My few visits each year to the social security office for the purposes of la alta, signing up and la baja, signing off, have always filled me with a sense of foreboding. However early I arrive, I don’t remember a time that I wasn’t greeted by the stony gaze of at least a dozen others already queuing. Such is the drab nature of the waiting area that any fresh arrival automatically draws the eyes of the entire room away from the screen registering the glacial pace of numbered turns. Once sized up, all eyes return to the display silently willing it to quicken. Styled in the eighties with a disregard for visual ease, the office makes little use of its many windows and open-plan floor and depends on fluorescent lighting. Almost contemptuous of the historic wood framed building in which it is housed, it inspires thoughts of arson rather than contemplation of previous lives lived within its walls.
Decades of building on broken systems has produced a slow, life sapping experience and what was probably once a laudable plan serves as a disincentive to many potential contributors. It would be worthy of study to find out how, of all the possible methods of tax collection, this laborious, time and paper consuming way was the one they had hit upon and decided was fit for purpose. Surely any amount of thought applied to making the process more user friendly would come up with something less Orwellian.
My face probably exuded dissatisfaction at having had to wait well over an hour to be seen, or maybe the ageing desk jockey had just spent too much time in this uninspiring office to really care what kind of day it was. Whatever the reason, my greeting didn’t receive even feigned engagement and by the time I sat down, I had already mentally disembowelled him. Over the years this office had seen most sides of my personality from monosyllabic grunter of awkward questions right through to a charming and contented contributor to the nation’s social security budget. Today the latter was absent and I set about making this as unwieldy an experience as I could.
If teaching English had been in any way responsible for retarding my learning of Spanish over the years, it was moments such as this in which I learnt much and I made a demanding student intent on receiving clear explanation. Lying somewhere between exacting revenge on a system that neither cared nor noticed and a method of intense learning, it ran the risk of rendering my Spanish unnecessarily hostile albeit proficient in bureaucratic terminology. This probably yielded little of benefit to my interlocutor but at around 275€ a month without much cover beyond infrequent visits to a doctor and the improbable promise of a state pension; I figured anything else was added value.
Barely sat, I was informed that I should have already filled in a form before coming to his desk. Braced for the impending list of things I had omitted to bring along, I clenched my teeth to show the leash I was on was short for good reason. Replying that I had never before been asked to do this, I went on to enquire where such forms could be found; after all having had something to do over the last hour may have made the wait seem a little shorter. I suggested the solution might be to print one up so we could both move on with our days, only to be informed dryly they were available online. There are many things online of which most I am unaware without the right prompt I said as the functionary produced a folder full of forms. He’d been playing me no doubt and I wondered how many paper cuts I could inflict before he fell apart.
Just how long was it after passing the civil service entry exam that the relentless nothingness of a job for life garnered as a younger man in search of security revealed itself as a poison chalice of unfulfilled ambition? A festering band aid for unemployment numbers that would shock were it removed. This bloated malcontent probably sought slow retribution in his daily dealings with the public and my lack of charity thrived in his cold, dead stare.
In for a penny I thought with the better part of the morning behind me; I would draw this out. I pled ignorance to all his questions and made him explain every single box that required filling in. By the time he’d finished explaining he could have done it himself several times over. I slowly collected my things and went to an unoccupied desk opposite to fill in the form alone.
This desk I remembered well as having been the scene of another skirmish on a previous visit. On that occasion I had unwisely felt the need to share my thoughts on an increase to my contribution to a female colleague of today’s adversary. I was rebuked with barely contained vitriol as she seethed that it was the same in other countries. I politely, but only just, informed her that I did not live in other countries.
In my best impression of a pre-schooler’s hand, I scrawled the details into the boxes with little attention to their confines and waited for the position to clear before retaking the seat at my nemesis’ desk. In fairness, he could have insisted I queue up all over again and I had already decided I would leave it for another day rather than do so. In an act of conciliation and perhaps a moment of fleeting, pragmatic maturity, I played a somewhat friendlier hand.
As our time together drew to a close I offered a few pointers on how the process might be made easier, bid him a nice day and left with a few copies of the form for next time. Perhaps he gave me them in compassion for whichever of his colleagues had the pleasure of my company further down the line or maybe he just feared it might be him. I’m still not certain if I heard him wish me farewell though in my mind he’d probably bled out before he could.
It was eleven thirtyish and after this inauspicious start, I was optimistic the day could yet improve.
