My government at work?

There is something that happened last week at the Canadian Consulate in Shanghai that I forgot to mention and I will mention now.  To be served you have to take a number.   There is a machine from which you can take a number, but you must be careful because you have two choices:  if you are there for passport reasons, you take one number; if you are there for citizenship reasons, you take another number.  Naturally, one person came to the consulate, choose the wrong number and was very upset when he waited for a half-hour and was not being served by the citizenship office.  

There was a second thing about the consulate setup that got people upset, including me.  People going to pick up a passport wait for their name to be called.  These people go to the same office as those who are supposed to take a number and wait to be served when dealing with passport applications.   I didn't know this as did another man and just as my number was called, a woman rushed into the office and was served.  It looked like a Chinese person budding into line in the Canadian Consulate.  Why couldn't they have picked up their passports at another office?  I asked about my friend about this and he made the same observation.  Only in government.