Normally I manage to take it with a smile. But when trying to sign up a kid for swimming, my patience got tested to the limit.
When I first came to Portugal in 2005 there was a lot of bureaucracy. A lot. So much that when you needed to do anything at a public office you would take the day off, go get a number for the queue at 08:30, then go out to drink coffee, do some shopping, have a walk, grab some lunch and propably it would be your turn mid-late afternoon.
A lot of that has changed since then. Especially during COVID where a lot of public services got online bookings/communication etc. But from time to time I still run my head against the wall when getting sucked into the public bureacracy – and this time it was something as simple as trying to signup a daughter for swimming classes. This is how it went:
First I realized that both pools near our village have closed. Or rather for some strange reason not reopened after COVID. Damn. More driving to do, but that is life in the countryside, so get on with it Mr…..
Contacted pool number 1 by email to check if they had vacancies. They did. Cool. Went out to shop swimsuit, glasses etc. and went to the pool to do the signup. Now there was no spaces available. WTF? “Try again after the summer” was the answer.
Found pool number 2 which belongs to the neighbouring municipality and is located out in the middle of nowhere(!) some 12 km away. Called their numbers around 50 times, phone never got picked up. Then wrote an email to ask for vacancies. Got a general reply that we would have to do a formal enrollment first and a form to fill out. Filled form. Wife had an errand nearby so she went there to see the pool which turned out to be a super modern facility with a fantastic view over the mountains and people working in the reception full-time.
So how come did they not answer the phone at any hours, ever? Because the municipality had a policy that all contacts must go through their headquarters. So even though each pool (and there was 5 in total) has their own phone number, nobody were allowed to pick it up. Hallelujah!
Wife managed to get some info (not about if they had vacancies though) and booked a time for our daughter to do a test so the teachers could determine her level. One more drive there to do that. But by the time the test was over, the secretary had gone for the day so they still could not tell if there were vancancies. Hrmpf.
As calling was a dead end and emails were replied from the central headquarter (who new nothing about our daughters test at the local pool), I drove there a third time to hear about vacancies and yep there was plenty! As a matter of fact they had vanacies for pretty much any level of swimmers but…… due to municipal rules theyre were not allowed to reveal this until a test was done blah blah blah. AAARGHHH.
Summa summarum: after endless attempts to call, an email and three times 24 km of driving back and forth, we finally managed to get her signed up for the classes. VICTORY!