Vs. The Post Office

Two packages, identical in size shape, weight and destination take off from St. Joseph, MI. One reaches the Caledonian School and is picked up. The other is held at the post office. That’s Czech bureaucracy.
The drizzly, gray Thursday after Kutna Hora, the successful TEFL students seeking jobs piled into a humid little classroom to hear a twenty minute speech from one of the academic directors about how there were not enough jobs to go around. Citing a slowing world economy, terrorism, oil prices, and the threats posed to us by a possible invasion from Neptune (just look at it there, waiting and scheming), the AD then asked for several volunteers to agree to a later start date in exchange for a small (and I mean small) stipend. Lindsey was sitting a few seats away from me, and given the nature of the decision, I’d have wanted to talk it over, maybe sleep on it, but as it was presented, we didn’t have the time or privacy for a proper discussion. As a result, we held them to our original job guarantee, only to have the volunteers convince the school to grant them not only a stipend, but to cover their rent for November.
On one hand, it’s nice to have our jobs figured out, a steady paycheck, and the chance to build a rapport with our students before the Christmas holidays. On the other, we missed out on a week or two we could have spent traveling.
After arranging our schedules, picking up some of our textbooks, and cursing both the academic and scheduling offices of the Caledonian School, Lindsey and I took the tram up to the Prague 5 Post Office to pick up the package that didn’t make the last leg of the journey. I was worried, before this, that going to the post office would be a throw-back to the Neanderthal era, and that we would literally have to hit people with clubs to get any sort of assistance. The Czechs, probably as a result of the Soviet occupation, have installed machines in their post offices that dispense numbers. In order to obtain a number, you must press one of the several buttons that describe the different reasons one may go to an eastern European post office. Unfortunately, our Czech was limited to “Pivo, prosim” and thus we selected blindly. Lindsey, ever resourceful, however, compared our summons to the post office to the various options and obtained a second number. One of our numbers was in the 200s, and one was in the 700s. We watched as an electronic sign called various numbers up in a completely random order. Number 520 would be followed immediately by number 3. We went as soon as one of our numbers was called.
The woman at the window was less than jovial, and despite my explaining (in Czech) that we didn’t speak the language, had some moral objection to gesturing. We stood in front of her, frozen in confusion, as she summoned the next random number, who turned out to be a somewhat-bilingual woman who told us to try upstairs.
Upstairs turned out to be a hallway of closed doors. We tried the first one, and after handing over our documentation, pointing, and gesturing, it turned out we were in the right room. The woman handed us another form and, by way of pointing, told us to go to the office down the hall where something, hopefully, would happen.
The second office was lined with teller-like windows, and my first approach to an open window was turned back by a scowl, a dismissive wave of a hand, and a few Czech words that I’d rather not, for decency’s sake, translate. We then sat in the chairs of the empty “waiting area” of the office for the sour cog in the fine post office machine to sweeten. After a few minutes, he motioned me forward and stamped our document several times. He then explained, by means of pointing, that we were to return to the first office.
Upon our return with our stamped form, we were finally given our package. And as we left, both of us were trying hard not to think about how we’d just spent over an hour taking a form from one room to another room to get it stamped, and then returning it to its origin. You’d think they’d have a guy for that.
But that’s Czech bureaucracy. On one hand it’s stringent, ludicrously inefficient. There’s a love affair with rules, documents, passports (you need one to rent a movie!), and lunch-time closures. You would be hard-pressed to find a Czech, let alone an expat, that would tell you anything good about the officialdom in this country. And yet, if you are equally as severe, if your desperation matches their rigidity, it is susceptible. It’s kind of like playing a game of chicken. You may get arrested, interrogated, and deported, or you might get your package from home or a stipend AND your rent paid. It all depends on who blinks first.