Day of Reckoning for Public Officials

I’m starting to really like this guy. Minister Renato Brunetta began stirring up controversy in Italy several months ago when he proposed a law that would require adult Italian children to move out of their parents' homes and fend for themselves at 18 years of age.

This week, Brunetta has many Italians all fired up for another reason. His package on public administration reform includes a rule that requires all public employees (except for the higher ups, naturally) to wear a name badge. Ahhh, it will be a year of reckoning for so many evil public servants! Now we will have the ease and pleasure of reporting city employees, town hall workers, records clerks, you name it. Conveniently, I believe that one blanket letter will work for nearly all my present and future complaints with just slight modifications to suit each situation.  Here’s what it looks like:

Dear (insert public office title here),

I am writing to inform you of what I consider to be unacceptable and downright appalling behavior on the part of one of your employees (insert name here, in future will be referred to as "XXX").

On (insert date here), I arrived at 9:30 to submit a (insert name if Italian bureaucratic process here). Although your office opens at 9:00, XXX arrived at 9:40, then decided to leave immediately for a coffee before beginning work.

When I finally got to speak to him (though the tiny opening in the bulletproof glass, of course), XXX took a phone call from his mother in order to discuss the menu for lunch and where he would like the pleats ironed into his shirts. The phone call lasted 8 minutes.

After the phone call, he stood up and walked out of the room without any explanation (bathroom break? Cigarette? Another call to Mamma, this one private?). Upon his return, he looked at his computer screen only to tell me “Mi dispiace, the terminals are down, you should come back tomorrow. Much to my dismay, I left and returned the next day.

       The lovely and neat ticket machine             Who cares if we have numbers? We still stand and hover.

The next day, XXX was actually in his office at 9:15. I took a number and waited my turn. After looking over my paperwork, he told me that due to a discrepancy in one of my documents (city of birth spelled differently by one letter in two different documents-what the HELL does city of birth have to do with anything anyway??!), there was nothing he could do for me. Despite my repeated protests (after all, some moron in his office had to be the one who spelled the city wrong in the first place), he looked at me with the cold and unsympathetic eyes of a lifetime underachiever and hit the “next number” button.

I now understand why you DO need bullet proof glass. If it hadn't been there, I might have bitten the man's jugular. But what you DON’T need are any more employees like XXX. As my friends at "Only in Italy" say: it's not like one needs an incredible educational competence to work in these offices. An eggplant can do a more efficient job and it doesn't even have to be "parmigiana".

Cordially,
A disgruntled Roman (sortof)