I thought Italy was the land of bureaucracy.

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

I thought Italy was the land of bureaucracy.

An overseas company wants a certificate for my company. I need to go to a specific office to get it and then scan it. I could get the same document online, but it wouldn't be signed. However, it’s a certificate where I declare... so I would just sign it digitally anyway. But no, they want the paper version, scanned, and then sent to them.

It doesn't make any sense.

#Bureaucracy

[yvan@toot.ale.gd]

@stefano running a business in the UK I used to get a lot of bigger and older UK companies requiring a "wet signature" on paperwork. The punchline being that they would then accept it as a PDF scan. So as a small act of subversion I used to put a signature on it in software, print it, "scan" it to PDF with my phone, and then email that. Totally daft.

[ricardo@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@stefano sent to them ... by snail mail, because fax is so unreliable 🤷🏻

[joel@gts.tumfatig.net]

@stefano in France, you would have had to fill-in a document to be able to get an appointement to that specific office, before anything else. There’s probably an Olympic Bureaucratic Games to organize 🤣

[lproven@social.vivaldi.net]

@joel @stefano

I think that was the eighth of the Twelve Labours of Astérix. ;-)

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Douze_Travaux_d%27Ast%C3%A9rix

[joel@gts.tumfatig.net]

@lproven yep, that!
@stefano

[teajaygrey@snac.bsd.cafe]

Bureaucracy is awful, everywhere.

I have a turntable that maybe will get delivered tomorrow?

It was sitting in customs in Hawaii since January 8th, shipped from Japan on the 7th.

I submitted a 5106 form to the CBP.gov website on December 31st, 2025. They didn't even reply to me until January 14th.

All told, I think I submitted five different 5106 forms (with very little difference between any of them IMHO; certainly the thing a sane human should be able to care less about, but alas I was not interacting with sane humans, but insane bureaucrats I guess) before the turntable was "released" from customs?

Here's hoping it actually functions when I accept delivery and unbox the thing! ^_^

Terry Gilliam's Brazil with Robert De Niro as Archibald "Harry" Tuttle circumventing bureaucratic red tape is inspirational and I think beck@ had an image of that character on his website once upon a time for all the right reasons. ;)

[raven@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@stefano Another great Bureaucracy case here in Germany!

I had to go to the municipal office to apply for a new ID card, filled out a form online in their computer with a digital signature (why not), only to leave again. I then had to pick up the ID card, and activating it requires a PIN, which I will receive by mail because it is more secure.

But hey, I was able to make the appointment at the office online on their website.

[luca@sironi.xyz]

@stefano I have an image of my signature which I paste on pdfs before sending back, to avoid wasting paper

[ann_in_a@livellosegreto.it]

@luca @stefano better if the signature image is blue, so it loks like the scan of a real paper document with a handwritten signature, not something digital (the horror)

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@raven I think the procedure is the same, here. I'll have to get there next week - I'll check 😆

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@ricardo luckily, they have an online form (using https) 😆

[linkshaender@bildung.social]

@Ann_in_a @luca @stefano You‘re absolutely right, that’s the reason I scanned my signature written with a blue ballpen that was half empty. Looks totally analog!

[stefano@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@Linkshaender @Ann_in_a @luca I used to do it, many years ago, but it's been a long time since I had to send a signed document this way