Carrying on from the first installment of the great Tenerife Textbook Fiasco, my dearly beloved took half the morning off work to come back from Los Cristianos and queue up for the charged card with which we were going to receive my daughter’s subsidised schoolbooks.
At the same time he was handed the card he was also given a list of books to buy. There are seven in total. 4 are to be bought by the family and 3 are subsidised by the government.
Okay, all down hill from here, we thought, skipping to the nearest bookshop. Just a week or so ago the lady in the shop had relieved me of €133 for the papers, crayons, pencils and what not listed by the school for both children and had promised to have Sami’s books ready. (He is still in infantil so we pay for all his books). When asked about his books she shook her head sadly and muttered something which clearly blamed her deadbeat husband for forgetting my boy’s schoolboooks on his last foray to Santa Cruz.
Okay, okay, so can we just get the books on the tarjeta so my husband can get back to work? He gamely presented the card and she recoiled as if electrocuted. Quite clearly she wanted nothing to do with this tomfoolery and by now, I heartily agree with her.
We were directed to another local shop where the shop assistant told us she only had the Mathmatica book and if we wanted to get the whole set, we’d be better to go to yet another shop. (I am not talking about a huge town here by the way. The village that I live in is about the size of an average Sainsburys’ carpark.)
By the time we arrived at the third bookshop, there was quite a queue ahead of us. Everyone in it had obviously been on the same wild goose chase and tempers were fraying fast. There were three women behind the counter and each customer they served sooner or later threw a hissy fit. Oh oh, I thought, this doesn’t look good.
Sure enough, at our turn we were told that the books were not available. Not in her shop, not in the South and not in Santa Cruz. Of the seven books we are supposed to buy (in cash or by charged card) only two were in stock and the rest had to be reserved and we can go back later in the week… which as the school administrator refused to give me the card means more time off work for my husband.
What I don’t understand is why one bean-counter in the education department didn’t sit down with one bean counter in the respective publishing companies and said we have x number of children in the first year of primary, x number in the second year of primary, etc. For primary one each child needs book a, book b and book c, for primary two they will need book d, book e and book f, etc.
The whole lot could have been packed up and dispatched to Tenerife where it could have been divided up by the schools and the books handed to the kids in their first week back at school.
We are now in the third week of school and the saga continues.
It would be just too simple to do it “right”, wouldn’t it?
Getting it done at all would be a start. Getting it done “right”, well that would be the cherry on top.