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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

#131

Post by orzig »

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…

It's tricky, because _sometimes_ they do. And the system doesn't give you guidance on whether you're talking to someone who (officially or not) can change the process. So, based mostly on our personality, we all push a different amount before giving up.

Relatable example: I needed to schedule a Pediatric appointment, her assigned Dr was on vacation, and the first receptionist stonewalled on switching Drs within the practice. The second one did it in 2m on her side and guided me to updating insurance in 2m on my side.

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

#132

Post by glitchc »

The problem with government services is the rampant fraud. In such cases, fraud is often guilt-free since the government is perceived to have infinite resources. This tempts otherwise honest people to "try their luck" free of conscience, and in most cases, consequence. These silly rules and barriers are meant to increase friction for fraudsters. Unfortunately it comes at the expense of legitimate claimants. I feel your pain and I also feel hers.

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

#133

Post by raybb »

tyingq wrote: post #18

Sounds like it's not real but... It reads like an indictment of the government employee personally, rather than the rules and constraints that employee is forced to use. Probably fair to comment on the interaction, whether the person was rude, and so on. But blaming them for not accepting email is kind of silly. They are not empowered to do that kind of thing.

Seems like something DOGE should have tackled early if they actually cared about making the government effecient. I guess making the lives of the disabled easier isn't flashy enough.

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

#134

Post by BoppreH »

raincole wrote: post #126

> It is a letter that arrives every few years from the government, asking a question that is medically absurd and philosophically insulting: "Are you still disabled?" It... doesn't sound like an absurd practice at all. There are curable disabilities. And what's curable changes along with the advance of technology. It sounds about right to review the situation every a few years.

And there's also fraud. If there's no periodic check, a single diagnosis from a corrupt doctor can give someone disability benefits for life.

This might not be the right frequency, though, and only accepting post/fax is bullshit. Doubly so for short deadlines.

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

#135

Post by tokai »

apexalpha wrote: post #130

The problem in the UK, and many other countries, is that they refuse to split Disabilities in "objectively measurable disabilities" and "not objectively measurable disabilities." Obviously, you can just objectively measure if someone is fully blind. Sure you can pretend, but that's very hard. On the other hand there's disabilities like anxiety, where the only option is to ask the patient questions that the patient ma…

>you can just objectively measure if someone is fully blind

No not really. Blindness is a spectrum.

https://www.cnib.ca/en/sight-loss-info/blindness/what-blindn...

https://www.perkins.org/what-blindness-really-looks-like/

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

#136

Post by Etherlord87 »

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…

Imagine what would happen if everyone did what the author did. The system would collapse. I think you put a wrong diagnosis that the author couldn't possibly affect the administration. Maybe not much, maybe there was only a chance, but statistically he did put some pressure on that organization.

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

#137

Post by raincole »

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 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.

Does this author live in a country where the government staff has incentive to reject the dole? Some kind of KPI? Otherwise why the author assume this woman is actively trying to stop him from getting his benefit?

I genuinely wonder that. In my country I've never heard that.

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

#138

Post by foxglacier »

fainpul wrote: post #93
spicyusername wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

never blame anyone for anything That's actually not quite true. Assigning blame, via agency or otherwise, and the associated social or legal consequences are additional signals in the environment that influence and change behavior. If the actions of an individual were involved in propagating some chain of events, then it's perfectly valid to respond to their involvement, via social stigma, punishment, etc, regardless…

I agree with you, except for the blame part. Of course people act accordingly to the system they're in. If they expect punishment for an action, or not, changes their behaviour. By defining what's punishable, we can change the course of action. But if you look at any action which already happened , you can't blame anyone for it, because it had to happen that way, given the circumstances.

That already happened is key to your idea and I think you'd have got a better response if you included it initially. It's actually quite a worthwhile concept. Blame can't change the past. The important reason we blame is to help our mind cope with the loss we suffered. But if you can succeed in coping by thinking the past is immutable, that's even better.

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

#139

Post by scrollop »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #72
justonceokay wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unless you have an Out of Body Experience and who the hell knows if physics continues to be at all having an effect in that realm and thus perform Free Will is a possibility.

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

#140

Post by lenkite »

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…

In all probability, Karen is a ruthless bureaucrat who has been told to cut down on disability payments and has been assigned to her position so that she may perform the job of trimming the budget so that the local congressman can "donate" to industry.
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