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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

#191

Post by panzagl »

stockresearcher wrote: post #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 some…

Unplug fax, no one gets benefits that day, simple fix and the office's day just got a little easier. What was already printed goes in the shred bin.

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

#193

Post by trinsic2 »

watwut wrote: post #182
Etherlord87 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" [tra…

No amount of beating low level employees will change whether they can accept pdf sent by email or not. And also, they are not supposed to use their intuitive ideas about what is and what is not dangerous use of software. When they do use their intuitive ideas, hacks happen. Karen here doing what she was told and accepting only formats that her organization security team told her to do is Karen doing the correct thing…

Disagree. Employees need to be responsible and make their voices heard. The whole thing was justified. We enable nightmares with our acquiescence.

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

#195

Post by FatherOfCurses »

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…

A few thoughts about the world this situation exists in:

1. Whenever I am dealing with a problem, I always try to say to the person helping me "I know you are not the person responsible for my issue." My goal is to help them not feel that my frustration is directed at them.

2. Government is a special area, especially when it comes to benefits, because a lot of regulations are in place because some random politician got a law passed/amended in order to convince their constituents they were fighting fraud and laziness. This is quite often done with no thought to the downstream effects.

3. I consider myself to be an empathetic person, but there have been times in my life when I have had to work in a job that was very anti-customer. Because doing nice things for customers was punished, I fell into a pattern of finding ways to not do nice things for customers and actually got some enjoyment out of the logical puzzle of denying them. I'm not defending it by any means and I'm quite regretful about it, but I can understand how someone can fall into that mentality.

4. I believe the real failure here, like so many other things, is the system design. The disability benefits system in the author's case seems to be providing benefits to permanently disabled and temporarily disabled people. The review process should be differentiating between these two groups. As the author points out, they are never not going to be blind.

I think a better way to communicate the frustration would have been finding the fax number for the minister responsible for the government department and faxing THEM the documentation, as they have the power to change things.

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

#196

Post by justin66 »

I found the bureaucrat was a more sympathetic character than the author, and that is saying something. Part of that is because of the bits of the author's story that don't add up. It's apparently "truthy" rather than true. I guess maybe that works sometimes.

Mostly it's because I don't think the SSA employee was malicious at all, although viewed through a lens of bitterness perhaps they could be viewed that way. But the author was unabashedly malicious.

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

#197

Post by pjc50 »

SomaticPirate wrote: post #103
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 l…

> There should be a political call to action here

A real problem in both benefits claiming and immigration systems is that there are voters on the other side loudly demanding that the system be made more hostile and kafkaesque.

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

#198

Post by perching_aix »

trinsic2 wrote: post #193
watwut wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No amount of beating low level employees will change whether they can accept pdf sent by email or not. And also, they are not supposed to use their intuitive ideas about what is and what is not dangerous use of software. When they do use their intuitive ideas, hacks happen. Karen here doing what she was told and accepting only formats that her organization security team told her to do is Karen doing the correct thing…

Disagree. Employees need to be responsible and make their voices heard. The whole thing was justified. We enable nightmares with our acquiescence.

And how does the author (or you) know she doesn't keep raising this?

Edit: can't even confirm that it really is only fax and physical mail that's available; on a cursory search, tackling this fully online is already well possible: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47544562

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

#199

Post by Synthetic7346 »

kerblang wrote: post #164

Under HIPAA requirements emailing personal medical info is a massive no-no. Admittedly, this is for the patient's protection, and of course being blind is not much of a secret... but it's completely understandable that email would be strongly discouraged. Nobody wants to get in trouble for breaking the rules. Honestly, being able to accept a fax is great, although I would think any properly outfitted modern office th…

Is this an outdated requirement? What's the attack surface of an email vs fax? Unless they ban phones at the office, someone could just take a photo of the documents the patient faxed or mailed them

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

#200

Post by InsideOutSanta »

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…

"From a shallow perspective it seems true, but in my experience bureaucrats fall into a position they enjoy"

I worked in a call center when I was studying because it was the only job I could get. Nobody there enjoyed it. Everyone did it because they had no other choice.

It's funny, though. In another thread, somebody pointed out that they wouldn't hire a former engineer of a company like Kalshi, Google, or Amazon, and people were quick to defend these people. What if you couldn't get a job anywhere else? I have a lot more sympathy for a government employee who has to answer calls from angry people than an engineer at Kalshi, because the latter likely has a lot more options than the former.

"If you're blaming us so tenuously"

Do you disagree that this person followed the law, and that politicians enacted those laws, and that we voted for these politicians?

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