The laughing bureaucrat

I had to go to the police prefecture on Île de la Cité, an experience that always reminds me that the word "bureaucracy" is French.

After the security controls and welcome desks, I was given a long, long list of documents à fournir. After my number was called, I found myself speaking to a jovial African immigrant with a strong accent, seated a meter away behind a thick glass protector. The man was very hard to understand through the glass and I had to keep saying, "Could you repeat that, please?" Several people at nearby counters gave me commiserating looks. It didn't help that the bureaucrat kept turning his head as he was talking, to laugh and flirt with a colleague hovering behind him.

He snatched the paper I gave him and in several places scribbled "original" where the list said "photocopie," and "photocopie" where the list said "original."  The list was returned to me covered with red ink, x's, additions, and strikethroughs. My heart sank.

"Oh, oui, ha ha ha! It will take at least three weeks, ha ha! Three weeks after you deliver all the documents correctly stamped, ha ha!" He agreed with a frank smile that the requirements were extremely difficult, even contradictory. "Ah oui, c'est souvent même impossible! Ha ha! Les gens abandonnent! Ah oui oui!"*

When I came out, I went around the corner to take a photo of the Christmas tree at Notre Dame. Paris is full of tourists this year and there was a long line just to get into the church, even though it was unusually cold, below freezing. I wondered how many of the tourists shared the faith of its builders.

  **"Oh yes, it's often actually impossible! People give up!"

Comments

[Gigi]

ha ha ha...sorry but I had to laugh too. And in my opinion, they'll have 'forgotten' to tell you about some very important papier that is absolutely essential to your dossier - but don't worry, they'll tell you in three weeks time when you arrive clutching all your stamped documents with a hopeful look on your face. Good luck with the form filling! Bonne Année :-)

[Mainon Jeblogue]

Bureaucracy actually means "other countries' regulations".
I remember the very polite consular officer in the US consulate in Paris insisting on my third visit that I provide him with my - I don't make this up - police record from Boston where I had spent a few months the previous year (1980). Or the request a while later, probably on my sixth trip to their Paris' office, - I was then living in Brittany - that I needed to swear on the Bible (?!) that I was not going to the USA with the intention to kill the president. (That was not my plan). Or questionning me as to why I had played for the Rugby Club Quimperois and how would I be able to prove it. Or... oh well I could go on for hours, literally....
I have residences and citizenships in both the USA and France; I don't find the USA to be less bureaucratic than France. A lot of the "official" requirements from the French administration are easily matched by the "nimble" American private industry. Ever tried to go a doctor in the USA? Make sure you have the "proper paperwork" from your insurance provider. I remember being covered with blood trying to get into a hospital in Michigan and being told to come back later because the number on my little plastic card did not match their record. Actually it was the clerk - we would call her a bureaucrat if she had been French - who was too busy appraising the design on her fingernails to enter the correct number. I could also go on for hours on the American hospital bureaucracy - oops sorry - I meant "on the can do spirit - damned the torpedoes - yankee ingenuity - of US health care."
I know how dealing with French administration can be frustrating. Unfortunately it is not much better in the US. If anything, the quality of service in the public and the private sectors seems to be getting worse everyday.

[Sedulia]

Mainon, you are certainly right. Bureaucracy is never fun anywhere, and the U.S. health-care "system" is a nightmare. It always makes me laugh when Americans argue against the single-payer system by saying they're afraid of a huge bureaucracy.

A lot of people make fun of the questions asked by the U.S. immigration forms, like "Have you ever been a Communist?" or "Do you plan to kill the President?" These questions are asked for legal reasons, so that a charge of perjury could possibly be made later. Kind of crazy though.

[Jeremy]

You think France is bad? In fact it's not - you get a buig list of documents to supply but in the end you find someone who will help you out. Here in Holland you get a bigger list of documents, and just a robot across the desk - a sadistic robot - who gets their kicks from telling you that "it is not possible" to do the thing you need to do. One such idiot told my wife that in order to exchange her UK driving licence for a Dutch one she needed to supply a letter from the UK police stating that she'd spent more than 185 days in the UK in 1983.