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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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 I've written up notes for a D&D campaign in a surreal city, and one of the locations is a pair of buildings named the Tenements of Faith and the Tenements of State.
The one is inhabited by bickering priests of innumerable minor gods, the other by low-level bureaucrats.
I'll be stealing this for the latter.
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@dan I've written up notes for a D&D campaign in a surreal city, and one of the locations is a pair of buildings named the Tenements of Faith and the Tenements of State.
The one is inhabited by bickering priests of innumerable minor gods, the other by low-level bureaucrats.
I'll be stealing this for the latter.
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@peter_b @dan When I was in college I had to obtain some papers and I did have to do a round of about five or so desks and queues only to end up at the first one.
The person there got snippy at me for being annoyed, to which I replied that if I'd had to circle four queues to end up at the beginning maybe I wasn't the one in the wrong.
I think. It's been a few decades. But we can do this in Argentina, too. We have the technology.
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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 sounds like a pink panther movie.
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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
this is impressive. but. both of your checks were on the same day in the same building. this would be an efficient day of progress on any application, review, or question regarding disability or welfare benefits.like this is douglas adams and welfare/disability is kafka
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@rk this scene would translate well to an Infocom game
@dan @rk isn't that more or less what Papers, Please is about? https://papersplea.se/
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@peter_b @dan When I was in college I had to obtain some papers and I did have to do a round of about five or so desks and queues only to end up at the first one.
The person there got snippy at me for being annoyed, to which I replied that if I'd had to circle four queues to end up at the beginning maybe I wasn't the one in the wrong.
I think. It's been a few decades. But we can do this in Argentina, too. We have the technology.
@adriano @peter_b @dan similar to my experience immigrating to Portugal. There are all sorts of places where you can get in a dependency loop of 3 or more government entities all of which insist one of the others approve a document before they can do anything. Mostly a function of AIMA (the immigration bureaucracy) being very underfunded for the load placed on it. But also, the PT bureaucracy seems to give a lot of wiggle room for untrained employees to make stuff up or ignore published rules.
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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 nearly 30 years ago I visited one of the smaller Caribbean islands… 4 seater plane and they had to shoo goats off the runway before we landed. On arrival, a friendly chap in a smart uniform and hat at passport control inspected our passports and then directed us to customs control. He walked with us to this other desk, stuck on a slightly different hat and asked us if we had anything to declare!
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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.
All we need is a camera and for you to be Steve Carrell for this to be perfect.
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