Like a rat in a maze
May. 9th, 2008 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bktheirregularI thought this morning, I would do some errands: go to the airport, pick up a package waiting for me in customs, head to a police office near where I have my apartment, and get my Greek ID card.
Sounds simple enough, right?
Until you try it.
First, the cargo area where my package was being held was over a mile from the main terminals, so I had to get a pass for an internal (to the airport) bus; then I had to get off the bus while it did some of its rounds, then get back on because I couldn't be let in past a checkpoint. Then I got to the cargo area: basically a warehouse. Across the catwalks of the warehouse to the UPS office, pay fifteen euros to get the package's papers, then back across and down to the ground floor, give the papers to one person, then another, wait for who knows how long for them to find the package, then get sent to a prefab office building in the warehouse, get bounced around, told to wait, then across to another prefab office, back to the first prefab office, then get sent all the way across the parking lot to the customs office.
Then get bounced to six different desks in the customs office building, cough up another seventy euros for customs duties, then get sent back to the warehouse. Bounce back and forth again among three different prefab office buildings in the warehouse, pay another ten bucks for storage fees, get bounced around some more, and finally they find and give me the package, after something like two and a half hours of runaround.
And that, dear readers, was the successful part of the day.
The ID card? Not so much.
1: I was directed to the wrong office.
2: The color photos I got for the ID are no good; they insist on black-and-white photos.
3: I need to bring someone to serve as some sort of character witness.
One colleague asked me how things went: I responded that I felt like a mouse in a labyrinth. (Best approximation I could get to "rat in a maze".) The answer: "hey, you wanted to come work here."
Oh, and now my computer at the office is starting to tell me that it's running a pirated version of Windows. I thought the tech guy fixed that.
Sounds simple enough, right?
Until you try it.
First, the cargo area where my package was being held was over a mile from the main terminals, so I had to get a pass for an internal (to the airport) bus; then I had to get off the bus while it did some of its rounds, then get back on because I couldn't be let in past a checkpoint. Then I got to the cargo area: basically a warehouse. Across the catwalks of the warehouse to the UPS office, pay fifteen euros to get the package's papers, then back across and down to the ground floor, give the papers to one person, then another, wait for who knows how long for them to find the package, then get sent to a prefab office building in the warehouse, get bounced around, told to wait, then across to another prefab office, back to the first prefab office, then get sent all the way across the parking lot to the customs office.
Then get bounced to six different desks in the customs office building, cough up another seventy euros for customs duties, then get sent back to the warehouse. Bounce back and forth again among three different prefab office buildings in the warehouse, pay another ten bucks for storage fees, get bounced around some more, and finally they find and give me the package, after something like two and a half hours of runaround.
And that, dear readers, was the successful part of the day.
The ID card? Not so much.
1: I was directed to the wrong office.
2: The color photos I got for the ID are no good; they insist on black-and-white photos.
3: I need to bring someone to serve as some sort of character witness.
One colleague asked me how things went: I responded that I felt like a mouse in a labyrinth. (Best approximation I could get to "rat in a maze".) The answer: "hey, you wanted to come work here."
Oh, and now my computer at the office is starting to tell me that it's running a pirated version of Windows. I thought the tech guy fixed that.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-09 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 11:53 am (UTC)