Take a job helping the disabled claim benefits they said. It'll be nice and you can help disabled people they said.
The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner
201–210 of 510 posts
Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner
#202I cannot get over the malice seeping through this author's writing. Happiness does not come from making others miserable.
You're getting a window into just how much it sucks to be disabled and then have extra burdens put on you. I don't know this author, but I know someone else in a similar position and I absolutely understand where this anger comes from.
Regardless of the condition of your life, harboring anger and malice never leads to fulfilment.
Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Spoken from the pretty obvious position of never having to have worked a low-wage people facing job. Here's the real situation: the people that pick up the phone when you call them up aren't going to be paid much above minimum wage at all. They have zero institutional power to fix anything . You're yelling at people that, themselves, almost certainly are only barely making enough money to get by either. It is worthle…
Being paid a low wage doesn't give you a right to mistreat people because of you conditions. There are no justified resentments
Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?…
Really? Are you sure? The UK disability system is notorious for compliance hurdles. Quite a lot of people including relatives of mine have had claims denied by the bureaucracy, applied for review (which is done by an external judge), and had it reinstated. It was even worse when the system was outsourced to ATOS. I've also heard stories about the Norwegian NAV. I don't think this is confined to any one country. It's…
I didn't say there is no compliance hurdles or the benefits are supposed to be easy to get.
I said that the author insinuates the woman is actively, even personally trying to stop him from getting the benefits, instead of following a rulebook. Which is quite surprising to me, as my experience tells me most employees don't care about saving money for their employers unless they're very strongly motivated to do so.
> She was counting on the friction of the physical world to make me give up.
Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner
#205Karen 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?…
I'm almost certain this is from the UK, and here we have a government that is absolutely obsessed by the concept of benefits fraud. Every real analysis has shown that virtually none exists, but it is a good excuse to tighten up the government budget by trimming some fat (disabled people).
Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner
#206I guess "I harassed a random low level employee because I took a request to fax documents as a personal insult" wasn't as catchy of a title?
Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner
#207For 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.
"Cover your left eye .... look straight at that chart and tell me what the third line from the bottom says ..."
Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
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" [tra…
> 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.
Not meaningful pressure, though, at least for large organizations. This is a variant of the flawed "vote with your wallet" argument: One wallet changes nothing. Even 100 or 1000 wallets change nothing.
These huge businesses and huge governments are too big for one person at the bottom of the totem pole to make a difference. Sure, they may share 1/N of the culpability for what their organization is doing, but if they rage quit, they will be immediately replaced with another body. The organization won't even notice it.
Individual human beings acting individually are totally irrelevant when it comes to the behavior of large organizations.
Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner
#209I worked briefly with an idvidual who had this extreme bureaucratic mentality. I just can't even imagine how you can talk to another person and have no empathy at all for their situation and only care about the process. I also know processes exist for a reason, people will abuse things, and these processes are designed to prevent abuse.
I don't have an answer. I just know that my empathy is too strong. I could never be so rigid and would not thrive in a career requiring that level of disconnect.
Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner
#210Yea, the front service desk worker doesn't deserve that shit. Dick move.