Thursday 31 December 2015

Administration blues

In 'Platform', Michel Houellebecq wrote that, after the age of forty, life becomes little more than administration. How true that sounds!

Here's two examples from the past week.

I bought a printer on Tuesday for my work and writing. I went to set it up yesterday and found the cable between the printer and PC / laptop is missing (yes I checked the dustbin to see I didn't trash it by mistake).  Telephone customer service at FNAC  doesn't work,  And I really don't want to do a 70km  round trip back to Bayonne to claim a cable.  So  I guess I will cut my losses and buy one locally (but most shops are shut for three days).

As a result of the missing cable I had to ask the secretary at my tennis club to print out my new car insurance certificate (the old one expires tonight).   To get there I had to phone my insurance company in Belgium to get them to send me an electronic copy of the certificate. The mail addressed to me at Poste Restante 'Hendaye Plage' went to 'Hendaye Ville'!  The clerk in the PO in 'Plage' was very helpful , knowing that I had passed by three times in the past week to find my mail. She  called the office in 'Ville' and called me back within an hour to let me know my mail was there. But it was too late to get to collect it before the holiday :-(.

I'm not complaining about crap customer service or inefficient postal services - though there are good reasons to do both. What I do see is that I spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with, and worrying about, malfunctioning administrations (and often not in my native language)  - and technologies that I don't understand. This saps my creativity.   Do my readers have the same problem and how do you keep it under control?  I veer between being hyper alert and trying to keep everything under control or just ignoring issues until the red lights flash. Neither strategy is very helpful  to leading a balanced life.

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