The John Griff Column: Jobsworths - we salute you (insert tongue to cheek)!
We’ve all encountered them - some of us have been accused of being them and I would imagine there are some who delight in applying ‘company policy’ with the kind of zeal that would have impressed Attila The Hun. The jobsworth is alive, well, and prospering.
Recently, Lois and I had a few days in Spain. It's something that we do a couple of times each year and broadly, we've never had real problems. Steering clear of the school holidays and peak season pressures, we tend to slip away when things are a little quieter. Fewer people means fewer stresses caused by long queues. This time, though, things were to be exasperatingly different.
Arriving at Luton airport for our 8.40 AM departure, we steeled ourselves for the ritual of running the gauntlet of security. Whether leaving or re-entering the country, this always seems to take on an almost bovine, dehumanising quality as everyone shuffles up and down the Tensator barriers to then be required to remove belts, shoes and belongings while our bags are x-rayed by a bored looking security officer. For some reason - and in years of travelling I’ve never managed to work out why it it should be - every time I go through Luton I seem to face additional drugs and security scans that others don’t. What is it? Is it my face? Do I have a similarity in name or appearance to one of Interpol’s most wanted? Or is it just my own perception of being singled out?
On this occasion while I again had to go through the ignominy of the extended checks, both of us managed to get through the process in a tolerable amount of time and, in truth, I had no complaint. With about half an hour until our gate time we grabbed a bite of breakfast before ambling in the direction of Gate 2 and our waiting aircraft. In its wisdom, the airport supplies few seats in its gate areas, so the walk from the duty free shops to the final door onto the apron was a welcome distraction. On arrival though, we were obliged to embrace the Tensator lines once more, until we reached our final check. It was at this point that things fell apart - 'Jobsworth' appeared and dug his heels in.
My own check had passed off fine with the display of my passport and boarding pass. Walking through the gate door into the morning air I walked a few paces towards our brightly coloured Airbus - until I realised that my fiancé wasn't with me. Looking back, I saw Lois engaged in animated conversation with the gate officer - something that normally never normally happens beyond a few, usually amiable words. I walked back through the gate to see what was going on.
Lois’ name normally has an umlaut above the ‘o’ - two dots, although her passport doesn't show them. Lois had checked in online a few days earlier, using the umlaut - but the boarding pass she was given didn't show them either. As such though, her passport and boarding pass showed the same name. For some reason though, the gate officer’s screen had interpreted the umlaut as an ‘e’ which it had inserted into her name, changing it incorrectly is ‘LOEIS’. In truth, Lois has been used to her name being mangled on many occasions before - but this time 'Jobsworth' decided that she had mistakenly entered the checking in details and thus posed a security threat to the aircraft, it’s crew and our fellow passengers, despite the fact that her travel documents were in agreement with each other and that it was his own screen that was at variance with everything else. It was no good though - computer had said ‘NO’. He wasn’t going to let her pass, and neither was his unseen supervisor in a remote office.
There followed a number of minutes of discussions, phone calls and generally entrenched stubbornness before Lois was presented with an ultimatum - pay £65 for a name change to delete the 'E' that had been incorrectly added by the departure gate's system (which was the sub-optimal link in the chain), or be escorted back from air side and out into Luton’s car park. With the Airbus now full of everyone except us, it was an ultimatum with no option. Relieved of the required penal amount, Lois was finally allowed through the gate and we headed for the aircraft and takeoff.
Even now, I’m not sure why the problem arose. Surely the purpose of the gate check is to ensure that the right person is presenting themselves to be admitted to the aircraft. Lois could - and did - do that with government issued documents and the airline’s issued boarding pass. That the airport's screens couldn’t handle the punctuation used in the spelling of her name was none of her doing - so why did she have to pay to align its systems? It looked for all the world like an attempt to crowbar revenue from a traveller, discriminate against her name and financially penalise her for being at odds with ‘the norm’. None of which cut any ice with 'Jobsworth' and his assertion that he was ‘just doing my job and following company policy’. Where was the common sense in all this - or does it not apply when concerning matters of ‘company policy’?
Our break eventually proceeded when we landed to a warm, Spanish welcome on landing at Malaga. Getting onto our return flight a few days later was simplicity itself.
We're due to fly again in a few weeks time, so we both have concerns about what might happen. Will Lois' £65 have bought a permanent and reliable solution to what originally occurred? We'll see.
The end to our journey proved fine - but thanks to 'Jobsworth', the start of it had been anything but ‘Easy’…