the police station

when i got my bank statement last month, i noticed that money had been withdrawn on my credit card without my authorisation. after talking to my bank manager about it, i sent a letter to claim my money back. easy. or so i thought.

because of the recent rise in the frequency of such occurences, the bank now asks that we go down to the police station to make a formal statement, which they need a copy of. great. i wouldn't have bothered, cos it was only 20 euros, but they'd gone and cancelled my card anyway, so i wasn't really given much choice. the thing about French police stations, though, is that things go VERY slowly...

i drove up there on Tuesday morning and was lucky to be the only person there. an officer who took down the main details of the event and then spent another 20 minutes or so ticking various fields in various forms (or so i assume, seen as he didn't speak to me at all for that part, but kept clicking on his mouse). eventually, we got to the part of the formal statement, and can you believe it, they don't use a template! this kind of problem is regular, each station probably taking down 10 such statements a day, but no, they write up every single one individually. right. what a waste of time... anyway, it was finally printed and all i had to do was sign (i ignored the spelling mistakes cos by then, i'd been there for over 45 mns). by the time i left, there were 3 people waiting to be taken care of, cos apparently, only one of the officers there was in charge of that. go figure...