This is why it's awkward

Yet another round of waiting in line for hours on end in the relentless pursuit of this year's foreigners card.

• Oficina de Extranjeros: 3ish hours of useless waiting. They told me since I already had a number I just had to go to the Police Station.
  
• Day One at the Police Station: 1 hour of semi-useless waiting. I did get a complete list of documents and photocopies I had to provide as well as the form I needed to pay the tax.
  
• Day Two at Police Station: 10 minutes of useless waiting. I arrived with all documents and was trying to enter when, at 1:40, before their schedule 2 p.m. closing time, that they wouldn't let anyone else in. It was a new, highly unpleasant security guard who, when I notified him that the office indeed hadn't closed yet, looked at me with his eyebrows raised, shrugged angrily, and said "That's it, no more, what more can we do?" What can you do? Well if you work Monday to Friday 9 - 2, actually work until 2. Boy those 25 hour weeks get long.
  
• Day Three at Police Station: 2 hours of useless waiting. Normally the line in the police station isn't as long, but when I arrived there was a line of about 50 people outside and probably another 20 inside. After waiting and watching the new security guard utterly fail to attend to the needs of the public in a timely and pleasant manner, he brusquely picked up the signs for the foreigners line, slammed the door shut, and informed us that the office was closed. Nevermind the line hadn't moved for like 30 minutes, telling us before that we wouldn't be able to get in would be too easy.
  
• Day Four at Police Station: 1 hour and success! I arrived before school and breezed inside, noting that my favorite doorman must be on some sort of break. The woman at the desk thumbed through my papers, they banged out a few fingerprints, I'm on my merry way.

What I did have time to put my finger on is why exactly waiting at the foriegner's office is worse than waiting at the numerous other bureaucratic institutions that we have to deal with here in the land of Catholic holidays and cigarette breaks: personal space.

The average line at these foreigner's offices is composed of Central and South Americans, Africans, Asians, Middle Easterners, old men, young families, working professionals, super awesome and ridiculously good looking blonde auxiliars, babies, etc. etc. Every single one of these groups has a different understanding of the etiquette of waiting in line.

For example, young Moroccan man with the scar from his lip to his face, I see you trying to cut in front of me. You keep inching forward, but I, in fact, have peripheral vision.

Family from Africa with two adolescents, a toddler, and a baby: spread on out, there's room for all in the hallway, no need to maintain any semblance of a line.

Woman from South America: Please, keep moving forward behind me, get in here right close like. I love being three inches away from strangers.

An equivalent feel for this awkwardness:

Until (hopefully) next year, foreigner's office!