Saturday, March 8, 2008

La Burocracia

I recently had the pleasure to experience; first hand, the Chilean bureaucracy. All persons living in Chile under anything other than a tourist visa must register their visa with the international police at one office, then take their registration information to another office to register for an identity card.

Clearly this is the best way to run this system. Of course I want to go wait for an hour at one office to receive a sheet of paper telling me I have to go wait in line at a place that is across town. Things should be so simple.

So last monday I decided to show up at the Civil Registration office at 11 in the morning, thinking this was sufficient. Never in my life have I been so wrong. There is a deli type number system in hell, I mean the office. When I arrived the number on the board was B-62, the number I chose was D-35. When I decided to leave; roughly one hour later, the number was B-72.

The next morning I returned at 7:45 with the appropriate documents. More than ready to wage war on this system. I was already 15 people back when I got in line outside the building. I waited for 45 minutes until the doors were opened to the public. As soon as people entered the gates chaos ensued. I witnessed a grown man cut an old woman in line, and justify it to her with the logic that the line was outside the gate. Once I made it to the number dispenser I pulled a 76. I only had to wait 10 turns!

I then realized why cutting was an absolutely necessary phenomenon of that dreadful office. Each person you cut in front of is literally saving you 5-10 minutes of your life. Perhaps one day, Santiago can have one registration office. That is a world in which I would like to live.

1 comment:

Fred O'Rourke said...

A man who died on the operating table only to be brought back by his doctors after several minutes of "death" described the experience as follows: I was drawn to a great, bright, white light, which I walked towards until I came to a counter, wheren I had to take a number and wait in line.

Dad