The Great Glitch

Hit rewind. It’s September. I’m standing on a street corner next to the canal St. Martin. Among picnicking couples, bouncing joggers and panting dogs, I’m the only one crying. I sob and choke into the phone. My misery? French bureaucracy.

I’d just been back to the Foreign Labor Office and seen a different woman who’d told me yet a different story. In France, the visa laws change depending on which employee you see. I’ve been sent away six times to find various Life Documents, all originals with original signatures and official seals and stamps and insignias. This is my seventh attempt to obtain working papers. I’m armed with every document that’s ever concerned me, from my birth certificate to my passport entry stamp.

Quite simply, the Foreign Labor Office is a madhouse. When I arrived that morning, a hand-written note was taped to the locked door: “Due to the high volume of visitors, we are no longer open all day. We will now receive visitors from 9am to noon. –The Direction.”

I reread the note several times to be sure I understood correctly. More people need papers, so they are open less often. It was 8:30am. I took a place in line.

Let there be no doubt: the French have no respect for orderly lines. There is no good translation for “wait your turn” or “single file”. When the doors opened at 9:15, a dozen people streamed out of the McDonald’s across the street and joined the funnel of people clamoring for working papers. I elbowed my way to the ticket distributor, which had, by that time, been knocked to the floor. Of the nine windows, only two housed state employees. The ladies blinked at us from behind the glass.

Eventually, one of them punched a button and a number appeared above her head. The skinny boy squatting next to me had just won the French lottery.

After two hours and sixteen sitting positions, my number was called. The woman took one look at my papers and said, “You’re in the wrong office.” I assured her that I wasn’t, that I’d been there six times before, that I had just been missing my pay stub from ten months ago. She looked at me and pushed a button; my number vanished from above her head. A pushy redhead with a nasty accent appeared beside me. The woman asked for her documents as I yelped, “You have to at least tell me where to go!” She pushed a paper with a new address my way.

And so I ended up on the quai of the canal, unable to begin work and angrily crying on the phone to my mother for just 2,34 euros/minute.

Fast forward to present day. Last Thursday, I was back at the same address the woman had given me, ready to renew the working papers that I’d received six months prior. I’d scouted it out earlier that week and had learned that the office was now only open Tuesdays and Thursdays from nine to eleven. I could call the office to ask questions, but they only answer the phones on Mondays from two to four. I had also discovered that because of a new rule, you had to apply to renew your working papers, by correspondence only, two months before their expiration date.

My expiration date was Saturday. I did the calculations: two days, not two months. Visions of deportation had haunted me all week. Would they at least let me pack up my things? Who would pay for the ticket?

As I sat down in Mme Dufournil’s chair, I feared the worst. I’d planned to lie about my dossier, telling her that I’d sent my renewal request months ago. Had she lost my papers? The French postal service was certainly to blame. After all, they had been striking recently.

Instead, I heard myself spilling my guts to her open-mouthed frown bearing clenched dentures. I was sorry. I didn’t know about the two-month limit. Please, Madame, don’t kick me out of the country.

She sighed, and finally asked, “When is your appointment at the Préfecture?”
“Ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”
She flipped through my documents, and concluded, “Bring me your last three electricity bills and your last pay stub. Be here at nine tomorrow morning. I’ll have your papers ready so that you can be at the Préfecture at ten.”

Brilliant. Through some glitch in the French bureaucratic system, I was golden. I could stay in France legally for another six months, and then would have the option to renew. I thanked her at least eight times before I left. I texted my friends to let them know that I wasn’t to be deported. Life was great and I was excited.

The next morning was magic. I walked to the front of the line at nine, told the angry Russian that I had an appointment and gave a solid knock on Door 623A. Mme Dufournil greeted me by name, we exchanged Life Documents, and I was off to the Préfecture... who informed me after my hour-and-a-half wait that they’d lost my file.

I spent the day walking back and forth between Ile de la Cité and my apartment, photocopying all the way. So it wasn’t a complete fairy tale ending, but I’m here for six more months. The exciting news is that, through an unrelated glitch, I was overlooked for my Visite Médicale at the Immigration Office. You know what that means. Sometime in the next six months, I’ll be the proud owner of lung x-rays.