Ulog #5 - Punctuality Matters, Claiming The Comelec Cash Cards For Electoral Board Members

How's your day my dear Steemians? I will narrate the story how I spend my day today.

Traditionally, a mother wakes up her children saying, "If it's raining money and gold then you have nothing to pick and miss the chance to become rich."

Philosophically, children bounce back saying, "But Mom, if it's raining bows and spears we will then the first to be hit."

This is a part of the crowd of 1,611 teachers in Lapu-lapu City who became the electoral board of the barangay election, queing for the cash card as honorarium for the public service. The claiming drains my day, to the extent we are all exhausted.

The Story

We were informed through group message that we have to come to Comelec at 8 - 10 A. M. for the honorarium. I woke up earlier, cook and have my brekfast alone since my children were still aslept.

Rice, fried egg, fried fish, salted egg, banana and coffee, having a heavy breakfast anticipating that we may spend more time in queing,

I am not used to be the most punctual but I am not that person who comes late. I arrived at Comelec office few minutes before the scheduled time with people from other schools forming a line and two of my co-teachers were doing the same.A guard gave us chairs still following the sequence in a line.

We waited an hour with nobody to entertain us nor give instructions how to claim the most awaited reward in return of our election endeavors.

At exactly 9 A. M., tables were set up and we found a lot of documents on top. We were wondering, what are those documents, usually when we are called for the payment we just fall in line, sign their payroll and take the cash.

Someone announced what to do, that those documents will be filled in and be checked by another person so we need to form a line again for verification and lastly another line to claim the card, the card then will be used to any *Bancnet ATM Machines of any bank. That time, the place was already crowded because the batch scheduled at 10 A. M. arrived but the first batch was still intact filling in the documents. I lined to get the documents, they were three pages and given the sequence number to be still used in another two times to fall in line for two separate transactions.

It's not bad when I was the 47th out of 1,611 to be served.

We filled in the documents and was surprise when in all three pages, there was always a space for the Tax Identification Number (TIN). It was worth to be amazed knowing that 5% tax would be deducted. Really? OMG! This is the first time that the honorarium from Comelec is now taxable.

Myself

@fabio2614

Finally we were in the last step, queing in the third line for the cash card now inside the office, fully air- conditioned. While still waiting outside the office, @jenesa and @georgie84 arrived on the table for the first step, the table was just near the office door. They now have numbers more than a hundred.

Passed 12 noon, we were able to get our cash cards and had our lunch before going to ATM machines of a bank.

Since the card was from DBP, we decided with my co-teacher to make a widrawal with the ATM stationed in our town's police office. When we arrived, a lot of Cordova teachers were also doing the same transaction. After 30 minutes of waiting, we entered the ATM both, but still the luck was not for us.It was offline.* Ouch!

Knowing from our group chat that those with numbers more than 100 were served at 5 P. M., I realize that though we were not able to encash for the day but al least we were able to go home earlier.

If you remember during the election, we also made to finish earlier, spending only 27 hours of no sleep while others from 30 to 40 hours of being awake.

At this time, 10:21 P. M. Philippine time, our co-teacher who have a number of 800 is not yet served. Comelec scheduled 24 hours service.

It's a learning lesson that punctuality is really an issue. That there are a lot of benefits when you come on time,

Reminding everybody to always come on time. God bless!