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The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

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Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#71

I don’t like the AI writing style anymore. It’s very readable and it has great words, but it’s lacking imperfections. Like a raytraced 3D render of mathematically perfect shapes.

Giving them a pass since he or she is blind. The text is also very large intentionally

I'm grateful for that. I never liked the hn default size even when my eyes were younger.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#72
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody is formed by their experiences and genes and they act accordingly. There is no free will. If you realize that, you realize that you can never blame anyone for anything, because they had no choice to act differently. As a customer it's still hard to take, when someone who is clearly formed by years of professional deformation, treats you like shit.

If you think there’s no free will then you won’t argue with me when I say I think there is.

But they will argue with you, for it was predestined.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#75

Karen woke up this morning in her run down, rented flat. She briefly looks at the collections letter that showed up yesterday due to an unaffordable repair she had to pay for on her credit card. Another letter from her ex-partner's lawyer. As she rushes out the door (she spilled coffee on her one nice sweater, her favorite) her mom flashes through her mind... "What about mum?". She arrives at the office. It is an opp…

> "She said it with a challenge in her tone. She knew who she was talking to. She was talking to a blind man living below the poverty line. She assumed that "fax it" was an impossible hurdle. She assumed I would have to find a ride to a library, pay twenty cents a page, and struggle with a physical machine I couldn't read. She was counting on the friction of the physical world to make me give up."

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#77
I enjoyed this read, but:

> For the recipient, a fax is a physical reality. It requires paper. It requires ink. It requires time.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was also digital.

> I imagined Karen’s fax machine. It was probably an old, beige beast sitting in the corner of a gray office. It was likely low on paper. It was almost certainly low on patience.

I think the rest of the article was also their imagination.

> "Sir, please. You have to stop the fax. It’s… it’s been printing for an hour. It’s jamming the machine. We’re out of toner."

People only speak like this in fan-fiction.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#78

The fax machine we had in the office would convert the incoming faxes to email for us. Maybe that's a security violation for them but I find it difficult to believe they don't have some sort of all digital receipt system

Yeah, there are also business that provide this as a service.

Funny to think of the author sending documents to a computer-to-fax service and the recipient doing the reverse.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#79
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody is formed by their experiences and genes and they act accordingly. There is no free will. If you realize that, you realize that you can never blame anyone for anything, because they had no choice to act differently. As a customer it's still hard to take, when someone who is clearly formed by years of professional deformation, treats you like shit.

This. There's something about most cultures that I am slowly am realizing; we always know how to complain and shift the responsibility. And no, you're not immune to this. You're not immune to anything, really. Medical departments aren't about helping you out anymore. When you work in a hospital, you do what your rule book says. If someone doesn't have their paperwork available, you cannot help them. That's your boss'…

> Why can you not just give them their pills and charge them the real amount. Why do we need this bureaucratic hell and pretend we're here to help people

I can get my drugs from people like this but you can’t because you prefer this system. Having chosen a system with heavy import controls and an overbearing government regulatory agency, all of which you are likely a huge fan of, there’s not much point to being upset that it yields high prices through an opaque system. The thing you want creates the thing you don’t want.

One might as well rage at getting wet when you stand under the shower and turn it on.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#80
> Robert Kingett is a Blind, and gay, obscure writer. He writes fiction where Disabled heroes get their happy endings and nonfiction where life can, sometimes, be educational.

Now I wonder if this is fiction, even if the person is real and they are blind.

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