Visa Interview at French Consulate

Today Jill and I went to our "interviews" with the French Consulate in NYC. My appointment was at 11AM and Jill's was at 11:30AM. I thought we had private interviews. Come to find out it's a cattle call. At 11AM they open the doors and I go in, leaving Jill at the stoop of the Consulate building. I let a young couple with 2 very young kids go ahead of me. Good thing I did, I saw they had an 11 and an 11:30. I asked they guard if I could bring Jill with me. Fortunately, he agreed because from there it was painful and I couldn't envision Jill going through it alone.

We go upstairs were we are told to stand in line. The young couple ahead of us paved the way -- they were raked over the coals for 5+ minutes and then it smoothed out for them. We got to watch the whole process, good learning for us. We got there and they started the process. Two minutes in, they told us our paperwork was never received and we need to leave. We would have to schedule another appointment once we got our work visa approvals (which he had). Fortunately I had an e-mail with the work visa numbers. Ok,long and boring...

One hour later they find our paperwork and within 5 minutes we were done. Goes to show, the French are very flexible with the rules. In the end we got the visas.

Lessen learned, no matter what the agency tells you keep pushing them to have the actual details in hand.