warning: this is a rant

Dear National Insurance Number Office:

Could you please endeavor to be more incompetent? Because it's really going to take some effort at this point.

First, you sent my application to the wrong house. Fine. It happens. But since I got the memo a mere 4 days before the application expired [side-note: who puts an expiry date on an application?! who?!] and since, apparently, Royal Mail is pretty bad at getting things delivered in a timely fashion anyway, even my efforts to send it out within one hour of receiving the application has not been sufficient.

You couldn't have phoned me to let me know you'd rejected my application on the grounds that it arrived a day or two later than you wanted it? Instead of letting me wait 2 weeks, patiently checking my mail and harassing my neighbors to see if it's been mis-delivered again? That was too much for you?

Honestly. I've got this fabulous employer waiting for me to get this NI number, so that I'm legally allowed to work, so I can earn back the money I spent on the visa that will allow me to live and be employed in this country in the first place. (That is to say, almost the entirety of the sparse funds that I earned slaving away with a broken arm in a dark, garlic-scented restaurant that shall remain nameless. I'm not bitter; why do you ask?) But I'm sure this goal is in your best interest as well, because really, I'm just asking to pay taxes--which you should enjoy, being a government operation and all. The least you could do would be to comply.

Sincerely (and with a fair amount of rage),
Christy