h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

("Mairie" is the French word for Town Hall, as well as the institution that sits there).

I changed jobs in September. I'm still working in the same place, but not as a secretary any more.
Now I'm a "civil status and voting rights agent".
That means I (along with the other people in the team) have to make sure that every baby born in France, that every person who dies in France(*), and that every wedding that takes place in France are registered in the Database.

The big towns are all sending these "events" via computers, but sometimes a file gets lost so we need to call them, and they send it again.

When they send their files in, our software thingy processes them during the night, so when we get into work in the morning, we have to deal with all the events (births, deaths, weddings, adoptions) that the software couldn't process for one reason or another.
Sometimes it's because it can't find the person in the database, so it can't declare them dead or married (maybe the name is spelt wrong, or the birthdate or birthplace are wrong), so we have to try different things to find the person.
Sometimes, it's because it's already found a baby born on the same day in the same place, with the same surname. That's an easy one. Twins.

And when we've checked that the data we have is accurate, we have to make sure it's exhaustive. I had birth number 235, I received birth 238. Either the town got the numbering wrong (that can happen, computers can be as stupid as people), or I'm missing some babies there. So you call the town's office and ask. Easy enough.

The smaller towns usually send us the paper forms, and we then get them processed. More on that tomorrow, I think.
And then, there's all the voting rights events, which I'll develop later.



(*) Every single person who dies in France has to be registered, which means that when a foreigner dies here, we have to create them in the database purely so that we can "kill" them from it.
One famous example, perhaps : Lady Di.
She's in our database.
Yup.

Good job you were not in this job this time last century!

That sounds like quite an interesting job.

Deb

[Amy P]

FWR: I wasn't born this time last century.
... Oh. I see.
(but the Institute was created in 1946, anyway)

Deb: it is.

Amy: Hi!

Firstlycongratulations on the promotion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Antediluvian_Order_of_Buffaloes
in the Buffalo Lodge I go to, the secretary deals with all the paperworkbut we have a "file 13" = bin it!
so if too many are being born/dying/moving countries etcinstead of getting snowed under = file 13 it

Tempting, but not allowed, I'm afraid...

just a thought

Reddit

"(Will You) Mairie Me"

just a thought "in english" you want someone to marry a town-hall ?

"Every single person who dies in France has to be registered"

Every married person, too?

Prof, only if it's called Mary.

Paulh, yes. And the death form being filled in by the town worker, they're Mairie'd too.

I was just checking.