a tale of two bureaucracities

Two bureaucracies, unalike in virtue...

Bureaucracy the first.

My unending battles with residency continue. Having won the bout a few weeks ago, I had almost forgotten that the war raged on. During the summer, some people at the lab here had claimed the priviledge of "regularising" (regulating? making regular, anyway) the acquisition by PhD students of work permits from the Direction de Travail (Ministry of Employment?). Foolishly, I thought this would be a good thing. In any case, having obtained my recepissé, I gave them photocopies of that and every other paper in the hopes that my work permit would magically appear before my invitation to pick up my carte de séjour (residency permit), envisioned for 6 weeks after the acquisition of my recepissé.

I went down to their office yesterday and asked how it was coming along. Well, it wasn't. They were waiting on my carte de séjour. I assured them that at the same time, my carte de séjour was waiting on my work permit, which they didn't believe. So, this morning, I showed them the little letter I'd received saying that I could come pick up my carte de séjour any time I liked, so long as I brought my work permit. Well, the lady was very confused, and called the prefecture up to talk it over, and afterwards encouraged me to go see them with my scholarship contract and use a jedi mind trick to convince them that they don't need to see my work permit.

We shall see.

Bureaucracy the second.

After my operation moved up to next week, so did some other things. To that end, I went for a tour of the hospital yesterday. First I dropped by to see my surgeon's secretary, apparently to get a tiny little slip of green paper saying that he would cut me open on Tuesday. The surgeon didn't seem to be in, so I didn't have to queue to see her, which was nice. From there I went down to pre-admissions to tell them about my insurance situation and what kind of room I wanted. Again, no queue. After that, I had about 45 minutes to kill, so I found a lounge and did a little work on my ECOOP paper. Around 4, I went up to anaesthesia for my appointment. I had to wait 25-30 minutes, then saw the anaesthetist, who got a quick history, informed me of my options for the operation, and told me what would happen afterwards to manage the pain. She then sent me away armed with a letter for the lab to take some blood, which I did directly, and again with neither queue nor delay.

All in all, I saw 6 people (all women, curiously) in 4 departments within a period of about 2 and a half hours, including about a half hour on my paper. Impressive.