No or Number ~ Disaster in Waiting

She looked down at the paper she’d just been handed. It read no 485. They were serving number 397.
Oh no! There was no chance she would get out of here in time to make it to work. She was stuck here for hours. She should have taken the day off. But really how could she guess it would take this long when she arrived 30 minutes prior to the offices opening. Sure the line up was already somewhat lengthy but 100 people ahead of her?? No way!

And all this for some stupid paper that she could have ordered online if their system had recognized the accent in her name. Why had her parents decided that they would write Céline instead of Celine? Just because her grandmother was of French descent, she was now stuck with an administrative nightmare. And a freaking long waiting time. Shit! Could anyone notice the irony? No one spoke French in her entire family. She’d tried to learn it and failed. Yet she was stuck with a stupid accent on her name. Accents were a disaster waiting to happen, her French teacher once said about the rules that applied to the thing. Well there it was, the freakin’ disaster. Because really, was there anything worse than being stuck for hours to wait upon the good will of the bureaucracy. A body of people that seemed to live only to make other people’s lives a nightmare. After all could they be slower? There was no way any of the people waiting in this stupidly big room needed anything that would take more than 5 minutes to handle, unless you were lazy. Yes they had to be lazy. Otherwise bureaucracy wouldn’t be so slow. It had to be mandatory to be a slacker to work in one of these offices.

Besides she wasn’t going to wait hours just to get her stupid birth certificate. No freakin’ way. If she wasn’t at the desk within an hour, she was gone. She had better things to do. Except she needed to damn paper if she wanted the visa she’d applied for. So what if she’d got a job in another country’s bureaucracy; she wasn’t a slacker. She would be fast and efficient. Unless people were annoying: then she’d be slow on purpose. Oh… maybe that was what it was. Stupid people being so annoying and demanding… they made everyone else wait because they were too selfish to realize that others also had important requests and needs from the administration.

She stood and walked out. Yep, no need to spend the entire day ranting in her head about things she didn’t control. She looked back and noticed a pregnant woman who was just sitting. The ticket in her hand showed no 512.
“Here. Take mine.”
The lady’s face lit up, as she held the paper close to her breast, like a treasure found by chance.
“Really? You’re sure?”
“Yeah. I’m not waiting today. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“It’s my third day in a row…”
She bit her lips, as if she regretted giving that piece of information. If anything she held onto the tiny piece of paper even more tightly.
“Don’t worry about it. Have a nice day.”
With that she walked out. The moment she was in the street, she breathed better. Maybe she could find a way around this. Otherwise she’d sleep in front of the offices tonight and be the first tomorrow morning. Yes, that’s what she’d do.

©scolpron2016