So after two weeks of exhausting back and forth meetings, my tuition loan documents were finally available for pickup. The guy who signed the form said I could take it to the office in the next city physically or I could wait till the postal strike was over to mail it in. Since I was in a bit of a hurry for the loan, I thought I'd go over to the city myself (it costs about $15 bucks to go by bus, which is the only transit available to me). Being a cheap student, then I thought I'd give it one week to see if the strike would be over.
So the strike ended a little less than a week after, I go over to the university postal office to mail it in, and the lady informs me that the guy who filled out the form did it incorrectly. He didn't fill out the date, without which it would be invalid. So basically I had to go back through the process of making another appointment, waiting half an hour to be called in and explaining my business, all so someone could officially write down a date for me.
In retrospect, this wouldn't be a big deal except:
a) I do not see how the guy could possibly have forgot to the write down the date, when the only two things he had to do was write a date and then sign the form. How exactly do you forget to do one of only two things you have to do?
b) I had to do all this and waste about 2 hours of the time total in walking back and forth between the several building, when on the same night that I had a major exam. I had meant to use that day for studying and instead I had to go back and forth between a bunch of building to get one frigging date written down.
c) I can't help but think of what if I HAD decided to waste that $15 to actually take the form myself to the office in the next city, only to be told to go back and get the date written down and then come back. Hello there, $15 of wasted travel, all because of one missing date
And the worst thing is that this sort of things happen at my university all the time, and we're basically just told to "deal with it."