This morning I woke Oldest Daughter and Youngest Son at 8:00am. A cruel time to awaken so soon after school is out. Our task for the morning was to visit the Canadian Consulate and obtain a student visa for Oldest Daughter. We were prepared. We had all forms filled out, all required paperwork clipped together and neatly placed in a folder with her passport. We learned from the consulate website that they only processed student visas between the hours of 8-10am. No problem. We are up and in the car by 8:30. There was a plan made to go out to breakfast after the visa was obtained.
Now a reasonable person could surmise that needing to be in the office between 8-10am means that it is during that time that things are processed, and that at the strike of 10am we would be on our way to a nice hot meal. Well, a reasonable person would be wrong. What they mean is that you need to show up between 8 -10am to pull a number. What they do not tell you is that the numbers are random and at no point will you have any idea how close you are to being next. Nor will they tell you that you should be prepared to spend a good 5 hours in an office designed to max out at 130 people, but holding well more than that number. Finally, you will not be told that there is no possibility of getting food or drink, because you might miss your number. See the sentence above about not knowing your place in the queue.
Add to this uncertainty a daughter who is a stressed about the whole school thing in general, a son (9 years old) who is bored and hungry, and a mother who has to go to the bathroom and then picture them all there in the room, with 130+ people and no hope of escape.
Once we gave up on going out to breakfast we began to plan lunch. We heard workers bees tell other people they tried to get everyone processed by noon. OK, we have an end time, noon. Noon comes and goes and the only change is that now the person at precious window #6. The window where you actually receive visas, has gone to lunch. Of course, we still can not leave because we may be called for the interview.
We pulled out of the parking garage at 1:40pm. Did we have a visa in hand? No. We had a letter stating that she was approved for a visa, but that we needed to go to the border for the actual document! I am so flabbergasted that I can not even come up with a good string of swear words.
In case you all were assuming the US is the only country with rampant bureaucracy, it is not. It has company and is fully aware that there is not a damn thing we on the other side of the glass can do about it.
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