Bureaucracy and its welcome imperfections

There’s something strangely instructive about dealing with bureaucracy. 

After many decades of careful observation, I’ve decided that the behaviour of bureaucrats is best thought of as being based on a kind of universal memo sent out to them all. That memo may not have a physical existence. It may be something virtual, or even spiritual, but its role is crucial in informing the training and moulding of the bureaucratic soul, not just at the start but throughout a career.

Key tool of the perfect bureaucrat

Now, the really good bureaucrats naturally read that memo and absorb its contents into their daily lives. Fortunately, for the sanity of the rest of us, there are plenty of bureaucrats who, out of common humanity, either decide not to read the memo, or decide to ignore it wholly or in part.

An Englishman I once knew in France, a self-employed businessman, decided he wanted to buy an apartment for his parents. He was successful but not to the point where he could simply pay cash for it. Fortunately, given his income, negotiating a mortgage was easy and went through smoothly right up to the very last stage of the process. Picture him actually sitting in the bank, pen in hand, ready to sign the final document that would release the funds.

“Now, the last thing I need,” said the bank employee, “is a set of payslips for the last three months.”

My friend looked at him aghast.

“But… I’m self-employed… I don’t get payslips.”

There was a long discussion, in which the bank employee explained the rules, which required the three payslips, and he explained how little sense that made. But it was no good. The great memo in the sky includes an injunction to pronounce the word ‘no’ in a tone which hints at the swish of a falling guillotine blade.

My friend had heard that sound.

He left the bank disconsolate and uncertain how to proceed. But then he saw, just up the street, a stationery shop (not to be confused with a stationary shop, though this one was both). Suddenly he saw the solution.

He popped in.

“Do you sell payslip pads?” he asked.

“Of course, sir. What kind would you like?”

Twenty minutes later he was back in the bank with three payslips hastily completed in his name.

The employee was all smiles.

“Three monthly payslips! Just what we needed! This is perfect.”

I call this the “tick-box deviation from perfect bureaucracy”. Once the bureaucrat has ticked all the boxes on his mental form, he sees no reason not to say ‘yes’, however imperatively the memo is telling him the answer’s always ‘no’.

There are bureaucrats that are far less perfect even than that bank employee. In France, you’re legally required to register a permanent move to a new part of the country. After we moved from the Paris region to Strasbourg, I rather let things slip and failed to register for over three months. 

Even so, everything went swimmingly at the interview. The pleasant young woman entered information on her computer as I provided it, and the paperwork advanced satisfactorily towards completion. But then I decided to ask a question.

There’s an old principle applied by lawyers: never ask a question to which you don’t already know the answer. But I sadly lack legal training.

“How long does one actually have to complete this registration process after a move?” I asked, “Is it three or six months?”

“It’s a week,” she replied a little coldly, but dissipated the drop in temperature by adding, “but have I asked you when you moved to Strasbourg?”

She hadn’t. And she didn’t. We completed the registration process smoothly and without difficulty.

This is the deviation from bureaucratic perfection that I call “human empathy”.

All this came back to me when I had my most recent exchange with the authorities here in Valencia.

My time working in France entitles me to a French pension. The authorities ask me to send in a form annually, signed and stamped by our local authority, attesting to the fact that I’m still alive.

I turned up at the relevant office with the form and with my passport, plus several other documents, on the grounds that the general first response in any contact with Spanish bureaucracy is that you haven’t brought enough paperwork with you. So I try to carry lots. This is the same philosophy that made me want to carry an umbrella whenever I went out during my time in England, on the basis that it only rained when I didn’t have one. I reckon the tactic would have worked, had I not always lost the umbrella, which meant I always got soaked on the return trip home.

I did make a mistake on this occasion, which was turning up at around 12:30. The offices open at 8:00 and I do know that it’s best to be there as close to that time as possible. Certainly, as the woman who was keeping us waiting at the door announced, it’s best to show up before the time of almuerzo.

Now, in most of Spain, almuerzo just means lunch. But not in Valencia. Here they have breakfast – desayuno – early, especially if they have to be at the office at 8:00. That means that they’re hungry by about 11:00. Almuerzo is the meal they have then. That keeps them going until comida, which actually means ‘food’, but in this context means ‘lunch’.

Lunch is important not just for its nutritional qualities. It also defines the morning. As a naïve Englishman, I tend to think that 12:00 midday, or ‘noon’, marks a transition in the day: the period after noon we think of as the afternoon.

Not so in Spain. Morning lasts until lunchtime.

The offices I was visiting are open in the ‘morning’, so they close at lunchtime, which is, naturally, a bit after 2:00, so they can get home by 2:30, which is when they have their comida. 

This all gives Valencian bureaucrats a motivation for being doubly strict in their application of the bureaucracy memo. Those mealtimes are sacred. Nothing can infringe on them. It’s like Americans with guns, though less harmful.

“Yes, we’re open and working, but we can see from the number of people waiting that we can only just get through those cases and still get away soon after 2:00.”

She didn’t have to explain why getting away soon after 2:00 was so important. After all, these were fellow Valencians she was talking to. She was alluding to an idea that they had all absorbed with their mother’s milk.

It didn’t stop them complaining and asking whether she couldn’t just squeeze them in, after all. But she was adamant.

When I saw a gap, I went up to her to ask whether I ought to return the next day. A lot earlier. Clear not just of the comida hour, but even of the time for almuerzo.

“For a proof of life certificate?” she asked. And then, almost as though talking to herself, “that only needs a signature and a stamp.”

She made up her mind.

“Come this way,” she said. At a counter she explained to a colleague what I needed, and I handed over the form for completion and my passport (none of the other documents turned out to be necessary, but I’m sure that’s only because I had brought them with me, as my metaphorical umbrella).

“Wait here,” I was told.

Five minutes later, out came the colleague, with my form signed and stamped. I was effusive in my thanks.

“De nada,” I was told, nothing to thank me for, the reply I got from the other employees I tried to thank as I left.

This I call the Mediterranean-warmth deviation from bureaucratic perfection.

And, boy, I was happy to encounter it.