Here is what happens when you arrive for a meeting at the United Nations (where David and I currently find ourselves).
Once you’re through security, you go to a reception desk in the large hall of the General Assembly building.
If you are naive enough to present yourself to one of the people behind the desk and ask for the person whom you’re due to meet, a rude awakening awaits.
Instead, you are pointed towards a small bank of telephones further along the desk, where you must phone the person you’re meeting yourself and announce your own arrival.
No, there is not a directory of staff phone numbers (duh). But let us assume that you display adaptability and have your contact’s number stored in your phone. What next?
In due course, someone will arrive from Upstairs to escort you.
Finding each other is no easy task. A number of people are waiting for meetings (this being the main reception hall for the whole UN); in addition, there are people waiting for guided tours, people using the free internet terminals, people buying special UN commemorative stamps and people looking at the nice exhibition organised by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
But let us assume that you manage to find each other. Together, you now move around to a new window on the reception desk.
Here, your escort will fill out a form with their details.
The person behind the desk takes your ID and scrutinises it carefully. He or she then fills in some more details on the form.
Your escort is handed a chit.
You and your escort then move another metre or so around the reception desk (for it is circular) to another window. Two uniformed security officers await you.
Your escort hands over the chit.
The first security officer warily examines the chit that their colleague (standing approximately half a metre to their left) has just issued.
Should it prove satisfactory, he or she will then fill out another chit (one assumes that there may be a degree of overlap in the respective content of the forms).
The second chit is then handed to the second security officer, who scrutinises it warily. Should it prove satisfactory, you are then awarded a special prize given to the UN’s most persistent guests: a Visitor’s Pass.
You are now back where you started before you were pointed to the phones.
Elegant, no?
