08-FD-336102 - Part I

I am really glad that I had my Divorce Twin with me when I filed for divorce. It was a weird and unorganized building, with weird and unorganized people. I know the government has a bad rep for being totally ass-backwards, but for some reason I thought that was just a misconception perpetuated by people for whom the system did not smile down in their favour. I was wrong. The whole damn place was a disaster and it's no wonder why people constantly curse how our tax dollars are being spent.

We came off the elevator onto the 10th floor of 393 University Ave. There weren't any clear labels as to where we were. Just a big bulletin board with a ton of paper tacked to it. We looked to the right, and then to the left, and then down to our forms to make sure we got the right floor. Yup, 10th floor. We decided to go to the left.

A big mess of cubicles with a bunch of people meandering aimlessly was the scene we were met with. DT and I looked at each other and were both thinking the same thing - there is no way THIS is an official courthouse. We went back into the hallway to see if we had missed something, like a worm hole to get us out of there. No such luck.

We went back into the maze and saw a sign that said we were to get a number, with an arrow pointing to the left. So we look to the left. And all we see are more messy cubicles with more confused people wandering around. There was nothing indicating where we were to get a number.

I finally noticed a sign that said "Information" hanging over a desk that was placed haphazardly in the middle of the messy cubicles and wandering people. There were several stanchions around the desk, but they weren't placed in a manner which indicated where the line was to form. So we stood at the end of the stanchions, where we believed the line was to start. There was a man already at the desk speaking with the attendant. So we waited.

The attendant behind the desk waved us over. "How can I help you?" I say, "We're here to file for divorce." He looked up at the both of us, with a quizzical look on his face. DT piped up with, "Not from each other!" The lady behind us started laughing her head off.

He took a look at our forms and told us we would need to make copies, and gave us each a number. He pointed us in the direction of the copy room. It turns out that the government charges you FIFTY CENTS PER PAGE to use their shitty old photocopiers. If the stupid website had said anything about needing an extra copy, I would have just made it at work for FREE. Geez.

After spending $5 between the two of us, we went back into the crazy room and took a seat. It wasn't too long before my number came up and I made my way over to one of the messy cubicles.

The lady there looked like a pleasant woman. She said hello and asked me what I was there for. I said, "I'm filing for divorce." Now, I don't know what I was expecting her response to be, as I'm sure she deals with thousands of filings a year. But I was expecting something. I'm a young, nice looking girl. I would think a simple "Oh I'm sorry to hear that" would have sufficed. But she said nothing.

She took my papers and started typing, typing, typing. She had a fan turned on, it was set up just behind her monitor. My papers kept getting caught up in the breeze. Type, type, paper blowing, catch, type, type, paper blowing, catch, type, type. It was amusing at first. I wondered how long she would continue to just let the papers blow away. Then it got annoying. What should have taken her maybe 5 minutes had turned into 10 minutes because she had to stop every 10 seconds to keep my papers from flying away.

I wanted to scream "JUST ANGLE THE FUCKING FAN TWO MILLIMETERS TO THE LEFT" but instead, I looked around at the chaos behind the cubicles. One word sums it up - PAPER. Piles of paper everywhere. I'm sure to the untrained, non governmental eye it looks like a mess. But to those who have pledged their lives to making our legal system the fine bureaucratic machine it is, I was in fact looking at the most advanced filing system on the planet. Yeah right. After the lady finished playing blow and catch with my paperwork, she wrote a case number on it, signed it, stamped it, sealed it and asked me for payment. It cost me $167 (GST included!) for all that nonsense. She told me to go back to the information desk to be given instructions on what the next steps are.