Another day, another confused soul

Co-irker fronts me this morning to have some certified copies signed.  No worries, let's make it happen.


Artefact one - two photocopies of passports.  Excellent, does co-irker have the passports?  No, they do not.  What do I mean I can't sign them then?  It will be most inconvenient to have to bring the actual documents to work to allow me to actually, you know, place both side by side and compare them so I can say truthfully that one is an accurate replica of the other.

This went back and forth for several volleys until I dragged out my handbook at pointed at the line that says:

The original document must be supplied so that you can certify that the copy is an exact copy of the original.

At this stage it was reluctantly accepted that production of the passports would be essential, although not, I must say, with much grace.


We then moved on to the lovely printout of some document they had.

*sigh*

Where was this document obtained?  Ah, you printed it out from some website.  Excellent.  May I see the original copy?  Of course I can't, it's a printout.  How silly of me.  In that case, I will refer you to my previous statement about supplying the original document.  If there is no original available, then no copy is possible, and while this is generally acknowledged to be an unfortunate state of affairs, the situation is not altered as a result.

If co-irker can log on to the website where the document was sourced from and thus provide provence of the origin, I am permitted to certify it as a copy.  Co-irker does not have these details, and was therefore informed that they were SOL this morning, weren't they?

How are you supposed to satisfy the requirements of whatever grotty government department you are dealing with, then?  I really have no idea, sorry - I'm simply telling you what I'm permitted to do.  It's up to you to work out a solution with them within the bounds of what is possible, and while I realise it's a problem if they are asking for something difficult or impossible to fulfil, I would also ask you to realise that the problem isn't mine, and I'm not doing something illegal to alleviate it.


Co-irker went away very sad.  Another happy customer.