Getting a Christmas package out of customs, statistical analysis

Number of trips to the main post office required: 3
Number of offices visited therein: 9
Of those, number visited twice: 4
Of those, number visited four times: 2
Number of employees I dealt with, officially, in order to get it:

(Not including the six dudes in Members Only jackets lounging on hand-me-down office chairs around a single desk at the entrance who shouted across the lobby at me, demanding to know where I was going, even though it was clear I knew where I was going (I muttered a floor number, which was apparently enough of an acknowledgement of their officialness that they did not find the need to rise from their seats as I kept walking); the woman on the stairs who stood in my way to ask me, "Where is go?" (I replied, "Go is a verb, not a location."); or the cleaning woman who was scrubbing the stairs with a bucket and rag while everyone was leaving (With the exiting horde taking up half the stairs and her the other, I had to ask her to move to one side so I could finish my business.))

• 3 employees to look at my form and tell me to go to the next woman, whose function was to look at the form and tell me to go to the next woman.
• 1 employee to find the slip that matched my slip.
• 1 employee to assign imaginary cash values to the items in the parcel and calculate the customs duty ("Mr. Samir").
• 1 to open the box ("Nasser").
• 1 supervisor to nod his approval of key pieces of paperwork as they were added to my stack ("Mr. Inji") This is the priss who had turned me away the day before because I showed up at 1:15 p.m. ("Too late!" he said with a smile of pity, squinting behind his glasses. "Everyone is gone home. We have procedures. This takes some time.")
• 1 employee to chaperone me (after I decided to ship some of the clothing items back to the sender in the U.S. rather than pay the tariffs which are set ludicrously high in an attempt by Egypt to shield its clothing industry from higher-quality imports) between the following employees:
  • 1 (down the hall) to give me a form for mailing the stuff back (cost, 5 Egyptian pounds 10 piasters)
  • 1 (in the shipping room downstairs and around the side of the building) to tell me to fill out that form (then I had to go back to the previous guy, through the main entrance and up the fourth floor, get him to record something, then return to the shipping room).
  • 1 employee to wrap the returning items in butcher paper and brown tape (cost, 1 pound).
  • 1 to weigh the bundle and ask me to write the address on it.
  • 1 to mail it (cost, 28 pounds, 20 piasters).
  • 1 to certify that I mailed back those items.
  • 1 to give me the "manifest."
  • 1 to record the calculated customs duties (on long sheets with carbon paper in between) ("Madame Fatma").
  • 1 to re-record and re-tabulate the customs duties on a pocket calculator.
  • 1 sidekick to the above employee to double-check her math on a pocket calculator.
• 1 employee to finally collect the money (542 pounds plus an unexplained 5-pound fee). At which point Nasser (the guy who opened the box) appears with the box re-sealed with a criss-cross of twine. I tell Nasser with a strained smile of fake cheer that I have had to interact with 17 employees that day, letting the implications about inefficiency lay there. He laughs softly, and turning to a co-worker, relates that I have dealt with "tamantashar" people, the Arabic word for 18. "No, sabatashar," I correct him, Arabic for seventeen. As Nasser hefts the box and we head out to the hall, toward freedom, I reach for it. "Oh, that's not necessary, I'll carry it," I tell him. But Nasser shifts my body between me and the box. "No, no," he says impatiently. His body language reveals that the box is still in the possession of the government. Nasser wheels us into another office.
  "Now you meet Tamantashar," he says, smiling.
• 1 employee to check me out. The guy has a Hell's Angel face, but he's by the books and anxious to go home at that point. He's about to speed me out of there when Mr. Inji shows up, the prissy supervisor. He had heard about my statistic, 18 people. He looks at the notebook that I've been jotting in. "Maybe you are journalist," he says, subdued and wary, like I'm there to bust them.
  "I was before," I say to reassure him. "Now I work for the U.S. government."
  "But what is this for?" he asks, gesturing with his chin toward the notebook.
  "Just for me," I say.
  "But for what?"
  "Just to write. About my experiences in Egypt." His eyes crinkle. He makes the hmm noise and nods a single nod.

Mr. Inji backs out of the office, and I complete the final final signature. Now I'm late for a meeting. As I step down the hall, there is Mr. Inji again, smiling like we've run into each other in the supermarket.

"I am sorry, but we have procedures," he says, apologizing not for anything dysfunctional on the part of his department, but for my lack of familiarity with the ways of the world.

"No, actually," I say, making a spontaneous decision to vent, "it's a problem. This sort of thing is holding Egypt back." My voice quavers as I spew a business journalism soundbite. "It's preventing Egypt from competing in the global economy."

Mr. Inji is not at all offended. Our slow pace down the hall continues.

"You need to fire about 60 percent of these people, put computers in here …" I trail off.

He stops, lowers his voice, and looks at me.

"I agree with you," he says. "I think, if it were me, I take all these procedures and these rules, and I throw them in the fire, and start over."

A non-awkward pause follows. "I will say this much," I offer. "Although I dealt with 18 people, they were, all of them, very nice, every one."

"That's all we ask," Mr. Inji says, beaming like a proud grampa. We part.

January 29, 2003