1/1/99

Queueing Up

Standing in line at the tax office. Thatג€™s the real Israel.

    "Fill out this form and go to Room 318. Next?"
    I love standing in line at the Income Tax Authority information window. The longer the line the better. It's free entertainment.
    "I need --"
    "Fill out this form and go to Room 318. Next?"
    "Look pal, I filled out your damn form and went to Room 318 and after two hours it was finally my turn and the clerk said I should've been sent to Room 339 and I didn't even need to wait or fill out a form, I've wasted all this time and I'll have to pay for two hours of parking all because you're an idiot."
    "Fill out this complaint form and go to Room 318. Next?"
    "I -- hey, where are you going?"
    "Ten o'clock coffee break."
    "How long do I have to wait?"
    "Relax. I'll be back after lunch."
    The mood grows uglier than at the storming of the Bastille. A couple of burly guys ahead of me stomp into Room 318 and drag the manager out. Everyone in the queue hollers at the same time, and the manager, who, regulars will tell you, narrowly escapes such a lynching several times an hour, agrees to listen only if everybody shuts up. It's a brilliant but illogical tactic he learned in Bureaucracy Manager's School.
    The manager assures us the information clerk is doing a good job, and just as the hollering starts again, a nondescript fellow from the back loudly agrees with the manager, imploring the crowd to let our maligned civil servants do their job. We're all shocked into silence. Someone grumbles, "There's gotta be one in every crowd," which is true; the nondescript fellow is a state employee hired to stand in lines and defuse trouble by agreeing with the manager.
    But this manager magnanimously offers to dispense information, "as a public service, even though it's not my job." The mob is satisfied.
    "Right, then. Who's next?"
    Uh, oh. After such a tumult, we've forgotten. The carefully monitored order has broken down. Now we turn on each other. A youth is suspected of taking advantage of the confusion by sneaking to the front. He claims that, despite his terminal illness, which has left him with four hours to live, he still has enough of his faculties to remember that he was behind the old lady in the dowdy brown dress. Which is true; however, she did sneak to the front (and he with her), and no one is going to tangle with an old lady who suddenly starts to wheeze and tremble.
    Finally we work out a solution: all the cheaters go to the front of the queue, after them the people with the loudest voices, then the people who tried most to be fair, and at the very back, the immigrants with limited argumentative Hebrew.
    Having sorted ourselves out, it is now afternoon. Our information expert has returned. He takes his seat and belches (proof enough that he really had been to lunch). With him is a forlorn-looking person, probably either a man or a woman, it's hard to say which, who is about to launch a career in information.
    The expert gives a form to the rookie, who gives it to the next in line. The rookie reads from a prepared text: "Fill out this form. And take it to Room 318." His mentor beams.
    "But I just want to know where the bathroom is," says his first customer.
    "Room 318," says the expert, snatching back the form.
    Next is a fiftyish lady, and she's real mad. "I asked you what papers I need and I went home and brought them and I stand here and I wait and then I sit in 318 and I wait and wait and finally it's my turn and the clerk --"
    "Save your story, lady, there's people waiting back here!"
    "Yeah, get on with it!"
    "Yalla!"
    Now the lady is madder. She ain't budging, she says, until the Income Tax Authority changes the policy requiring her to have the paper they forgot to tell her she needs. We vote on it. We decide she's right but that there's nothing to be done about it. Like, what're they gonna do, send the information clerk to her house to retrieve it?
    Suddenly, a squat bald man comes out of nowhere and slips in ahead of everyone. Oh, the hue and cry that arises! "But I just want to ask a question," he explains.
    His dauntless hutzpa impresses us all; I mean, why exactly are any of us here?
    The information man, happy to serve, answers his question. Well, questions. It turns out to be a complicated case, but we can't really blame the queue-jumper because he really did think it would be just one question, and when it transpires he was in miluim with the information man in '71 in Ramle, who could begrudge them a few recollections of the good old days and what ever happened to that insane sergeant, Moshiko what's-his-name?
    A thin dark fellow comes at us with a floor polishing machine, and the middle of the line scatters to let him through. When we reassemble the man directly behind me, with the gold chains and the itch, is inexplicably directly in front of me. I question him about this, but regretfully he is hearing-impaired. Mind you, he does seem to hear quite well when I suggest he go back to where he came from; he thinks I mean Morocco, but I explain that it would be enough if he returned to his place in line.
    Two teenage girls start yacking about their boyfriends, and all other conversation stops. An old man, embarrassed, hums loudly. A lady, you can tell she's an Orthodox American settler because they all look like that, says "tsk-tsk.".
     By now we've seen it all, except -- ah, here he comes: the fellow who "was here before." It's an argument-proof claim, one that Israeli society has yet to find an answer for. Very likely he was here before, a year or two ago. 
    However, this returnee is different. He's Russian, just arrived, and he's learning to be Israeli.
    "But... I was there ..."
    A helpful soul corrects him. "-- Here; you were here..."  
    "Mm, yes, I was here, uh, how to say ..."
    "Before."
    "Thank you." With admirable if agonizing effort, he strings together his first Hebrew sentence. "I ... was ... here .... uh ... before."
    Everyone beams proudly.
    "Next?"
    "Yalla, gingy," a loudmouth barks out. "Ya came here to daydream or what?"
    I turn to glare at him and notice that he -- and everyone else -- is glaring at me. 
    Omigod!
    I wheel about and realize there's no one ahead of me.
    I'm next!
    Just me and the information man, nobody between us. It's like I've come face to face with Yasser Arafat. I feel faint: what do I say?!
    "Uh..."
    "Fill out this form and go to Room 318. Next?"
    Room 318. Everyone I know is there. It feels like a reunion. Isn't life wonderful, I say to myself, the way so many strangers come together, by utter chance on the same day in the same place, kinsmen bound by one destiny, one destination: the ...
    Oh my.
    You mean, this isn't the Property Tax office?