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

sightlessscribbles.com

171–180 of 510 posts

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

#171

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

The story may be posted today but there's no reason it has to be a recent story. Even the most backward government post in 2026 should have a fax-to-document service that integrates with their document tracker. But there was definitely a 15 to 20 year window from in the 1990s to somewhere in the 2010s where you could send faxes directly from a document one way or another but the recipient was almost certain to be dumping them straight to paper. The story mentions using an internet service which I am not sure would have existed in the 90s (maybe at the very end), but I extend the essence of the story back to the 90s because I remember having a modem that had a printer driver that allowed you to hit "print" and fax someone directly, which you could also easily use to do something like this without any sort of step where you're feeding paper into a physical machine.

Faxes have been "obsolete" a really long time.

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

#172
post #146
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's her inconvenience vs money he relies on to live. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and this is the sort of thing that might make Karen suggest to her boss that they accept PDF files.

>might make Karen suggest to her boss that they accept PDF files. I'm not sure what state or country this was written in, but requiring physical copies or a fax is very likely a legal requirement.

And unless enough bureaucrats complain to their boss, that law will never change. Regulations don't get handed down from the gods or something, they can be changed if enough people want it. There are plenty of countries these days where a PDF is enough.

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

#173

For a second I thought this was one of my friends. He had his eyes removed due to a medical reason (already blind). He recently had to go to a vision doctor and take a vision test. To confirm to his insurance that he was indeed, blind.

I have no eyes and I must take a vision test to prove I'm blind.

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

#174
I love the story (I have close family that has to go through the same crap -it's truly nasty. They deliberately try to intimidate people into giving up their benefits).

But I have also learned that pissing off bureaucrats can have severe consequences. They may be petty, but some of them (like SSI/Medicaid people) have the power to truly mess up your life.

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

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Irrelevant. Even if you're right, and not merely oblivious to the space of possible deployments of fax handling support in modern offices, the author (or narrator) is clearly proud of their behavior in situation (or story) they posted, so my comment stands.

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

#176
I enjoyed the story and yay for him then read after the end, "Robert Kingett is a Blind, and gay..."!?!?! What does what the author does in the bedroom have to do with the story I just read? Nothing. I don't give a damn what the author does in their bedroom.

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

#177
post #163
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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/

That's presumably what the word 'fully' is being employed for.

Sure, but its meaningless as you don't need to be fully blind to be legally blind. Its easy to delimitate things if can just change the units to fit your scheme and do away with the ambiguities.

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

#178

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…

Seems potentially libelous to claim this person isn't actually blind.

I don't think that's what they meant -- they're describing a series of three imaginary phone calls. (I did misread it that way at first, though.)

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

#179
The ending is a little hard to believe.

My sister has a job somewhat like this for a school system. Multiply the number of working hours by the number of workers, divide by the number of active cases and the number of hours each case takes to resolve. The answer is that a large number of cases will not be done by their deadlines.

If someone wanted to send her a 500 page fax, she’s just going to shrug and work on something else. If she gives it even a passing thought, it would be “this ass better hope his fax finishes printing before the deadline for benefit cutoff”

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

#180

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?…

Depends on what kind of dole you are on. Unemployment isn't terribly difficult. Disability is nigh impossible. Took a decade for one of my family members to get it. From what I've seen they want to see you're broke and jobless for a very long time before they will believe you.
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