Some years ago, I needed to get an visa for urgent travel to China, a process that required me to fly down to SF and stand in a very long line at the Chinese consulate.
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@dan Jen once needed a special cultural exchange visa to go work in a hospital in China. Getting it required _5_ trips to the consulate in New York, each time being sent away to come back with a more significant seal from the inviting institution.
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Some years ago, I needed to get an visa for urgent travel to China, a process that required me to fly down to SF and stand in a very long line at the Chinese consulate. When I finally handed the woman there my forms, she promptly stamped them and said "you need to take these to Window 2", pointing around the corner. So I walked around the corner...
...where *the same woman* swiveled her chair around and proceeded to check the stamp that she had just applied.
I would have been annoyed if I wasn't in so much awe at discovering the purest form of bureaucracy.
@dan Even California DMV would be impressed by that.
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@ricci @steve @dan my both alma mater and employer for teaching had a problem with their old diplomas and, specifically, the Chinese government. they were very avant-garde for a diploma and a lot of international students had trouble convincing their home governments that they were real. eventually they changed to a more traditional design and students could pay to have theirs re-printed.
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@ricci @steve @dan my both alma mater and employer for teaching had a problem with their old diplomas and, specifically, the Chinese government. they were very avant-garde for a diploma and a lot of international students had trouble convincing their home governments that they were real. eventually they changed to a more traditional design and students could pay to have theirs re-printed.
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Some years ago, I needed to get an visa for urgent travel to China, a process that required me to fly down to SF and stand in a very long line at the Chinese consulate. When I finally handed the woman there my forms, she promptly stamped them and said "you need to take these to Window 2", pointing around the corner. So I walked around the corner...
...where *the same woman* swiveled her chair around and proceeded to check the stamp that she had just applied.
I would have been annoyed if I wasn't in so much awe at discovering the purest form of bureaucracy.
@dan Related historical anecdote from Ulysses Grant's memoirs:
"As commander of the company [Braxton Bragg] made a requisition upon the quartermaster—himself—for something he wanted. As quartermaster he declined to fill the requisition, and endorsed on the back of it his reasons for so doing. As company commander he responded to this..."
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@dan Having worked in systems-forward (bureaucratized) offices myself I have a theory:
those are two separate jobs and her coworker was not available.
There are two separate windows to improve a specific functional flow. If she did both jobs at her own window things would have gotten messed up as the office space on the other side of the counter is set up to perform that kind of flow.
Like the Italian coffee shop.I think most of us readers knew that. We are just having fun
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@dan Years ago I went to India. On the plane, they gave us a card to fill out, which I did. When we went through the immigration line, the first guy looked at me, looked at my passport, looked at my card, signed my card, and directed me to the next window. At this window, the guy looked at me, looked at my passport, looked at my card, and stamped the card. He then directed me to the final window,where a guy looked at me, looked at the card, looked at the passport, and took the card.
@grayladywriter @dan there was something similar when we went to Cairo almost 30 years ago. But I think it was maybe six or eight steps and involved someone putting a physical stamp in my passport (like one you lick to stick on). And then another person used a stamp (an ink stamp) to stamp the other stamp. And there was some card we filled out on the plane that someone else I think inspected and wrote something on that then someone else had to stamp with an ink stamp. And that card then went to another person. And there was a luggage inspection in there somewhere. Luckily we had a company expediter meet us at the plane and he shepherded us through the whole process, paid the various fees/tips/bribes/baksheesh, talked to the various officials, arranged for someone to carry/guard/not steal the luggage, and whatnot. Otherwise I've got no idea how a normal person was supposed to navigate that process because there was no obvious order to what was happening.
I've got to imagine the various highly bureaucratic societies consult each other and have contests on how they can invent new layers of bureaucracy.
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Some years ago, I needed to get an visa for urgent travel to China, a process that required me to fly down to SF and stand in a very long line at the Chinese consulate. When I finally handed the woman there my forms, she promptly stamped them and said "you need to take these to Window 2", pointing around the corner. So I walked around the corner...
...where *the same woman* swiveled her chair around and proceeded to check the stamp that she had just applied.
I would have been annoyed if I wasn't in so much awe at discovering the purest form of bureaucracy.
@dan talk about a side hustle…
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@rk this scene would translate well to an Infocom game
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@dan not even a cowboy hat or a fake mustache?
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@dan Jen once needed a special cultural exchange visa to go work in a hospital in China. Getting it required _5_ trips to the consulate in New York, each time being sent away to come back with a more significant seal from the inviting institution.
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-
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Some years ago, I needed to get an visa for urgent travel to China, a process that required me to fly down to SF and stand in a very long line at the Chinese consulate. When I finally handed the woman there my forms, she promptly stamped them and said "you need to take these to Window 2", pointing around the corner. So I walked around the corner...
...where *the same woman* swiveled her chair around and proceeded to check the stamp that she had just applied.
I would have been annoyed if I wasn't in so much awe at discovering the purest form of bureaucracy.
@dan In 2006 I was in Hungary and needed to buy medicinal alcohol in a pharmacy. The receipt specified the prices of the bottle, the alcohol and the cap.
