The True Cost Of Bureaucracy

My dad told me this story. When I was born, my dad had to file paperwork to get me my citizenship certificate. Unfortunately, he made a mistake in the filing process. Either he misread the filing fee, was looking at an older form, or accidentally wrote down the wrong amount, or something, but whatever it was, somehow the amount he paid ended up being short by fifty cents.

Sometime later, he got a letter from the embassy requesting a cheque for the additional fifty cents. My dad sent in the fifty-cent cheque as requested, but couldn’t help his amusement as he noticed the cost of the stamp on the envelope they had sent to him.

It was a one-dollar stamp.