A Little Bureaucracy

I was contemplating our blog a bit and it dawned on me that a lot of our blog posts seem to come when we have taken a nice trip or at the more important moments of our journey. However, as you may imagine, in between all of those occasions, there are lots of little moments that fill in the gaps and provide some context for our experience here. I'm sure most of those little anecdotes are going to be more interesting to us than for a wider audience - something more akin to an "inside joke" - but I thought maybe I would try and sprinkle a few of those little ditties into our blog now and then anyway.

The following story is an excerpt from an email I wrote recently to a friend of mine, clearly venting about one small aspect of the bureaucracy that we often encounter. We all have our little life-dramas that are often happening in the background of all of the more visible things happening in our lives, and I certainly don't think we are so unusual in that regard, but I think I will look back on this little gem and laugh a little.......

We're doing well here. I would say we're still getting settled, but I really think that "getting settled" is going to take at least a year, maybe longer, so it may be more accurate to say that we're still getting "in-processed". I mean, we've been here 6 weeks and really, we are still trying to get basic in-processing things done. I am supposed to have an actual office here, but it's being used as swing space for someone else, so I'm kind of in the "bullpen" area with a bunch of Italian architect/engineer technicians. Yesterday, they got a very mild dose of how I can get at times, when I got a call from the School telling me not to bring our kids to school tomorrow morning. They (the kids) haven't had their local "health assessments" done and so their pass (to get into the school) has been revoked! I kept my cool, relatively speaking, but I very calmly and sternly asked who I needed to talk to in order to make an exception since it was obvious that the person I was speaking to was not in a position to do anything for me. I got the name and number for the head of the "Parent Central Services" Dept (what a great government name, right?) who I called immediately. She explained that the only exception she could make is if we could send her documentation-proof that we have an appointment scheduled for getting these assessments done. Raising my voice, I told her that I contacted the Army benefits people THREE weeks BEFORE I got here because our family's health insurance was with my wife's work, and she was ending her employment, so I needed health insurance for my family. I explained that the Navy wouldn't help me because by the time the Navy's health insurance policy would become effective - the start of the next pay period - I would no longer be a Navy employee. The Army told me that I had to wait until the day I was an official Army employee (meaning the day we arrived in Italy) in order for the Army to give my family healthcare coverage. So, the day we arrived here, that was the first call I made, but then they told me that I would have to wait a few days so that we could be entered into DEERS. A week later, I was officially entered into DEERS, and I called to obtain family heath insurance .......but it would not become effective until the start of the next pay period. Once it became effective, it would take up to FOUR weeks to get a card with our policy number. I spent HOURS on the phone with Army Benefits, and then with Blue Cross/Blue Shield (including a few overseas calls), trying to find someone who could give us our policy number, without success. See, the local clinic wouldn't agree to even make an appointment for us until we were enrolled into their medical records department, but they wouldn't enroll us without our insurance policy number. Weeks later, our cards got here. So I told this woman at Parental Central Services that as soon as we got our healthcare cards, I went the next day to enroll in with the clinic's medical records dept (which took like an hour), and now, finally, we were able to schedule appointments. As far as I knew at this very moment, my wife has probably already made appointments to get this screening done - after all, WE'VE BEEN TRYING TO GET THIS ALL DONE FOR OVER TWO MONTHS NOW!!! And being that it was now 3:45pm and this woman from "PARENTAL CENTRAL SERVICES" was probably about to leave, how absurd was it that if I was not able to get in touch with my wife to have "documented proof" that she has an appointment, THAT OUR KIDS WERE GOING TO BE DENIED ACCESS TO THEIR SCHOOL IN THE MORNING!!!!!!!!

..... By the end of the call, I was standing at my desk, hot and bothered, speaking pretty loudly, perspiring a bit - NOT very happy!

Ultimately, this woman at Parental Central Services agreed to give us an extension so that our kids could show up to school tomorrow morning. THANK YOU VERY DAMN MUCH! right?

I hung up the phone (kind of loudly), looked up, and you could have heard a pin drop in the office! My Italian colleagues, normally quite chatty throughout the day, were suddenly SILENT and extremely intent at whatever they were doing on their computers. One guy glanced in my direction then quickly averted his eyes back to his computer screen before he made clear eye contact with me. I stood there for a moment in the quiet to collect myself, to wipe some of the perspiration off my brow, and let my blood pressure go down. It was kind of hysterical. You didn't hear ANYthing except the clickity-clack of keyboard typing - clickity-clack, tickity-tack - that's it! I may have scared the beJesus out of my colleagues.

I wonder if they talked about that later during their afternoon coffee break.....