12/10/99

No way, Jose!

    The nerve of some people.
    Our hard-working, efficient bureaucracy is just trying to get through a difficult workday, and along comes one nudnik or another with impossible demands.
    Like this guy who claims to be named Jose. He's Spanish speaking, and kind of funny-looking, so that tells you something right there. He's from Uruguay or Paraguay or one of them countries (they're all the same, really), and he comes to live here and he expects -- get this -- mercy.
    He says his name is Jose, but he also says he's the cartoonist for The Jerusalem Post named Pepe Fainberg. Obviously, one of them is an impostor.
    "I did some drawings for the Justice Ministry, and sent a bill," explained this man with the suspicious-sounding foreign accent. "A woman called to ask: 'Who is Pepe Fainberg?' I say me. She says 'No, you are Jose Fainberg.'
    "Well, I said, I'm Jose and Pepe, I have a name and a nickname, and I work by my nickname."
    At this point, our friendly bureaucrat should have simply hung up and called the police. He was clearly harrassing her. In South America, people go to jail for that. Forever.
    "She told me that I can't get paid because my tax documents say I am Jose, not Pepe, and they can't put me in their computer, because my name is Jose, but in my bills I am Pepe. So, she said, they will have to deduct 50 percent taxes."
    Not only did she not have him arrested, but she offered to pay him -- and still he's not satisfied!
    He does not thank her. He gets angry.
    "I explained that if I had a store called La Victoria, it doesn't mean that my name is La Victoria. I pointed out that all the numbers -- on my documents, my bills and my file in the tax office -- are exactly the same."
    Yeah, so?
    He calls his accountant, who tells him "The tax office doesn't give a damn if you're Pepe Fainberg or Caperucita Roja. They go by your number."
    All he wants, he says, is justice, and this is, after all, the Justice Ministry, but they're not gonna fall for that line.
    He calls the lady back. Obviously, she knows more than all the accountants put together, and continues to refuse to part with our national funds.
    Now, this fellow tries to appeal to her sympathy. "To have my Jose removed I need to go to two different ministries and the tax office to change my name and my documents from Jose to Pepe, which is not worth the NIS 700 you owe me."
    Dumb luck, she says. Go and do all that, and I'll give you the money.
    Now, you'd think, if this fellow -- whatever his name is -- was really a loyal Zionist, he would graciously accept the tax deduction as a donation to the welfare of the State. But people are so selfish.
    Several dozen phone calls later, he has succeeded only in taxing our national telephone system.
    Finally, a magnanimous public servant comes up with a solution: she'll see if they can get around the problem by paying him from petty cash.
    Never mind the indignity of being paid with spare coins from a tin can in a drawer shared by thumb tacks and paper clips; he could then pay his petty accountant bills and petty phone bills.
    That didn't seem to work out, so Senor Fainberg tries to outthink the best and brightest of our civil service: he buys a new billing booklet -- without his name on it -- and sends a new bill, writing in the name "Jose Fainberg."
    He finally decides who he really is, and there are smiles all around. Aha!, they say; now we can pay you.
    This guy is ready to send each person he pestered a bouquet of flowers in gratitude.
    Uh, but there's just one problem.
    They can't have two bills on their desk for the same work, and God forbid both Pepe and Jose should be paid. So they tell him he has to cancel the original bill before he can get the money.
    No prob, he says; lemme have it, and I'll gladly make confetti out of it.
    No can do, they say.
    You can guess why.
    They lost it.