A microcosmic example of a much larger problem - the Bureaucratic "So?" - Granite Grok

A microcosmic example of a much larger problem – the Bureaucratic “So?”

I took a vacation day for a specific purpose dealing (second hand) with Government – and a bureaucrat made the time, effort, and gas all for naught.  And a cost to my currently unemployed Youngest a very dear $25 of his money.  For nuttin’.

I have oft been posting about my concern about a growing bureaucracy – and with a growth above a certain size seeming comes with a downward looking attitude or a “so?” attitude that is surrounded by Civil Service protections that can make it all but impossible to terminate bad apples (e.g., NYC infamous “rubber rooms” where really bad teachers spend their time, sometimes for years, on the citizens’ dime because firing them is all but impossible) – unelected, unresponsive, and unaccountable.  Today was a primary example of “So?”

The Youngest was told by a local bureaucrat (names and positions made generic to protect the wrong (no, not the wronged)) that he needed by a piece of paper that could only be researched and completed by someone at NHBHQ (NH Bureaucratic HQ) on Hazen Drive.  It was needed for yet another appointment needed to be able to set up yet a different appointment.  All within the square dance of Govt / NGO / Social Service Organization / Govt complex – one waterfalling to the other.  Heaven help him if he messed up.  And yes, by the end of this, he was appealing to Heaven.

So, having taken off the day, we arose early (er, aren’t vaca-day singletons supposed to be for lazy morning mornings??) loaded everyone into the SUV, and down we went (yeah, stuck behind the proverbial slo-mo old time Yankee farmer “whatcha hurry, son?  Nobody needen to drive more than 35 – it’ll wait, what evah it is”) and arrived.  I watched the Scotusblog Coverit feed of today’s announcements on DOMA and Prop 8 (in getting the link, saw a post named Bad news for marriage, good news for government power which pretty much sums up my feelings about the declarations; more later).  I happened to catch him in the side mirror – the cloud over his head and on his face was way darker than the clouds in the sky.  And then he started to really tell us how he felt – yikes!

And everything unraveled from there – the bureaucratic train did the expected train wreck.  “Oh, well, sorry about that – I THOUGHT they did that type of thing?” – a nice assumption that somebody in NH could easily obtain information from another State (but only by traveling to NH’s version of  Barad-dûr  as a supplicant for mercy).   Remedy?  There is none.  And that can be the problem – magnify that by thousands or millions of times.  And then the rush to “fix” the train wreck by other bureaucrats not exactly all that interested that their counterpart had slipped up and threw the first railroad tie on the track – how dare that their schedule and calendar is now disrupted (yeah, the next stop was supposed to be this afternoon and another tomorrow AM)!  I could hear the phone conversations as we rolled northward home – it was clear that their counterpart was not the party being blamed.

Now, before you all get too excited, yes I know – people are wrong from time to time and “stuff”.  Four hours of my time of a vacation day ill spent, his time, $25, gas….I’m most upset about the time that is now lost forever (as the cost is a bit, it is not a deal breaker for me).  And for me, my Mom’s pithy saying of “You will always be a Parent” also means “His tribulations will always be mine”.  However, he was more ripped about spending the $25 for absolutely NO VALUE.  Yes, he can go nuke pretty quick at times – and this was one of them.  But as I said – I heard the conversations and even as he was being FAR more polite to them than what he is to me (“just once, just ONCE, I could like hearing ‘Yes, sir’ “….yeah, that ain’t happening), the tone back to him was “why have you made things difficult for me???”

Remedy?  There is none.  As I said here whereMoultonborough teachers, paid public servants, seemed to both believe and demand that they are in the superior position to the parents that pay their salaries:

… I ask “who work for who”?

Remedy?  There is none.  And that’s the problem at the 50,000 foot level.

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