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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

#111

Post by iso1631 »

dwedge wrote: post #82
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this anger is entirely misplaced. I don't think this woman is happy to have to enforce this idiotic law and listen to angry people all day long. It's the politicians that people like us elected because they promised to cut wasteful spending, so now blind people have to prove they're still blind once a year. We did that to them.

> Yeah, this anger is entirely misplaced. I don't think this woman is happy to have to enforce this idiotic law and listen to angry people all day long I'm not sure I agree. From a shallow perspective it seems true, but in my experience bureaucrats fall into a position they enjoy. They often seem to take a perverse pride in this job - and it is a job that they, at one point, chose. > It's the politicians that people…

Nobody enjoys working in a call centre

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

#112

Post by Etherlord87 »

wholinator2 wrote: post #45
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…

I agree wholeheartedly! This is exactly what i was thinking the entire time. Like, does this guy think this single woman is responsible for the kafka-esque trap they're both in? Will the 0.5% uptick in toner cost for the year cause the administration to rethink their requirements? He's just taken the immense weight and pain he holds for this process, undeservedly, and placed it upon another undeserving person, then l…

I see this type of an argumentation very often and I strongly disagree.

You're removing all responsibility from an actor that is a part of a bigger thing. Imagine if you slapped someone on his hand for doing something wrong, and he or someone else argued what you did is wrong because it wasn't that hand that has offended.

I'm an antitheist but the Bible (gospels) put it well "The student is not above his master" [translation mine] - which means if you follow said master you have to share responsibility for his doings or the doings of the gang as a whole.

From the perspective of the effect, if you make life of an employee miserable, the employee is more likely to resign or ask for a raise, this does apply some pressure.

Moreover, consider what happens if your argument convinces too many people: malevolent actors can just wall themselves with "innocent" people and get away with pretty much anything.

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

#113

Post by maerF0x0 »

I cant wait for useless jobs like Karen's from Compliance to be replaced with a highly capable AI that is tuned to think on it's feet (so to speak).

Yes, I realize there will be cynics who say "The difficulty is by design to deny benefits", but I also think a lot of well meaning policies are hamstrung by the implementation (especially of software). Claude + Code for America can fix this.

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

#114

Post by gentoo »

catapart wrote: post #87
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…

exactly this. I didn't put you in a bad job; you - and to a large extent, your society - did. you are the face of the machine that I am trying to deal with. if you don't want to be that face, go be the face of some other machine. but if you pick up a phone to talk to a client or customer, you are a representation of an organization, and you will be treated as such. fix you mind to understand that people are trying to…

The human faces of the machine are our only hope. The alternative is, in the short term, a machine face of the machine, whom you can't argue with and who will summarily deny your benefits with no chance of appeal. In the long term, the alternative is no machine at all.

The purpose of this machine is, ultimately, to give people government benefits. The people who hate that the government gives out benefits at all, when in power, do everything they can to make the machine more hostile and less functional. They then take anecdotes like these as evidence that the machine should be smaller and do less.

Karen is not your enemy, the policy makers who want to give Karen less agency (and who make rules like "you can't accept emails") are your enemies. They want you to hate Karen and Karen to hate you. Ultimately they want to fire Karen and reduce government disbursements to zero. They are reading this thread with glee.

See, e.g., the case studies in https://virginia-eubanks.com/automating-inequality/.

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

#115

Post by nxobject »

wholinator2 wrote: post #45
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…

I agree wholeheartedly! This is exactly what i was thinking the entire time. Like, does this guy think this single woman is responsible for the kafka-esque trap they're both in? Will the 0.5% uptick in toner cost for the year cause the administration to rethink their requirements? He's just taken the immense weight and pain he holds for this process, undeservedly, and placed it upon another undeserving person, then l…

As an alternate framing, with the paperwork be giving her what she needs to go to her boss and escalate, and their boss as needed - the paperwork as a magic ticket for everyone to advocate. To qualify that, the fax is a limited resource, and I'd be concerned about how what other things the fax might be needed for to help other people in a timely manner...

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

#116

Post by 0x3f »

dwedge wrote: post #82
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this anger is entirely misplaced. I don't think this woman is happy to have to enforce this idiotic law and listen to angry people all day long. It's the politicians that people like us elected because they promised to cut wasteful spending, so now blind people have to prove they're still blind once a year. We did that to them.

> Yeah, this anger is entirely misplaced. I don't think this woman is happy to have to enforce this idiotic law and listen to angry people all day long I'm not sure I agree. From a shallow perspective it seems true, but in my experience bureaucrats fall into a position they enjoy. They often seem to take a perverse pride in this job - and it is a job that they, at one point, chose. > It's the politicians that people…

> in my experience bureaucrats fall into a position they enjoy.

What possible kind of 'experience' could you have to judge such a thing, save for personal preconceptions and biases?

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

#117

Post by mothballed »

afro88 wrote: post #101
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Depends on your goal. If you want a better machine maybe hating the cogs doesn't help.

If you goal is to not have a machine at all for some particular thing, then potentially no one wanting to work a job that does that thing might be an effective way of abating the machine from doing that.

Although inconveniencing bureaucrats handling disability benefits is probably a poor starting point no matter what your opinion is.

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

#118

Post by [deleted] »

wholinator2 wrote: post #45
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…

I agree wholeheartedly! This is exactly what i was thinking the entire time. Like, does this guy think this single woman is responsible for the kafka-esque trap they're both in? Will the 0.5% uptick in toner cost for the year cause the administration to rethink their requirements? He's just taken the immense weight and pain he holds for this process, undeservedly, and placed it upon another undeserving person, then l…

[deleted]

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

#119

Post by catapart »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #104
mothballed wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tryin…

the author didn't make anything harder for anyone because the "fax" wasn't ever even printed, much less caused a backup or even a slowdown at all. the giveaway was having the karen call back to request the person stop. the initial phone call undoubtedly happened, but the fax was consumed by the same systems used in medical offices all around the country, which means that it arrived as a pdf in some repository and it was attached to the client's records in the system. the whole "it has to be a fax" thing is a HIPPA compliance measure about chain of custody, rather than a technological requirement. it "could" be an email, but the data can never at any point be stored in certain ways or in certain locales, or whatever. since most email can't guarantee that, the policies are to only use fax, but then they use a service or application (that provides financial and legal guarantees of custody) to receive incoming faxes as pdfs. sometimes, even as attachments on emails.
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