More Israeli Queueing Theory

Last week when I was in Yerushalayim I stopped at the Jewish Agency so I could get a letter to enable me to extend our visas. They were set to expire at the end of this month. The same guy was there as last time and he took care of me quickly. So today Yeshaya, Shira and I went back to the Misrad Hapnim in Ramla to get the visas extended. It was crowded there and we got number 193 while number 169 was inside. There were two people working there and the average person takes about 15 minutes. So based on my knowledge of queueing theory, I figured that we would have to wait a very long time. The lady we dealt with last time was in an office and she seemed to be in charge. There was also a lady at a desk. Shira started filling out the form and we started waiting. Then the desk lady went into the office and came out and said something fast in Hebrew that we didn't understand and nobody got up. So Shira started to get up to see if she would take us (we discovered last time we were there that you have to be pushy) but then Shira decided that I should be the pushy one. So I went up to her and told her what we needed and she said that we were lucky and we should go sit at the desk. She said that she'd be right back. It took her 10 minutes but then she did come back and took care of us. It took about 45 minutes to get visas for all 6 of us but we did it. In all that time only 3 people went so had we waited our turn we probably would have been waiting for much more than two hours. I still have no idea why she took us before all the others but I'm not complaining.

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