Rouge Tape

Along with wine and cheese, the French have developed a reputation for producing some of the finest bureaucratic procedures in the world. A common expression here amongst expatriates when discussing the long, complex, and seemingly ambiguous measures one has to take when acquiring things such as a visa, a bank account, or a metro ticket is that the procedure is “very French.” Having been in Paris a month, Lisa and I have yet to figure out why the ineptitude and redundancy found in administrative dealings are assigned the “very French” label. While we are still unclear on the cause of French red tape, we have become fairly familiar with the effect. In a word, that effect is annoyance.

On Lisa’s first day at her pastry school, the American expat administrator warned the students that the school was “very French” and they would probably get annoyed with how things were run. The administrator’s words of caution were well received by the students who had already noticed that their schedules for the week were incorrect due to negligence. Ironically the blame for the error fell on the American expat herself. I was given the same word of caution from my school. Although the “very French” label was watered down to “the French, you’ll find, have a different way of doing things.” The example the speaker used was what to do in case of an emergency. He asked the Americans in the audience what numbered they dialed when they needed urgent help. A loud and unified “911” rang out immediately. Then he asked the French in the audience the same question and a soft disjointed response came back, “It depends on the type of emergency.” Apparently if you need the police, you call 17. Except if you’re calling from a cell phone in which case you dial 112. For the fire brigade you hit another two digit number and for poison control it’s yet another. There is a number for doctors that make house calls. There is a number for mobile dentist and about a dozen other such numbers that the French dial in case they have an emergency. At the end of his example he reiterated that it was just a different way of doing things and we adjust ourselves accordingly.

I recently went through the procedure of getting my “carte sejour” to complete my long stay visa. The process took no less than three hours and I made contact with five bureaucrats, six doctors, and about fifty or so visa seeking foreigners. In the three hour span, the rest of the visa seekers and myself queue up into lines four separate times. Also within that time I was weighed, my height was taken, my sight was checked along with my blood pressure, and an x-ray was taken of my chest. Why my height, weight, sight, and ribcage were pertinent to my status as a temporary resident of France is anyone’s guess.

Clearly, as anybody who has recently been to the DMV can attest, frustration arising from bureaucratic procedures is a universal feeling in the modern world. The French do not have an exclusive on red tape. Like so many other things, however, they seem to have created an art form from something that would be simply mundane in another country. We’re not satisfied with having you wait in just one line; no, you have to wait in five! Oh, you would like to make a deposit into your checking account? Well, walk passed the ATM for withdraws and passed the one for savings account deposits and you’ll find the one you need. You may think that I am exaggerating, I assure you I am not. Just Like the complexity found in a nice Chateauneuf-du-Pape, which contains nine different grape verities, the French have a way of taking something simple and adding to it until it begs either positive or negative recognition. Nothing in Paris, we have come to find, is plain. Not even their bureaucracy. And perhaps that is what they mean when they say “it’s very French.”