amusedBasically, once you are enrolled in your major, you pick your classes and freely choose which ones you're going to take that semester (ot of a list of required ones, obviously), i.e. you do not register for classes (even though you'll attend them), but for the exams you are going to take. A lot of times, this exam is the only grade you'll get to pass the class.
Anyway, all of this makes registering for exams a rather crucial element of the semester; registration is during one week only in the middle of the semester at the much-dreaded examination office, which is infamous for having the rudest. staff. EVER. (and people have also been known to have been made stand in line for several hours.)
Thus, as a naive first semester student (as I was when the following episode happened), you will try everything NOT to piss the almighty examination office ladies off.
So there my friend and I are, on registration day, standing patiently in line in front of the office, about twenty minutes before they were supposed to open (9am). There is a HUGE neon pink sign on the door that reads (translated), "To maintain student privacy, only one person at a time is permitted to enter!".
Anyway, 9am comes, nothing happens. 9.10 rolls around, and then 9.15, and we're still standing in front of a locked door, although we can hear the ladies talking behind the door. Finally, at 9.20, a sour-looking lady opens the door from inside and bellows at my friend, who was first in line, to "come in already!".
So she goes inside, greets them, and gives them her registration sheet and stands there for a second, waiting for them to check her ID card as they're supposed to. Instead, they stare at her blankly (the lady that took her form, and the other two that are playing Solitaire on their computers in plain view) and call, "Next!". So my friend leaves, leaving the door open for me.
I enter, and having watched the scene through the open door, I greet them and give the lady the registration sheet, smile, and turn around to leave the room. The lady then yells after me, "Do you think today's Open Door day?! Shut the damn door!" I look at her with a deer-in-headlights look, leave the room and shut the door.
All of a sudden, the lady swings the door back open (almost hitting me in the process), and yells at the line (which consisted of about 90 more students), "Do you think we have all day?! We're only open till 11, so you better get in here quickly! So come on now, five of you, get in here!"
My friend and I went O_o, shook our heads and finally accepted the worldly wisdom older students had tried to teach us before: No matter how pleasant and polite you are, the examination office ladies will find a way to be pissed at you.