Loja da cidadao is the place to be. It is also one of the reasons why this country is in crisis. I spent almost 4 hours there. waiting, standing, for a piece of paper that took less than 5 min to get. The government earned 3,5€ on me, but probably loss more because if I had been working this day, I would have needed to take the day off to take care of this paper and in that case I wouldn’t have earned any money and therefore paid nothing in taxes. Many people need to take the day off work to go there to get papers fixed and regarding the fact I went for one of the most common papers, a paper stating all my crimes in Portugal, it took 4 hours. When I was at Loja da cidadao last time to get a fiscal number, it took me 15min. So you actually never know how old you’ll get at this place. I thought once it’s my turn yesterday I’ll turn in my papers for retirement.

So it’s designed like this. The Loja da cidadao is where you go for all things regarding you and state controlled stuff; gas, electricity, fiscal numbers, identity cards, ministry of justice, social security papers, you name it. Only thing missing there is the unemployment office. Once you get in you have to find the right floor, then the right encounter and then get a number and wait for your turn. Now it seems to be so badly designed that the encounters having most people are those with less assistants helping you and also with the least seats to sit. So not only are you going to get old there, you’ll probably have to get old standing.Most amusing part was that when it was getting closer to my number, a woman on the speaker phone announced that issues regarding finances could not be handled anymore that day due to technical problems. She said “we’re sorry for the inconvenience” and that was it. Yaaaay, that must be fun waiting for some hours there only to find out you can do a damn thing but have to return… I’m surprised there are any fights in that house.

I went to a dinner in the evening and told my (portuguese) friend about this and she said that she called there once to ask something for a contract. They had then told her that she has to go to the Loja da cidadao to ask this. So she did and she waited about 2 hours only to get an answer in a minute. Now this is not efficiency neither effectiveness. I don’t know if I might have missed out something here, the one who has most papers when they die wins?