Made a mess of what ?
Thanks Karen, the things that pop into ones head when walking the dog!
Whatever they were doing, or I suppose more realistically taking far too long, or being ordered by some other higher up that what they were doing and believe to be right is not right at all.
This has happened.
I am the person dealing with your dossier.
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Have you any idea how job cuts etc are affecting admin services ? Sarkozy started the rot and every government since has continued to reduce investment and cut personnel.
I’m sure many of the comments are tongue in cheek but we are talking serious reduction in investment here.
I have many friends and family ( three daughters plus two sons in law ) working in the public services and you should hear some of the stories they come out with. One close friend, an Assistant Social in the eastern Charente coming up for retirement fortunately for her has a high percentage of British customers.Some are great but many are complete arseholes. She tries to help everyone of them but some of them/ you just don’t have a clue.
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No, this was the fiasco regarding our Attestations for our Carte Vitales and I was lucky enough for the fonctionnaire involved to obey the order of the CPAM English helpline, but the same person then said, afterwards, to a friend, knowing full well what to do, that she would have to investigate the procedure.
This is appalling.
Sounds like Jane.
For thé record, not all such employees are fonctionnaires, the majority aren’t. There are various forms of employment in the public sector and the statut fonctionnaire is becoming less and less. This is to save the state money as the perks of being a fonctionnaire have become too costly. One son in law is a conseilleur with the Pole Emploi and he earns not much more than the SMIC.
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Careful mes amis. I’m not too sure how to express this because I know it doesn’t apply to my SF pals and I don’t want to offend anyone but, slagging off our hosts’ idiosyncrasies (many of which we love) can come across a bit… UKIP.
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UKIP didn’t have enough brain cells to compute gentle piss taking…
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Admittedly I may be a bit sensitive on this Jane.
When my girlfriend (soon to be wife) and I first pitched up in Grenoble in 1981 she met a lovely lady called Madame Dolas (sic) who ran a voluntary organisation called Grenoble vous accueille. Ger (my wife) got on really well with her and contributed a lot to the organisation.
One evening they were running a welcome night for UK assignees and spouses to the nuclear research centre in Grenoble (one would imagine bright, cosmopolitan people). The blague de soir was “what’s the best thing about Grenoble? Answer; the autoroute to Calais”. Rather than mix with such boors Ger never went back. And she was right. Ever since I’ve had a horror of what I sense as “put down” jokes about France. I’m all for legitimate criticism but snigger, snigger doesn’t do it for me.
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Surely being within spitting distance of the 3 Valleys. So jealous.
Oh Mat, it was wonderful. Look out the office window in the morning, decide the snow was right, take a half day off, pop home to collect the skies and on the slopes by two o’clock. Them was the days 
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I’m a fonctionnaire and I think nobody is un-criticisable 
nobody usually remembers the nice helpful normal person but nobody forgets the minority of awful ones.
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please feel free to delete this thread if you find it offensive in any way.
In our Grenoble office there was always a handful of people that ended up on crutches round the office for a few weeks every winter - all been skiing close by.
A really nice-feeling city to work in for us young techies then. Is it still so nice?
Oh no Art. I don’t find it offensive in the least. Just I worry that not challenging what some may consider innocent banter, like spurious EU straight banana regulations, can, as we’ve seen, have serious results over time.
Happy days. I live in the Var now but as a young sportif techie in the eighties there was no better place to live IMO. We loved the city, the culture (in the broadest sense) and our French friends.
Not a question of being offensive Karim but it is easy to criticise when sometimes one should consider both sides of the story. Yes, some govt workers are abysmal though some are brilliant.
How about a topic which praises certain departments ? But I suppose it’s much easier to slag people off…
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And I was a functionnaire…and laughing gently at foibles can actually be a good way to recognise and correct them. Like playing meeting bingo.
Anyway this post is about admin, not just functionnaires.
Sometimes innocent banter is just that, no more, no less. Please not let’s police everything. This is not racist (or even sexist), has no double entrendres, and it would be a very, very big stretch to get from here to Frexit.
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I must be blessed. I have,
Acquired a Carte Vital,
Registered to vote in commune elections.
Registered and obtained rulings on Impots Sur Revenue.
Registered a 10 m boat.
Registered a 6m boat.
Obtained a French driving licence.
Obtained a French international driving licence.
Obtained a Carte de Sejour.
The only problem I ever had was obtaining my original EU based Carte de Sejour as the Prefecture at Montpellier had decided to invent some rules of their own. As the President had publicly encouraged us to stay in France I wrote to him. The problems disappeared.
I did not apply to register an old boat trailer as it was obvious that to bring it up to French standards was not worth the effort.
Do you read and understand French administrative requirements?