![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Random work-related bitching
You know what's annoying - when a parent, usually a mother, comes into the library with their kid, having heard we do passports, and when you give them the forms and point out that both parents have to sign, and that yes, if they take it home to get the signatures, then the kid will have to come with them for the actual applying bit, no, we can't just say she's been seen and not have her brought. The rules are simple and straightforward - the person applying for a passport must appear in person, be it newborn infant or person on his/her deadbed. I didn't make the rules, I can't bend them, I just obey and fill in papers and wield a mean datestamp.
So why, oh why, do they always try to negotiate? Saying "but if?" and trying their level best to make me feel guilty, as if this wasn't something they could have known long before they set foot in the library, information freely available online or if they had bothered to pick up the phone and call ahead to ask, as if this is somehow my fault, like I'm trying to somehow wage a miniature bureaucratic war on them specifically, these randoms strangers that I've never seen before and probably never will again.
Ah well, at least I've finally come up with a decent comeback for the woman who ranted about how I ought to be more flexible. Something along the lines of "madam, flexibility is the privilege of the people who make the rules - us mere mortals can but obey them". Pity the bitch came and went months ago, but better late than never, right???
no subject
We're actually pretty popular with the parent crowd for stuff like passports, because unlike city hall we rarely have a long line (or any) and a convenient children's area where the kids can run rampant after we've actually seen them, measured them and gotten a signature out of the older ones. It's even got an enclosure-thing with those plastic balls kids seem to love.
It's just frustrating coming face to face with these women (and they're mostly women - make of that what you will) and knowing that if I let them think they can show up without the kid, they'll just come face to face with a "no-sorry-we-can't-make-a-passport-for-your-kid-without-your-kid-being-present" - and I remember this mother that came in some months ago, asking for passports for three kids, only she only had two with her, and it turned out the youngest had been sent home after having finally sat still long enough to have her photo taken, just before mom and sisters headed for the library. The look on that woman's face, well, let's just say that while I find these ladies annoying, then I am not even close to hating them enough for that.
(Mind you, I'll confess to a certain degree of schadenfreude during the summer, when a special subspecies of the breed tend to show up - the people who somehow manage to forget until two days before leaving for distant and exotic locations that kids actually need passports too, you know. How people manage to forget something like that is frankly beyond me. And then there was the time when dad was at work on a oil-platform and not due home until after the vacation...)
no subject