My Post Office Fiasco

I shouldn’t need to prove my right to work via 6 visits to the Post Office in 3 hours

Recently I applied for a new job and part of the process of onboarding is proving your right to work. Now when you have a passport with you that is easy enough done. But I don’t have it with me – it’s at my parents – so today I had to embark on going to the Post Office to verify my other documents. It was a nightmare.

I arrive at the Post Office at about 10am with a print off of my passport and other documents, and the nasally pierced fat woman on the till said ‘these are too blurry and low quality’ and ‘they’ve got to be only half the A4 because only that way can we clearly stamp them’. I replied by saying ‘Isn’t there space to stamp them at the bottom’, pointing at a more than an adequate space. ‘No’ said the lady. So, I went to the Oxford Union to get alternative prints. Then to Santander since the Union wasn’t open. Santander kindly printed off my passport photocopy.

I take a ticket this time returning to the Post Office and get called up five minutes later. I show them my photo of my passport and the young Indian man says ‘They won’t do as they’re not one page’ as the Santander print off was indeed over two pages. I said ‘Why does that make any difference’ to which he said that ‘It needs to be one page – that’s the rules’. I checked the rules later and found that not to be the case at all. I went to Ryeman’s to get a Post Office approved print off.

Upon returning to the Post Office for the third time I am told by a young Indian lady that I need the actual passport. I must confess I hadn’t fully read the email I was sent by my potential employer, so, I was annoyed but accepting of what she said. I said in an irritable tone ‘Well can’t you verify it’s me – I mean here’s my face’ and she said ‘no -we only accept original documents against which the copy can be verified’. I leave.

I go back to Ryeman’s to get a photocopy of my driving license and return to the Post Office for the fourth time. I turn up and realise I’ve left my actual driving license at Ryeman’s. I returned there, picked it up, and then went back to the Post Office

On my fifth visit, I finally get a stamp on one document and think I’m almost done. I then ask the old Indian man to stamp my council tax bill, P45 and poll card. He says ‘No, I can’t do that’, ‘Why’ I ask ‘Because they are not copies’ ‘But there are original documents, why do I need copies?!’. He then shows me his stamp which says ‘This document is a true likeness to the original’. I fired back with ‘It is the original, so it has 100% likeness to it’. We were being dictated to by his stamping machine.

What was especially ridiculous was when I asked him to stamp my P45 specifically. ‘Can you stamp this one please’, ‘No, I need an original’ ‘Well that is the original in the sense it is a printed off P45, they don’t send out an original in paper’ ‘I still need a copy to stamp’ ‘So if I go and photocopy this print off, you’ll stamp it’ ‘Yes’. So, I leave for Ryeman’s again and get copies off all the above. The P45 photocopy is exactly the same.

I return to the Post Office, for a sixth time, wait another 5 minutes, then, finally, get all my papers stamped. I end up paying £25.50 for the privilege of proving my right to work! By then it is 1pm and I am in a foul mood – which I don’t often get in. At various points in this bureaucratic nightmare, I just wanted to boom: ‘I am an Englishman and need not prove I have a right to work, damn it!’ I doubt this would have gone done well in a multicultural Indian manned Oxford Post Office we me dressed in a Panama hat and linen jacket. I bit my tongue.

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Since 1997 Britons have been required to prove they have ‘a right to work’. This is a ridiculous imposition on individual freedom. My right to work, just like any other person’s, is not conditional on some stupid politician in Whitehall, no doubt motivated by wanting to win an election by cracking down on immigration. ‘Ohhh you’re so tough Mr Blair’, Tony probably thought the voters would think of him. I don’t care about that – I want convenience in my life – I want my freedom back. Damn it!