Bureaucratic Waltz

Today I went to the passport office to apply for a new passport. I brought a book to pass the time, as I was sure the place would be a maze of lines. And also because I never leave the house without a book.

I found the building without too much difficulty, which surprised me because in my experience government offices are rather elusive. But once I got into the building -- a pretty big affair with two towers and many corridors and elevators -- I was astounded to find that there were no signs indicating which offices were on which floors. So I walked around the ground floor a bit, and found after turning some corners that Suite 103, the one I was looking for, was not far away.

I went through the glass doors and had to stop to get my bearings; to my left was a man consulting with people and directing them to various lineups, to my right was a lineup marked "pre-sorting" and ahead of me was a row of counters and attendants, facing a room full of chairs where people sat. There was another lineup, apparently for the counters, to my far left. I joined the pre-sorting line since I wasn't sure where to go. I wondered as I stood there what the attendant near the door was doing, if not sorting, and why there wasn't a line in front of him, and whether I was just a sheep joining an apparently redundant cause. In any case, my turn finally came, my documents were reviewed and I was directed to line 20.

As I joined this second line, I noticed that there was a row of monitors facing the seated people, showing which client number was being served by which agent. This seemed strange, since no one had issued me a number, and it seemed that most everyone was going straight from pre-sorting to line 20, and seated people were not moving much or quickly. A man standing next to me asked if this was line 21, I said no and then he disappeared, I don't know where.

When my turn came, I was directed not to booth 20, but to booth 11. I wondered why the line I had stood in was 20. Why not just a general lineup? Or why couldn't I take a number and sit? It's very uncomfortable to read standing up! Anyway, the attendant read through my form again and pointed out that I had skipped over a section. I filled it out while he waited. I wondered why the attendant at the pre-sorting line hadn't noticed it, since I could have saved a lot of time by filling it out while I was in line 20. (Of course, it wouldn't have been easy, since I would have had to do it standing up.) Once I finished, he took my photos and slipped them into slots on a new form. A passport application requires two identical photos. He cut a sliver off one of them. But not the other. They were exactly the same size! Then, as I turned to go, I noticed that in the five or ten minutes that I'd been facing the counter, the seats behind me had become virtually empty.

Having finished, I walked out of the building feeling bewildered and, vaguely, like I'd been a ridiculous pawn in an incomprehensible human comedy. All of this being amusing because I was reading Kafka.

Sometimes the world conspires to make your literary experiences more vivid.