On Bureaucracy

If you don’t have any feelings, you’re no better than a jellyfish. No better than a bank manager.

Dave Lister, Red Dwarf

            Many of us know that. Fulfilling, signing, reading something you don’t understand at all and signing it all again, and then going home with all messed up in your head thinking about what you have just done.

            It’s a common feeling when you are obliged by circumstances to go to bank or any estate office to ask them for any favour. And first remember – there are no favours.

            Just imagine the basic situation: you forget to renew your unemployment application which causes losing your one month unemployment pay. As soon as you realize that, you go to the office to solve it. After speaking to four different office employees, the fifth finally gives you a new application and tells you that everything, including your paying, is all right now.

            In a week you receive a letter with the same date you renewed the application. There’s something about confirming all that what happened so you don’t care, except the notion about previous communication with you that warned you about the possibility of losing your pay – and this communication have never occurred.

            You call to the number of the office to complain, you listen to the music for whole five minutes, then you start to complain to the man on the phone who eventually and by the way inform you that you are not inscribed in any unemployment pay application and that you have to go immediately to the office to sort it out if you want to receive your money at least from the date you’ve made an unemployment application (which is 15 days approx.).

            Is there a part of the story which is missing?

         You go to the office, economy department, the lady makes you an application. When you ask her about why they didn’t make an application the day you were there before, she can’t say and ask if you were in the economy department. Course yes. And then at the department manager´s desk, and then in some other department desk, and finally in application department where you were given the unemployment application, but not any advise that you have to go once more to the economy department to make another application so that you can receive your pay.

            So you’re there now and the lady can’t say, so you go to the department manager´s desk to complain and he informs you than you’ve been too late and if he renew the application today you are supposed to receive only one day pay. It’s day 30.

“One day pay? Wait a minute .. the man on the phone said last 15 days pay .. what one day pay?”

“Today is the last day it could be solved and I don’t think there is enough time to do that.”

“But I have a right to my 15 days pay anyway.”

“You weren’t inscribed.”

“How could I know? I was right here in this office two weeks ago and nobody told me. I will make an official complaint concerning all your department.”

“Wait a minute, I can call to the head office and try to solve it now.” And he leaves for a couple of minutes.

            ..

“Who should I address in my complaint?”

“No, stop that, don’t write the complaint. I called to the head office. You will have it solved today and you can receive your 15 days pay.”

            Then he explains you that the letter you have received was in fact a resolution of suspension of your payment application (which was written in some cryptic language typical for official letters) and it was dated the same date you were in the office before. So by coincidence happened that the resolution was emitted the very same day you renewed your unemployment application but in the electronic system didn’t appear any disorder at the time you were there. Maybe in a couple of hours later it appeared but you were not there anymore and nobody got to know that. So eventually nobody could be on blame. Only the system.

           

            Well, this is not a basic common situation. But it serves well as an example of how our offices work. Everything seems so difficult at the first sight. But if you threaten them a little bit, you get what you want. It does sound wicked!

            Did the manager show a piece of humanity just because I have threatened him of complaint? Actually he did, and this was the core of the problem I wanted to talk about. They all work like machines. They do their job. And that is to say: nothing more. They can listen to you, but finally they just do what the system permits them. Maybe only managers can do more. That means: nobody does anything for you just for the matter of being kind. The basic theory of the offices that serve you and help you if you need, doesn’t work properly, because it requires nothing more than a simple human understanding which have faded out. Therefore we have many managers, officers, accountants, secretaries, but no more persons.

            And there’s the question: Do you have to threaten someone to get what you want? And if so, what does that imply? It implies that the society goes mad, because this is happening quiet often in everyday life, but if it happens in a public office, there´s really something going wrong. It’s natural not to do favours for free, but if you doing something for someone, you are even paid for that and moreover you have to be convinced to do that with a threat apart, there’s something very wrong in all the system – I mean either the people who create the system, or the system that create the people; rather a mix of this two possibilities. Maybe there’s the same root in being threatenable and being corruptible.

            But I have to get back to the point. I don’t want to speak generally, so speaking for myself, there’s no humanity in any public office I know. Are they taught to be automatic machines in some special meetings? Why do you have to feel inferior to them if you have to ask about something you don’t understand and they look at you with an eye of a crow? Some people can’t stay the humiliating situation so they just go home with nothing solved. But no public institution should provoke this feeling in you. If so, it’s a wrong-working institution. But since we are living in the world where there are many wrong-working institutions, we have to be very patient. And if something comes wrong, just threaten someone a little bit and you will see – everything has its solution!