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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

#101

Post by afro88 »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #66
recursivedoubts wrote: post #33

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…

"cut those cops strangling that guy over bootleg smokes some slack, they have a tough job" These sorts of don't hate the cogs hate the machine takes are worthless because they create an instant exploit where the machine can be as bad as it wants as long as it hides behind the cogs.

What good does hating the cogs do though? Make noise to the people who can change the machine.

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

#102

Post by b3lvedere »

Way back in the previous century my dad once told me that corporate had purchased a thermal fax machine for his department. He hated it and wished it would stop working.

So i asked for its number and sent it lots of completely black pictures. The thermal fax did not like that.

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

#103

Post by SomaticPirate »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #33

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…

My exact thoughts. Too often we lash out at the person who is working within a Kafkaesque system as a lowly bureaucrat. Attack the system. Find the fax number for the chief of your social security administration. Get a letter sending group together. The democratic system is slow and terrible but atleast the author seems to live in one.

There should be a political call to action here. Call xyz or work to change this law. Bureaucrats run on laws. Laws can be changed. I was able to get my local HOA to accept pdf uploads just be talking with them. Small example but change is possible. Not as fun as ruining someones day though

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

#104

Post by TeMPOraL »

mothballed wrote: post #86
john_strinlai wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then laughed at her anguish. anguish? as in, "excruciating pain" or "agonizing torment"? i dont understand where the "anguish" comes from. he didnt yell at her, berate her, hit her, cause her to be fired, submit a malicious complaint, or anything of the sort. he sent her a long fax. oh no! if i was in her position, i would shrug and hand my boss the 500 pieces of paper. if you are just a cog in the machine, it is n…

This is exactly how it's handled from my limited dealings with the machine. Literally no one gives a shit if you make their job 'harder.' They have an endless treadmill of things to do. Whether it's your 500 page fax or 500 people with a 1 page fax is of no consequence to them. They will work at the same pace either way. In fact their boss might like it because they can try to use it to argue for more headcount which…

> Literally no one gives a shit if you make their job 'harder.' They have an endless treadmill of things to do. Whether it's your 500 page fax or 500 people with a 1 page fax is of no consequence to them. They will work at the same pace either way.

As they should. They're in this for the long run. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

Which means all the author did was to fuck over a couple dozen other disabled people trying to navigate the process. Good job.

Were I the reader that donated them that $20, I'd issue a charge back now.

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

#105

Post by john_strinlai »

rdtsc wrote: post #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.

for some reason, you forgot to copy/paste the rest of the sentence, which continues with:

"and nonfiction where life can, sometimes, be educational."

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

#106

Post by shimman »

WindyMiller wrote: post #88
speedgoose wrote: post #34

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.

[How confident are you that this writer uses AI?]( https://sightlessscribbles.com/posts/the-colonization-of-con... )

People forget that AI is trained on mediocre writing too, not everything a person writes is fire. Most of it is a mediocre, too long, and hard to understand; just like the outputs you get from LLMs.

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

#107

Post by simgt »

looperhacks wrote: post #50

I know it's fiction - but in reality, Karen is likely just as annoyed by this as the author. The spam should go to the person in charge, not the person who is forced to deal with this every day

You can usually tell these people apart though, they sound empathetic. The one in the story doesn't.

Most of these bureaucrats have more power than what they want to let us think, but that means taking the risk of being told off for having been kind.

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

#108

Post by iso1631 »

voidUpdate wrote: post #75
recursivedoubts wrote: post #33

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."

This experiment feels related

https://theinquisitivejournal.com/2023/04/07/the-power-of-pe...

Presumably the blog writer has never worked in a corporate hierarchy, let alone at the lowest of the low of being in a call centre. They sound like a horrible person whose interactions with the outside world being driven from being terminally online (the choice of Karen was telling)

> He writes fiction where Disabled heroes get their happy endings

Perhaps "Karen" was disabled, having lost both her legs from a drunk driver as she selflessly threw herself into harms way to rescue some innocent kids. I hope she gets a happy ending.

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

#109

Post by rogerrogerr »

harvey9 wrote: post #71
firesteelrain wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's ironically kinda less accessible in total, though. Because my browser lets me zoom in on a page almost infinitely, but I can only zoom out enough to make this text go from insanely-big to uncomfortably-large.

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

#110

Post by john_strinlai »

tyingq wrote: post #60
miki123211 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, as a user with 10k+ karma on HN, can testify that the author has all the hallmarks of a real blind person (active in blind communities and so on). I don't have any evidence suggesting that the author ever engaged in deceptive behavior. In other words, my P(real) > 0.99.

Sure. He's real. ̶̶̶ ̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶u̶g̶h̶:̶ "Robert Kingett is a Blind, and gay, obscure writer. He writes fiction where Disabled heroes get their happy ending..." Edit: Yep, appears I have it wrong. Thanks for the pointers. The non-fiction tag missed my eye.

let me finish the rest of the sentence for you, which somehow got deleted from your clipboard. weird bug!

"and nonfiction where life can, sometimes, be educational."

extra weird, because you are the third person that has experienced this bug where you can only paste the first half of that exact sentence.

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