Just A Day At The Nokia Service Centre

It was a day at the Nokia Service Centre. When you're there, there's only 3 possible reasons you can be there:

1.) You're getting your phone fixed.
2.) You're collecting your fixed phone.
3.) You're accompanying a friend/relative for the above two reasons.

So there I was, due to reason #2.

Some interesting things to note while I was there:

1.) There are a few public computer terminals there, presumably for customers to browse through the Nokia catalogue.

A girl with a guy friend went to the computer terminal and started surfing personal blogs of their friends, and friendster.com.

Another girl came next and started surfing http://www.lovebyte.org.sg/web/ent_p_home.asp.

2.) A man was at the counter collecting his phone. The female receptionist said something (which I couldn't hear) and smiled at the man, and the man seemed sullen-faced. He left, and he walked back after a few steps, and shook his phone at the girl, and said "You think I spent hundreds of dollars on this phone to let you crack a joke on it?"

And he stormed away.

3.) A woman at the counter asked the male staff attending to her how long it would take to service her phone. He looked at his watch, and replied that Nokia would contact her within 3-5 days (because they needed to source for spare parts, he said).

The woman shook her head and frowned, and insisted that it had to be done by Thursday. The male staff told her that they would try to contact her by tomorrow.

That wasn't inclusive of the repair time. The woman pulled a long face and frowned angrily at the male staff.

4.) I got my queue number and it was C174. I looked at the current queue number, it was C161. Sitting down waiting, staring at the queue number display board. I sat down and took a deep breath, irritated and depressed at the long waiting time I'd have to go through.

A man later came by and sat down next to me. His queue number was S258. His current queue was serving S238. Looking at his queue ticket, he took a deep breath.

5.) A woman came into the Service Centre, and took a queue number. The staff prompted her to take a seat while waiting. She walked to the middle of the waiting area and paused.

There were no seats for her.

6.) The staff there pressed for the next customer in queue, C170. The queue number flashed 6-7 times, but nobody stood up. The staff (a male), shouted "C ONE SEVEN ZERO!!! WHO IS ONE SEVEN ZERO!!!??" in his boom-box voice. Everybody turned to look, but nobody stood up still.

He pressed for C171, and that made me happy.