Spanish Secrets: Jobsworth
Craig Briggs tells of a friend who, because of the officiousness of a Ryan Air check-in desk employee, was not allowed to leave Spain because her British passport had expired.
Last week we had some friends from England staying with us, Richard, Yvonne and their two beautiful children, Mason who's just turned four and Erren who's just twelve months. I think it's safe to say that we all had a really enjoyable five days together.
To get here they had decided to fly into Valladolid with Ryan Air, the discount airline and then travel by hire car the rest of the way. Whilst being quite long, their trip here went through without a hitch, more than can be said for their return journey.
They left our house in plenty of time to get their flight back to England and arrived at Valladolid the required two hours early, but from then it was all downhill. They approached the check-in desk and handed the paperwork over along with their passports. It was then that the man at the check-in desk noticed that Yvonne's passport was out of date, two years out of date.
At this point you're probably thinking that this is quite a remarkable oversight. But as most married women know, when changing your passport from your maiden name to your married name, the new passport only lasts for the balance of the time left on your old one and not for the standard ten years. When checking the passport at home Yvonne, had checked the start date and assumed it ran for ten years. Whoops!
The police were called. Yvonne was now an illegal immigrant. The policeman told the man at the check-in desk to simply send her back to England and let the English authorities sort it out. After all, she had entered the country illegally.
Mr Jobsworth on the Ryan Air check-in desk was having none of it. No doubt for the first time in his insignificant life he became someone in authority, a man with the power to stop this highly dangerous mother of two young children from returning home with them. So he exercised that power.
It was at this stage that we received a phone call from Richard asking for the telephone number of the British embassy in Madrid. Whilst Richard and his two children boarded the plane home, Yvonne was hiring a car to drive the 150km to Madrid.
Fortunately for all concerned Yvonne is a very resourceful individual having spent twelve months travelling Australia and other far flung regions of the globe, but it didn't help anyone when her mobile phone stopped working.
Arriving back at Stanstead without his wife, Richard and the kids made their way to the long stay car park only to realise that Yvonne had not only got the car park ticket, but he had given her all the money as well. On this occasion the car park supervisor on hearing of Richards's plight not only expressed his sympathy but simply opened the exit barrier and wished him a safe and speedy journey home.
A lesson in customer service that Ryan Air could certainly do with.
By this time Yvonne had reached the Embassy in Madrid, which had stayed open especially for her and from where she didn't leave until 9.30 that evening. Not bad, to say it closes at 2.00pm. The Embassy staff could not believe that she hadn't been allowed to return to the UK, especially as having entered the country illegally she is required by law to be returned to the country of origin.
Yvonne spent the night in a Madrid hotel and the following day even had time to visit some beautiful gardens before this time driving to Madrid Airport and getting a fight back to Liverpool, where she was met by Richard for the drive home.
email address
craigandmel@msn.com
