Good deed.

By now you should be able to tell from my descriptions of the Préfecture that this place is worthy of a special place in Dante's inferno.

Nasty bureaucrats, screaming babies, impatient everyone -boredom and frustration reign supreme. Suffice it to say that such conditions don't bring out the best in people. Line fights regularly break out, everyone is generally on edge. Without fail someone decides to change their cellphone ringtone by testing all possible rings for everyone to hear. It really is unbearable.

On March 1st, when Monsieur J and I decided to take a break from the madness by going to a bookstore, he (being new to this) was worried that our number would be called and we would miss our turn. I suggested that he take another ticket, which would give us at least 20 minutes.

Well, after the bookstore outing there were still 38 people ahead of us. So much for that second ticket. Monsieur J went to run some other errands, and I found a seat and did some reading.

I couldn't help but notice the woman sitting next to me and her adorable little boy, who I guessed to be about 4. He wasn't whining, was spinning in circles and playing with a scrap of paper he'd found on the floor. Sometimes he would smile at me and I would smile right back.

I also couldn't help but notice the ticket she clutched in her hand, 50 numbers worse than mine. Ouch. Twelve tickets processed per hour with 88 people in front of you? This was not looking good. And while Junior was keeping it together for the moment, surely he couldn't do this all day.

And that's when it hit me. We had a second ticket, and it would improve her wait by about 4 hours. Now the only question, was how? I didn't want this to result in a line fight. I've seen them before and trust me, you don't want to involve yourself, much less provoke one.

I got up to stretch my legs and stood by the ticket machine. The little boy came up and gave me a shy smile and with that I slipped him the ticket and asked, "tu peux donner ça à ta maman"?

He toddled over and handed it to her, she looked at me questioningly as she unfolded it, and then her eyes looked as if they might bug out of her head. We couldn't say anything to each other without causing a riot, but the looks of gratitude and understanding we exchanged said it all.

You've Got Mail.

I wish I were writing about that cheesy romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, but alas, I'm not that lucky. Instead, I received a terrifying lettre recommandée aka certified mail from the Préfecture yesterday. For those of you who don't already know, the Préfecture is the official headquarters of all bureaucratic migraines, especially if you're not French and exponentially more so if you hail from a country outside of the E.U. It is a place that I will always associate with amoeba-esque lines, conflicting notions of personal space, monotone zombie personnel, incorrect information, B.O., and minimum 3 hour waits. This place is the bane of my French existence. In an effort to help you understand, I've provided a facetiously literal translation of a very nonsensical letter, in hopes that you too will feel my pain:


Miss,

By the file deposited at the Préfecture on the 29th of September 2009, you have sollicited a change of status in order to exercise a salaried activity.

Under the application of article R5221-17 of the labor code, in order to grant or refuse the work permit requested, the Prefect of the Department takes into consideration the following elements of appreciation notably:

- the situation of the job

- the adequateness between the qualification, the experience and the characteristics of the job to which the foreigner is applying

- the respect by the employer of the legislation relative to work and social protection,

The statistics of the Regional Direction of Labor and Employment and of Professional Training in the Midi-Pyrénées make to appear for the position "trainer", of 101 offers of which 8 are temporary contracts inferior to 1 month out of 402 requests.

And yet, the employer proposes a temporary contract for the duration of one year in addition to occasional overtime but does not indicate what type of mission this is about.

Moreover, the company has confirmed that upon signature of the contract only a temporary contract can be envisaged without further perspective in the coming weeks and without further information on the concluded market that would impose upon this organism of training a specific and occasional recruitment.

As a consequence, given the situation of the company and its way of using temporary contracts and in considering the situation of the position, your change of status is not conceivable. We invite you to approach yourself to the nearest Prefecture in order to submit a new dossier requesting a change of status within the next month.

I pray of you to accept, Miss, the expression of my distiniguished sentiments.


And I pray of you, M. le Préfet, well... nevermind.

Fortunately, my boss and I are going to sit down tomorrow to get to the bottom of this bureaucratic nightmare once and for all. And who knows, maybe she will understand the more sublte nuances of this communicative masterpiece better than I. At any rate, it's high time to figure out what sort of contract and additional information about my "mission" as a "trainer" will be needed to get this file approved before I turn into a pumpkin, I mean, an illegal alien. Now that I think about it, perhaps we should specify that I'm only certified for "foreign langauge training" lest the Prefet think I wish to exercise in the dog or potty training sectors, I would truly hate for there to be any confusion.