A Complete Banker

It's no coincidence that the word 'bureaucracy' is, by origin, French. Sometimes, the power of the local municipality and the existence of far too many people with nothing better to do that push bits of paper around can be useful. A phonebox in Montfort was vandalised one Saturday night; by Monday evening, it was as good as new. The roadworks near where I live actually progress at a pace visible to the naked eye, whereas in England, one of those slow-motion cameras they use to film the growth of plants is needed to see any difference. Yet most of the time, the bureaucracy here is just plain irritating.

For a start, when you open a bank account here, they don't send you the debit card through the post. Oh no, that would be far too easy. No, you have to wait ten days and then go back to the bank to collect it. Figuring this was probably actually not a bad idea, given the number of postal strikes they have here, I did as I was told and turned up at the bank.

The banker had clearly watched too many episodes of Who Wants To Be A Millionnaire as he taunted me by showing me my shiny new bank card, before telling me that he couldn't give it to me as there was no money in my account. I protested that I had been told that I didn't need to deposit anything when I first opened it. He conceded that this was correct, explaining that, one my salary went into the account on 20th October, I could have the card.

Still relatively calm at this stage, I told him that I wouldn't try to use the card before my salary went in; I simply wanted to collect it now to save me having to wait a week or so before being able to come back into Rennes, and also to save me having to trek all the way over that side of town again. Could he not give me the card now, trusting that I would somehow, with my 1500 cc of fully-evolved human brain, remember not to try to take out any money before it was in my account?

Apparently not. It would appear that, in an attempt not to discriminate against the brain-dead - and by this point, I was beginning to wonder if he was included in this class - it was the bank's policy not to give out cards to customers with no money in their accounts.

Taking a deep breath, I asked whether I could, in that case, deposit some money now and thus be allowed to have my card.

"Mais bien sûr, mademoiselle", came the reply, and in my naivety, I believed that it really was as easy as that. I looked in my purse, found a twenty euro note and triumphantly held it out to him.

What a pathetic fool I was. It turns out that this bank also has a policy of not allowing personnel to handle money, for security reasons. How could I have been so idiotic as to assume that a person working in a bank would be allowed to actually take my money? With all the glee of a man who has just sent his bishop to F3 and smugly declared, "Check," he informed me that I could make an appointment with someone who was authorised to take my money - presumably someone who actually learnt to count at school or something - in about three weeks' time. It was at this point that I realised the futility of yelling at this imbecile how ridiculous that was since my salary would already be in my account by that time. He already knew that, of course, and he was loving every second of it.

I must have looked absolutely crestfallen because he decided to throw me a lifeline. "Of course, you could always deposit money into that automatic machine over there," he suggested. I nearly kissed him.

My euphoria didn't last long, however. I returned and explained through gritted teeth that the machine wouldn't let me deposit money without a card.

"Ah oui, c'est vrai," he replied, with only a hint of a smirk.

I enquired as icily politely as possible whether he might deign to give me my card so that I could deposit some money in my account. I cursed having never been very good at chess as he informed me with some delight that he couldn't possibly give me my card if I didn't have any money in the account. Hundreds of beautiful images involving this idiot and a variety of large, spiked objects flitted through my mind as I patiently explained that I've always hated the book Catch 22, and that if he liked, he could personally escort me the three metres across the room and watch while I deposited the money.

As it turns out, I now have the card. And if the cops find the battered, bloody body of a banker in Rennes, then I admit it. I did it, in the Crédit Agricole, with the debit card.