Inefficiency or In Efficiency?

The other day, I had a terrible realisation. I needed an official document in order to attend an important appointment on Monday morning. To obtain the document, I needed to make an appointment with another agency and provide some personal data. The data would need to be processed before the document could be supplied. It was Thursday, the second appointment was on Monday morning and there was no way I could take time off work, so I essentially needed the initial appointment to take place within 24 hours, outside the normal working day, and for the information to be processed within 48 hours of me supplying it.

What were the chances?

Within ten minutes I had an appointment with the first agency to take place at 7am the next day. The information would be processed by 7am the next morning and I could pick it up any time up until 9pm in the evening. When I attended the appointment, the people at the agency were friendly, caring, efficient and did exactly what I needed them to do. The document was ready at the time they said it would be, neatly stored in an envelope with the other papers that I had requested.

"In which parallel version of France did these miraculous events occur?" I hear the frustrated foreigners cry.

Well, the data I needed to supply was a blood sample and the document was the results of the tests. When it comes to the French health service here, there's no messing around.