On Efficiency

I am simultaneously the most organized and most unorganized person in the world. My school notes are all color coordinated and carefully preserved under plastic covers. Each different color post-it and highlighter has a very specific meaning and constitutes a complex study/research regime that I have perfected over my entire life (I was just going to put the number of years I've been in school, but quickly realized that number is synonymous with the years I've been on this earth. Ouch.) However, if you look in my closet or under my bed or at my stack of unopened mail, you'll soon realize that I also thrive on chaos. Chaos and procrastination. I'm one of those people that insists I work better under pressure, but that really is just a self-indulgent lie. Knowing this about myself, I try not to throw rocks at the glass house of inefficiency. HOWEVER, researching in Mexico City has quickly changed this hesitation to judge.

Let me tell you about my day.

There's a library here that houses many governmental records, reports, and publications on Mexican immigration policy that I need access to. The majority of these publications are no longer in print and are not available anywhere else. Not online, not in bookstores, not in any other library in the world. Therefore, this valuable information that took several working hours and countless governmental officials to compile is only available Monday through Friday from 10 am until 4 pm. In this one library, in this one building, in Mexico City.

So, I enter this building, the Instituto Nacional de Migracion (INM). This sounds familiar to you because it is also the very same building with the trickster elevator, which just makes the whole process that much better. While still in the lobby, I have to register my laptop, be hosed down by hand sanitizer, pass through a metal detector, submit my purse to be examined, and trade in my ID for a pass to get to the 12th floor. I finally move on to the evil elevator, which I have now mastered. Turns out there's a keypad down the hall and around the corner where you have to enter the floor you are going to. This keypad then indicates which elevator (either A, B, C, or D) will be so kind as to bring you there.

I finally arrive at the 12th floor. Now, before I came to Mexico, I sent an email to the main librarian to make sure that I would have full access to this library. Sure, sure, no problem! Come on down, what's mine is yours! Therefore, I wasn't anticipating any problems.

This is what full access looks like in Mexico:

1. I'm not actually allowed inside the library, I have to wait in another room right outside.
2. The online library catalogue isn't working, so I have to tell the secretary my key search words.
3. The secretary searches through her private catalogue and prints out a list of publications that I might be interested in.
4. Every single book title is cut off, leaving me to guess what the full title might be.
5. Using this information, I put a check mark next to the titles that could possibly be relevant.
6. The secretary passes this list to the librarian .
7. The librarian then searches for the books, many of which have dissapeared.
8. The librarian calls me over to pick up the books.
9. The exchange is made at the threshold of the library, which is secured by one of those half doors where the bottom part is closed and the top part is open. I guess this is to make sure that nobody sneaks through at the point of exchange.
10. The librarian waits for me to look through the books and decide which ones I need.
11. I am only allowed to take four books at a time, but I am allowed to make as many copies as I want.
12. I can't use their copy machine.
13. I give them yet another ID and they give me until closing time (4 pm) to go make copies and bring the books back safely.
14. I make my way back down to the lobby. This is easier said than done, seeing as how the first floor is not the lobby floor and there is no button on the keypad for lobby, or planta baja in Spanish. The elevator delights in my confusion and spits me out at the basement, leaving me to turn around and take the stairs. I find the parking lot and floor 2 before I find the planta baja.
15. I turn in my visitor pass, get back my ID, pass back through the metal detector, and sign out my laptop.
16. I walk several blocks down to the nearest commercial center.
17. Copy place #1 can have it done in 48 hours. No sooner.
18. Copy place #2 has a broken copy machine.
19. Copy place #3 is out of paper.
20. Copy place #4 obliges and says they will be ready at 3:50. Cutting it close.
21. I go to Pinkberry.
22. I pick up my books and copies and walk back to the INM. In the rain.
23. I shower in hand sanitizer, cross through the metal detector, re-register my laptop, and wait in line for a visitor's pass.
24. I safely return the books and recover my ID.
25. I get to do it all again tomorrow.

I've decided to hold a nation-wide conference on efficiency, with mandatory attendence for all librarians and governmental officials. I will simply explain to them that there really is a much better way to do things and show them how to do it. I figure that this is the kindest form of American imperialism and that, in the end, it will be much appreciated.