Battle Royale, or, Getting a PPS Number

My struggle with Irish beaurocracy has reached the 'epic battle' stage, given the past week's 4 aborted attempts to attain any sort of legal document. Having spent fruitless hours sitting in a room with other wannabe Irish employees, watching the grass grow faster than the numbers were called, I decided to bite the bullet, and arrive at the office BEFORE it opened, thereby being the first person in the building and the first to receive official attention.

So this morning, I climbed out of bed long before the appointed hour. I should mention that, for reasons that are still very unclear, the office does not open until 9.30 am, making it challenging for us working types to visit it at all. However, I got myself ready, hopped on the bus, and was standing in front of the office at 8.30, a full hour before any doors would open. You will imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered a small mass of people already milling about in front of the doors. Nor were these people in any sort of order; I have experienced the British/Irish obsession with 'queueing', but my fellow document-seekers seemed to be taking a leaf out of the Italian playbook. I suppose that makes sense, as not a one of us was Irish, but the small mass of people was a full scale mob by 9.15, and tensions were running high.

At 9.30 on the dot, a man appeared on the opposite side of the glass, and his unlocking of the doors was akin to the firing of a starter pistol. As soon as that door opened, every member of the now sizable crowd tried to be the first person through it, regardless of how far away they stood. A big Russian man barreled his way towards the doors, only to be stopped cold by a very fashionably dressed Japanese woman, who drove one of her stilettos into his foot. An Indian man, trapped at the back of the melee, hoisted his wife on his shoulders and prepared to launch her over the heads of the crowd. Two Chinese women were delivering an onslaught of kung fu to a very tall Malawian man, who was trying to fend them off while still holding a smaller man back from the doors by the scruff of his collar. Trying to stay aloof from the fracas (while still trying to get through the doors as quickly as possible), I trod carefully among the battling groups. I saw the Indian woman, having vaulted to the front, now held in a headlock by a woman in a headscarf. The only other American besides myself was dishing out Chuck Norris-style roundhouse kicks, and I utilized his circle of destruction to squeeze myself between two Polish women and throw myself inside the building.

Yet the contest was far from over. Once inside the building, I had to join the 10 kilometer sprint to the desk handing out numbers. It was at this point that I gave up on any sort of sportsmanship, and elbowed the man next to me in the liver. The tiny woman who somehow managed to beat me to the desk had managed to break the number-dispenser, so I had to repair it while fending off other rabid PPS-seekers. At the end of all this, I managed to emerge with number 5, not a bad showing considering that there were still people outside the doors fighting to get in.

Once I had the number and was properly seated in the wounded tent- I mean, waiting area, it took all of 7 minutes to apply for the number. Grand! I thought, but it turns out I still have to wait 6 to 10 days to get the number itself. That is, unless I want to go back to pick it up...