A Little Bureaucracy

The Philippines is a receipt-mad nation. I end up with a receipt in my pocket for practically everything.

Of course, I end up with cash register receipts, just like anywhere, but how many times have you bought a whopping 12 dollars worth of household cleaning supplies and had your receipt checked not once, but twice? The cashier rang my purchases up, the bagger stamped it with the "checked" stamp on the right hand side, and the door guard stamped it with the "released" stamp on the top, but only after checking -- and circling -- the number of items purchase. (You can always click on these photos to see a larger version if you want to see the detail.)

Just about anywhere you park your car, you'll receive a receipt when you enter the parking lot. Some of them are single-use,

and some of them are used over and over again.

Whether parking is free or not, you'll more often than not get a receipt. Bobby explained to me why there are so many parking receipts: they're intended to keep vehicle theft to a minimum, the theory being that, without a receipt, you won't be able to exit the parking lot. In fact, your license plate number is usually scrawled on the receipt in generally unreadable script by a guy who has been scrawling tag numbers on little pieces of paper for the last seven hours. I'm thinking, however, that if I were intent on stealing a car, I wouldn't stop and get out of the car just because a lone receipt-taker told me to.

But the Granddaddy of All Receipts has to be the "gate pass" Jim brought with him to Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday. But first, the backstory: we needed a cooler for the party, and didn't really want to buy one we'd either have to leave behind or ship home, so we asked Jim to borrow one from the hotel he's staying at. He's been there for a couple months, they have his credit card number, they all know him and, most importantly, they were willing to loan him a cooler, so it seemed like a good deal all the way around.

Then he showed up at the house on Sunday with this:

There were, no kidding, TEN signatures required to loan Jim a cooler that couldn't cost more than fifty bucks.

Numbers 1 and 2 weren't signatures so much as the names of two hotel employees who would be responsible for the cooler if Jim didn't bring it back in time. It reads "Please allow the bearer: Mr/Ms ________ of _____ to bring out of the hotel premises the following item/s temporarily/permanently.

Number 3 is the signature of the person who prepared the form.

Number 4 is the department head who "noted" the preparation of the form.

Number 5 is the cost control office representative, who also "noted" the preparation of the form.

Number 6 is the signature of approval from the Financial Controller/Treasury Manager, and Number 7 is the signature of approval from the general manager.

Number 8 is the signature of the security officer on duty, who witnessed the changing hands of the cooler, while Number 9 is the initials of the security manager on duty who acknowledged the witnessing by his security officer. Note that, if more people had been on duty that day, there are spaces below Number 8 and Number 9 for their signatures and initials, too.

Finally, Number 10 is Jim.

What a paper trail! But I think, perhaps because of all the effort put into borrowing the cooler, that the beer was colder and better tasting than any beer I've had since arriving in October.

Or at least that's what I'll tell Jim.