Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

sightlessscribbles.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 510 posts

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

#411

Post by shepherdjerred »

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…

It's the classic "and everyone clapped" story.

I get that this is exhausting, but the rank-and-file employee is just doing their job. This is like people attacking McDonalds employees because they were out of Szechuan Sauce [0].

The author _clearly_ had a way to accomplish their goal. Why could they not just say "ok that's inconvenient, but I'll just use this online service to send my existing PDF".

[0]: https://www.nme.com/features/tv-features/rick-and-mortys-sze...

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

#412

Post by kayodelycaon »

apical_dendrite wrote: post #369
kayodelycaon wrote: post #74

How many fax lines still go to a physical machine that prints on paper? It’s a lot less paper to have a pdf of the fax emailed.

You'd be surprised how many doctors still rely on a physical fax machine.

I was thinking of doctors offices and pharmacies when I asked. My doctor has a physical fax machine in the back of the office.

I was hoping things might be a little bit more advanced elsewhere. It hurts my soul to see people print a document to fax it before throwing it away.

I was going to say it would be nice if you would just choose a fax machine from the print dialogue. You can… if it’s set up. Sigh.

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

#413

Post by tzs »

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…

> Under HIPAA requirements emailing personal medical info is a massive no-no.

Doesn’t that only apply to covered entities, which the internet is telling me does not include the Social Security Administration.

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

#414

Post by hooverd »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #273
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…

I find it far more effective to make friends with and be kind to that employee, and then describe how I know it isn't their fault but this one aspect of the thing that their company does really sucks, right? They're then able to carry that specific complaint from one of their best customers up the chain. There are a thousand reasons why someone might be miserable, might resign or ask for a raise, but at the next mont…

Indeed, if you're nice they might take your side. If you're an asshole, that's a lot less likely.

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

#415

Post by hooverd »

bambax wrote: post #233
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…

Absolutely agree. Also, the kind of Karens described in the post usually enjoy their position and the meager power they hold over other humans. They need to get bitten sometimes.

If you're trying to effect actual change that seems like a great way to harden the people you need to be influencing against you.

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

#416

Post by hooverd »

realo wrote: post #312
rwmj wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case the problem can't easily be blamed on "the system". Government benefits are this way because politicians have for years blamed "benefit cheats" and "welfare queens" and other boogymen, people have voted based on this, and now the law is you have to prove you're still congenitally blind every year. The system is working, it's actually doing what the politicians and their voters want.

Explain that to the Karen, then... and let her suffer, instead of the poor blind taxpayer. He never chose to be blind. He pays his taxes. He is the customer. She chose to be part of The System. She is paid to provide a service, within The System's rules. I have zero empathy for her. Everything is working as intended.

Hopefully you feel about the same way about every bit of vitriol levied towards tech workers.

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

#417

Post by kakacik »

kevinh wrote: post #255
newer_vienna wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the condition of your life, harboring anger and malice never leads to fulfilment.

Sure, and if depressed people weren't sad, they'd be happier. 'Just don't get frustrated' isn't actionable advice.

> 'Just don't get frustrated'

That's not the issue, not sure why you try to steer discussion that way. The issue is, that's not enough to be an asshole and have some respect or general approval for that.

Every Karen making hell for entire neighborhood has some sad story behind, usually series of them and some are properly fucking horrible and heartbreaking to levels where this article reads like great easy chill life. I wish I was kidding, wife is GP and has to do basic psychiatric work too due to lack of available specialist doctors and the stories she hears almost daily... For example the amount of people who experienced sexual abuse as children with lifelong devastating consequences is fucking horribly high, but most go unreported even to close family so not part of any stats.

To condense - this is not enough as an excuse, however harsh the life can be. Thus don't expect that much sympathies. I'd expect a bit higher empathy levels from folks here.

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

#418

Post by sl-1 »

create_accounts wrote: post #217
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.

I hate it when bureaucrats ask me to send e-mails because they are not encrypted. Specially my ID. It's a security risk, indeed

Not end to end encrypted? I'd wager most email traffic is encrypted while in transit, but of course that depends on the service providers. And it does sit unencrypted when stored.

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

#419

Post by thelastgallon »

Every country has different norms about these things.

If it were India, you have to pay a 'tax', mostly directly to the bureaucrat or using the workflow setup by the bureaucrat -- its another person outside 'taking care' of these things or his security guard/watchman or another low level employee. It can't be done remotely, you have to go to office and figure out the workflow and the right person. Most third world countries have some version of this configuration.

In US, there are lawyers who get you disability, no problem, they take care of everything for you, and take 50%. Millions of people are on fake disability thanks to these kind lawyers.

Ultimately, most people in Govt (politicians/bureaucrats) are entitled to ALL the money that Govt collects (steals?), and they have different ways of collecting their money. This is just human nature. The Trump regime shows the most innovative ways of doing this, it is quite admirable.

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

#420

Post by edwcross »

wyldfire wrote: post #362
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.

> blaming them for not accepting email is kind of silly. I definitely agree - but if the organization creates pain as an externality, then there's no incentive for them to change. Making them realize the cost of their decisions seems appropriate and just and not-even-abusive. Yelling at the person on the phone is bad and doesn't help anyone. Malicious compliance like this helps motivate them to escalate their concern…

Indeed.

If Karen from Compliance cared, she could (and should) inform her superiors of what just happened. Let them know how much their procedure cost, in time and money. Call the IT people and say "I have a fax machine printing 500 pages". Get it noted somewhere. Reported. Make statistics out of it.

It can be as simple as an e-mail. Or she can send the entire stack of pages as a souvenir. If she cannot be bothered to do anything about it, then maybe it's not such a problem for her after all.

But keeping silent about it, is being complicit.

Post reply on HN