France is the spiritual home of petty officials.
A friend of mine told me the story this week of how she had wanted to organise a "clean up our parks" initiative, the gist of which was to round up a bunch of people and spend the afternoon in one of the local parks putting all the rubbish they found in bags and then disposing of it safely. She contacted the local town hall about it, who informed her that she'd need a permit if there were going to be more than 20 people in the same place for the same purpose, as that fell under the law on public gatherings. Applying for this permit cost money, needless to say.

She also had to make sure her own insurance covered the potential acts of the people who would be there for the event, in case she or any of her friends damaged the site; her gut reaction was "We're going to pick up rubbish; what the fuck are we supposed to be damaging? Are you afraid we'll step on a blade of grass and condemn it to a slow and painful death?". In the end, the town hall staff dragged their feet so much in giving her the permit that she had to push back the date of the event by a fortnight, and she applied for the permit four months in advance.

All of this was depressingly familiar to me. A friend of a friend at a dinner party once explained the French bureaucrat's attitude to work as: "If I don't have the original form requiring the paperwork in my right hand and the paperwork itself in my left hand at a given moment, the request is clearly fishy and I'm going to chuck it in the bin." You have to declare your local GP in France in order to get your healthcare costs reimbursed by the State, and when I sent the social security fund the form saying my local GP is Dr. X and his surgery is located at Y location, they hadn't received the corresponding attestation from Dr. X himself, so the mouthbreathers just sent the entire 5-page form back to me with all my information crossed out and giant question marks scribbled over every page. Brainless fucks.
( .Yeti., Thu 27 Mar 2014, 22:12, 10 replies)

In the last few months I've written lu et approuvé on forty six thousand pieces of paper.
Give or take a factor of a thousand.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Thu 27 Mar 2014, 22:51, closed)

It's like some kind of hazing ritual, isn't it?
If you can write out half a fucking page of text in capital letters and sign it at the bottom of the printed contract/lease/purchase agreement you've just read, without your hand cramping up and falling off, you win some sort of prize.
( .Yeti., Thu 27 Mar 2014, 22:53, closed)

It's filtering by attrition.
They work out the percentage of things they want to pass in a year and then adjust the pain of the bureaucracy to an appropriate level to dissuade the rest.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Thu 27 Mar 2014, 22:55, closed)

Not so sure about that one.
I think it's more entropic: if I ever have to ring up the same administration more than once, there's a cast-iron certainty I'll get a completely different answer every time, just because I'm speaking to somebody different. I've actually got into the habit of taking a half-day off work and going down there in person, because that's the only way anything ever gets done and I avoid getting fucked over.
( .Yeti., Thu 27 Mar 2014, 23:02, closed)

sarcasme, nom masculin
Moquerie ironique et méchante. Synonyme ironie
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Fri 28 Mar 2014, 7:38, closed)

Au temps pour moi wesh

( .Yeti., Fri 28 Mar 2014, 8:32, closed)

Sounds like The Trial
distinct danger of becoming Josef K there.
(fivetide, Mon 31 Mar 2014, 12:44, closed)

^can't afford an avocat

( Albert Marshmallow is a completely irredeemable cunt, Fri 28 Mar 2014, 8:45, closed)

If I could afford avocados
I'd buy a job lot of them and hurl them at the troglodytic denizens of local administration.
( .Yeti., Fri 28 Mar 2014, 8:51, closed)