Something you will not see in France: a number to take your turn
"Do you have your receipt? Oh-- I can see from your face that you don't!" said the nice bureaucrat at the Mairie. "Never mind. I remember you." She dug around in her files, then handed over the precious document. "Et voilà!"
Next I went to the post office. In the past few years, the post offices of Paris have undergone a huge change. Gone are the windows and the long lines of people waiting behind ropes (or, even earlier, the milling mob of people all planning how to resquiller their way to the front of the lines). Now, most of the post offices have machines all over the place and shelves of ready-to-post envelopes and boxes. Next to these is a single stand where a harried postal employee gives advice and takes packages. I'm not sure it's an improvement.
I picked out an envelope for the book I was trying to send and addressed it. The envelope tore-- I asked for some tape and the post office employee, a young woman, said, "Oh là là! You can't send a book in this envelope!"
"Why not? The book is very small and doesn't weigh much."
"It's for documents only," she said as she carefully taped it up. "That's why it doesn't have a customs form on it." She took it to ask her superior, and the older woman shook her head.
"You shouldn't have bought this. It says clearly on the display that these envelopes are just for documents." (It didn't.)
But to my surprise, instead of making me go buy a box and fill out a customs form, they just casually tossed my taped-up envelope into the overseas box. "Next time, pay more attention!"
French bureaucrats-- sometimes I love them!
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