Famous French Bureaucracy
Perhaps you are considering a move to France. Or you’ve just seen the rumors floating in the air like dark little clouds waiting to rain on the heads of individuals. Whatever you’ve heard regarding the bureaucracy of France, it’s all true. None of it is an exaggeration or hyperbole.
And who doesn’t like to read about bad things happening to good people? So here is the latest example of the kinds of things we immigrants face on a regular basis here.
As you may know, we moved from Nice to Dijon a couple of months ago. We are required by law to notify both the prefectures in Nice (Alpes-Maritimes) and Dijon (Côte-d’Or) of our move so that they can hand off our file and continue to monitor our residency in France. We did that immediately upon arrival in Dijon. It’s done easily online and it triggers the prefecture in Côte-d’Or to reissue our existing one-year residency cards, crucial for us to stay in France legally. Think of it like a green card in the US.
We then waited for about six weeks until we were notified that the new cards were ready for pick up. That’s where the easy part ends. How we were notified is cryptic. Our files with the government are individual. We are not somehow combined because we are married, so we both received the same text message: Votre title de séjour disposable en pref. Taxe a payer: 0025 EUR. RDV SUR WWW.RDV.COTE-DOR.GOUV.FR AVEC PASSEPORT-RCS-TITRESEJOUR-TIMBRE FISCAL. I almost trashed mine thinking it was spam, but realized it was important and regarding our titre de séjour, which means “residency permit.” Also contained in that cryptic text message is the phrase Taxe a Payer, which means payable tax, also called a timbre, or stamp, and 0025 EUR means €25 fee to get the card.
You’d think you just go to the prefecture office, pay the 25 euros and get your card. Ha. No. If only it could be so easy. The tax has to be paid prior either at an online website to the government or at a local Tabac. How does one even begin to explain what a Tabac is here in France? They are literally everywhere in this country. In the middle of nowhere and in the major cities. Gemini defines a tabac as:
A tabac (short for bureau de tabac) is a licensed local shop in France that sells tobacco products and stamps, while also serving as a vital neighborhood hub for lottery tickets, transit passes, newspapers, and small café services.
A Tabac is where you go to buy magazines, but lottery tickets, pick up some smokes, have a glass of wine or a coffee, and yes, pay your various government stamp taxes. They are absolutely vital to the running of this country. People hang out in them every day—they even have regulars. The red diamond-shaped signs are also famous.
(PHOTO credit: https://francewithvero.com/)
Anyhow, back to the card pick up. Can you just go to the prefecture office to get the card? Again, HA. No. You have to make an appointment. Online. Okay, fine. But when you log in to make the appointment, after you pay your tax, also online, you are met with a message that says all appointments are booked and to please check back often. WTF? And they don’t have just one calendar to check, they have two! So, you logically check the available appointments on the second calendar, and guess what, you can let go of that false hope, those are all full, too. Oh, just to turn the knife a little more, there is a message in parenthesis that lets you know the last time there were available appointments was ten days ago.
So, as I am doing more of these days, I check in with ChatGPT, whom I lovingly call Chappy, and see what I can learn about this whole snafu. Chappy tells me that I have two options, well three, really. Sit and hit refresh on both calendars endlessly for the rest of my life. Hard pass. I can sign up for a service that monitors the appointment calendars and when one comes open get notified so that I can book them. Remember, I have to have one and Chien-hui has to have her own, too. This sounds great (forget about that an entire business has sprung up due to the inefficiency of the French bureaucracy) but I learn that it has a monthly fee of €12.99. Monthly? Again, WTF? I only need it this once (right?). I’m not going to pay to babysit the calendar. My third option is to set an extension in my Chrome browser called Easy Auto Refresh for each of the two calendars and it will automatically sit and click endlessly at whatever interval I set it for until it hits the jackpot. This is one of these times where I love AI for being so clever. I download the extension, install it, and set it for every 10 seconds. The last thing Chappy tells me is that on Friday afternoons, the prefecture often releases new appointments between 12 and 2pm because they get cancellations. It happens to be Friday at 11:30am when I install the extension. Lucky me.
The prefecture is on to me. Every 30 seconds or so, it displays the no appointments available message and then defaults back to one of those stupid Captcha puzzles where I have to parse the hieroglyphics that somehow read as numbers and letters, like 52Gh78Vz. The auto renew plugin is rendered useless since it can’t enter code for me and I am back to entering the codes and essentially spinning the wheel.
After two hours of this, I hit triple 7s at about 2:00pm. There are five appointments that suddenly flash up on the screen. I grab one, but in order to confirm it I have to enter a code from the prefecture sent via text and enter it on the screen within 30 seconds or I will lose the slot. My phone is sitting next to me, I get the code, I enter it and secure the first appointment. Hell yes.
Now I need to book Chien-hui’s. I go back to the calendar and there only two appointments left now, three already gone in less than a minute. I grab the next available appointment that happens to be 15 minutes after mine but the code they text goes to her phone. She is down the hall in her office. I scream I NEED THE CODE! I NEED THE DAMN CODE THAT JUST HIT YOUR PHONE! She yells back, “What?” Panicking, I get up and thunder down the hall, my footsteps thump, thump thump on our old wooden floors. By the time I reach her doorway she has her phone in her hand and she sees the code and gives it to me. I run back to where I was in the dining room and enter the code. Yes! the appointments are all gone… but I got hers. Both appointments are for the following Tuesday.
I print out the confirmation letters the prefecture sent us with their respective QR codes. I also print the paid taxes and their QR codes. We also have to bring our passports and, of course, our not-so-old cards that we have from the Alpes-Martimes prefecture. The cards actually have our address on the back and they also show which prefecture we’re assigned to. You can’t just use an old one.
Tuesday comes quickly. My appointment is for 2:05pm and Chien’s is 2:20pm. Fortunately, the location where we are picking up the cards is not far from our house and we walk over there in about ten minutes. It’s France, and everything is closed from noon to 2:00pm for lunch. The building is what I think is an old hospital that has been converted into a government office, its rather beautiful and has large arched windows. A large rolling gate in front blocks a set of stairs and a small plaza leading to the automatic sliding doors of the building. We line up on the sidewalk. I say “we” because there are already many other immigrants there, each holding their own set of documents, each with the same nauseous look on their faces. We all know what’s coming. A couple of new arrivals try to mill about the front as if they are going to ignore the very obvious line—another very French thing that happens—and rush the gate when it opens, but they receive enough side-eye from those of us in line that they quickly give up and go take their place in back before the line gets any longer.
The staff of the prefecture mills about on the plaza in front, each with a cigarette in hand on their lunch break. There are two security guards and three or four others who must work inside at the desks. We eye each other across the gate like two teams from the sidelines before a game, measuring the potential damage that might be inflicted on each side.
At 1:55pm, the two security guards take to their post and the others disappear inside to take their positions. At precisely 2:00pm they put on their game faces, and the meaner-looking of two comes down and opens the gate. It rolls back like a compound gate and he signals that it is okay to go to the other security guard to show our documents and prove we have the right to be there before they let us in the building.
When it’s our turn we put on our best Bonjours and show him our appointment certificates. He checks them against a manifest, or perhaps more like a guest list at the club. Are we on the list? Do we get past the velvet ropes today? Are we the VIPs or the losers who get turned away for having out of style fashion? I see him scratch lines through our names, a very good sign. He comes back and asks us for our proof that we paid the tax. I produce these documents. His face sours. Uh-oh. In rapid fire French he tells us that the tax has doubled and we should have paid €50 each. But I didn’t quite catch what he said and probably looked like a deer in the headlights, so he kind of yells at me what I think is the same information. I only hear the word for fifty being repeated.
Very kindly, a man standing behind us waiting his turn tells us in English the news. He says we can either pay it online or run to the nearby Tabac and pay it. The guard will let us back in if we are quick about it. I stagger. What do I do? I choose the exact wrong thing to do and I take out my phone and show the guard the text message with the 0025 EUR amount clearly shown. This only enflames the situation as he tells me very sternly that the text is wrong and I need to pay 50 more euros and he then looks me off as he greets the next person behind me. This is exactly the kind of thing that French bureaucracy is famous for. One department decides to double the fee, but doesn’t bother to let the other know, or to change the outgoing text message. How would anyone possibly know they need to pay a different amount?
Now I am thinking that I will have to go home to pay the tax online because I don’t have the link on my phone, it’s only on my laptop, and this will certainly take longer than I am probably being given by the guard before he will turn me away, which means I will have to repeat the entire appointment booking exercise again. France! The man who interpreted for us earlier has also discovered he needs to pay more than he had. Only whatever he is doing at the prefecture costs €550 and he only paid €500. He says we need to go to the nearest Tabac and get back, that will be the fastest. The three of us head off following Google maps and head for the Tabac, which turns out to be the one right by our apartment. I have walked past it many times since June but I’ve never been in a Tabac.
We hustle over there in about seven minutes and I show the guy there my QR code showing I already paid €50 and that I need to add €50 more. He scans the code. Nada. He calls his wife from the back and she tries. BZZZZT. Sigh. It can’t be done.
I tell him to just charge me for completely new taxes and I’ll deal with the one I bought online later. Maybe I can get a refund. He seems shocked. The man who has been with us reassures him in French that this is what I want to do. Even if I am paying triple, I prefer that over starting over. I pay and receive two tiny pieces of paper with new QR codes on them. We thank the man who has been helping us and leave him to his business and we bolt back to the prefecture.
It’s only been 15 minutes total that we’ve been gone. The previous line has been completely depleted. The angry guard is now gone and the other guard has replaced him. We start over, beginning with Bonjour, and he finds our names on the VIP list, then checks our new taxes, and the velvet rope magically lifts. Feelings of freedom and privilege rise from my belly and replace the stress and frustration of the past half hour.
In Nice, a huge prefecture, there are long lines, markings on the floor of where to stand and arrows showing what paths to take to the various desks to take care of business. People there have jobs whose sole duty is to take groups of people from point A to Point B. We enter the Dijon building and there isn’t a single soul in the room. We see a lone man sitting at a desk across the floor in front of us behind glass, like he is bank teller. Above him is a huge sign that reads Titre de Séjour. We approach cautiously and say Bonjour. He speaks to us in French. He wants the appointment certification paper. He zaps it with his QR reader. He taps a few strokes on his keyboard. He asks for the proof of tax payment and I hand over the newly minted slips of paper. They pass muster. There is a pile of envelopes sitting next to him like yesterday’s mail. He rifles through them until he finds mine. He opens it and there it is, my card! He places it into some kind of electronic reader, clicks a few more keys to activate it, and then removes it. He tears off a perforated slip of paper from inside the envelope and asks me to sign it. He asks for my old card and nonchalantly throws it into a large open cardboard box on the floor with dozens of other cards, their faces staring up from inside. He asks me for my birthdate. I tell him in French, and I am secretly so proud of myself for saying it correctly, and he kind of smirks, so I think he knows I am. And then he places my new card in my hand. You would think I had won the lottery.
Chien-hui repeats the entire performance step-for-step while I stand behind her far enough away not to interfere so she can have her own moment of triumph. Cards in hand, we walk toward the door, victorious. The mean security guard is back at the door and as we pass by him on our way out, we say, “Merci” to him and he just smiles and looks completely harmless now. He says “Bonne Journée,” wishing us a good day.
We walk home deflated and yet elated. I go online and get my refund for the previous tax stamps, easy peasy. Then we take well-deserved naps.