I don’t know what possessed me. Maybe it was defiance. Maybe exhaustion. Maybe the quiet realization that a system forcing you to perform a useless duty eventually becomes absurd, if you simply stop moving.
It began—as it so often does—with a letter. And a stack of paper so thick it could have served as a doorstop or a funeral offering. The compensation office, that dutiful administrative entity with the bedside manner of a tax return, had instructed me: “Please register with the RAV (Regional Employment Center). You are, after all, only half-disabled and therefore… well… certainly willing to work.”
So I did what you do in Switzerland if you want to function: I functioned. I dragged myself to the RAV. I dutifully said I was looking for a job. I nodded politely when someone threatened me with “waiting days” because I had dared to save my dignity and quit on my own.
And then? Then came the package. Not from Amazon—but from the Unemployment Fund. A thick, maliciously grinning form-monster. You could feel it: this was not meant for people. It was meant for people with a scanner, a law degree, and a complete lack of self-preservation.
I could have filled it out—as always. Dutifully. “Correctly.” With neat handwriting and all the receipts meticulously attached.
But there was something inside me that suddenly said: “No.” Not loudly. Not defiantly. Just… quiet refusal.
I put the stack of papers aside. It waited. I waited back.
And today—weeks later—the call from RAV Plus: “Mrs. M., we have reviewed your documents. You are not even entitled to daily benefits.”
I smiled. My inner bureaucracy-refusal-general saluted. My recycling bin cheered.
This was the day I didn’t fill out an official form for the first time in my life. And it turned out: I never needed it.
The moral of the story? In Switzerland, not functioning is sometimes the only form that works.