One day last week, I had to pay visits to three different government offices. I spent a lot of the day seated, waiting for my number to be called. Each office was similar: a cashier seated behind a plexiglas window; an armed guard seemingly ill-prepared should he – God help us all — ever have to actually use his gun; a number of sober-faced Ticos behind desks; and a much larger number of patient citizens awaiting their numbers to be called.
In each office there was something about the surroundings—the solemnity, the sobriety,the reverential silence of all those waiting—that reminded me of church. Which is fitting. I have always been of the belief that Bureaucracy—and not Catholicism—should be considered the true official religion of Costa Rica. Every year more and more Costa Ricans leave the Catholic Church to become Evangelical or Pentecostal Christians or just abandon religion altogether and all is accepted.
The teachings of the Catholic Church are debated and argued and sometimes questioned and there is little public outcry. But woe to the politician or economist who expresses the opinion that the public sector could easily be downsized considerably, that too much money is already thrown that direction on salaries, pensions and sick leave—the Bureaucracy and its participants and defenders will shout to the heavens in outrage that anyone could dare utter such blasphemies!
Forget the old axiom about politics and religion; in Costa Rica, if you want to stay safely on the good side of many Ticos, avoid any pointed discussion of the bureaucracy. There is a better than average chance that they will have at least one family member gainfully employed within the bowels of the thousand armed being that is the public sector.
At the third and final office I visited, my number was called quickly. I took my seat but before I could get a word out, the young woman on the other side of the desk asked me to wait while she caught up on some unfinished business. She had printed out a thick stack of papers. In her right hand she wielded a stamper.
Page by page she proceeded, stamping each with a practiced precision. Although the stack was thick, she made great time. After only a few minutes she finished her stamping. I started to speak but she held up her hand to indicate that she hadn´t yet finished.
She put down her stamper and picked up a marking pen. She flew through the papers quickly, marking selected ones with the pen. But before she could pass the papers on, she saw something on the top page that needed correcting. She produced a pen that, when squeezed, produced white correcting fluid. She whited something out, and then took the stack of papers to someone seated behind a partition.
I had just witnessed the holy trinity of the bureaucrat—the stamper, the marking pen and the correction fluid pen—all put to use in a brief period of time, and I knew better than to show restlessness or impatience when she returned. I collected the papers I needed, thanked her for her time and departed. Every year, every adult living in Costa Rica sacrifices a few days or more in accumulated hours inside the offices of the Costa Rican Bureaucracy. It is not worth complaining about.
It is simply the price one pays for living here. Consider those lost hours’ time spent worshiping at the altar of the True National Religion.
