things up, which is totally different to what you see on tv, was that they had pre-filled all the syringes "off-line", so the nurse had a large box of them "ready to go" with non of the usual foreplay of sticking the syringe in the vial and flicking it to ensure full. . Good or bad thing, I don´t know.
* one week later, and after a scathing letter (from a spaniard) in the local press, they seem to have found a bunch of very large sun-shades in their stores and put them up in the waiting zone. Not really for any clear reason now, as we went past yesterday at 1245 and there was no queue! This morning a pal called and said his wife had been to the medical centre in La Cala yesterday and they had offered her an immediate jab down in Las Lagunas - so they were actually in there getting it when we passed - and they confirmed they didn´t have to queue at all. Who know what is actually happening?
Comments