I also happened to work in Switzerland, before they made cross-region agreements with EU, and it was lot of burecratic fun, explaining the situation regarding a Portuguese, living in France and working in Switzerland.
Quite common in Eastern Europe before Schengen. That's why we hate border patrols, police and all sorts of uniformed men in general. They used to cut young people's blue jeans or long hair back in the '80s and bribing them was common before 2005. We also had quite a lot of policemen jokes (they were called militia men before 1990). One goes like "Why do militia men work in couples? Because one knows how to read and the other knows how to write.". I used to wish that we join Schengen so we no longer have to deal with border police any longer and they'd lose their jobs or get moved to a different border. If finally happened. Now Germany Poland, Austria and also other EU states introduce "temporary" border checks. Which they keep extending. Great.
Yeah. Though I live close to a Slovakia-Austria border crossing and use it frequently and it is quite apparent these are border checks in the name only. Pedestrians and bikers are not checked at all; passenger cars are waved through and only vans and busses seem to be actually stopped for a check and even that depends. Still sucks compared to no border police presence at all.
Last year my bus took nearly an hour to get across the Serbia-Croatia border, which is technically a Schengen border, but Serbia is surrounded by Europe so security is usually lax. We all had to get off and go through passport control while the police combed the bus. Meanwhile, car traffic was being waved through without the slightest formality. Infuriating.
The literal Nazis made a law that virtually banned long distance busses inside of Germany, and the market was only liberalised in 2013. Deregulation and liberalisation often get a bad rep, but they have done a lot for us.
(To be more precise, the Nazis didn't outright ban long distance busses directly, what they did was give the government railway monopoly a veto over most bus routes and lots of extra restrictions. Which amounted to the same result as a ban. Just like the US doesn't directly ban buying from the world's most popular electric car brand or importing photovoltaic cells: they just slap outrageous 100%+ tariffs on them.)