I think my first encounter was in medical school. A bureaucrat was showing a new underling around. It was a safety net hospital and as a third year med student, you're responsible for plugging all the leaks (alot of social work). Anyway it changed the entire mood of the floor. People are working and this bozo is trying to strike up meaningless conversations to show their importance.
Fast forward two years later and we get a first big snow in the city of my residency. Myself and the surgery intern had the consult and trauma pager. Everyone was slipping into a ditch, usually at low speeds or elders on AC falling and striking their heads. We kept getting trauma consults to the ED while trying to complete our 50+ floor notes and new consults. No exaggerating, I put 22000 steps on my counter that day. We each had to plow throw over 50 notes a piece. He was especially annoyed because he was a prelim who planned to do interventional, I'm a family resident and most if our surgery senior residents helped out briefly between OR cases. Anyway, every time we got call to the ED, we ran past these guys sitting in the common area in suits just chatting it up. . . for 2.5 hours. I think the seething resentment was on my face occurred when one of the guys yelled, "there they go again!", as we ran past, responding to another overhead trauma page to the ED.
Year 2 and 3 of residency was dominated by covid. During the earlier months, it was scary but I didnt feel that bubbling resentment in the hospital because only essential personnel were there. I was relieved that so many useless people were out of the hospital. And if I was coming off a night shift and going into the office for the last 4 hours of my 28, I didn't have to hear some asshat say, "you're still here" as we pass in the hall.
Now that residency is over, I still having trouble managing that resentment. Especially for the role of practice manager. The one I work with is an employee of the hospital and especially useless. She continues to be shielded by her fellow neerdowells. Whenever I bring up having one person cover several offices, for the sake of efficiency, it is usually shot down. Everyone in my office, puts in 40+ and I imagine she does not more than 20 hours. Most Wednesday and Thursdays, she works remotely and Fridays she's done early. I'm assuming she's done most weeks with real work by Wednesday and sends a few emails to make herself seem useful.
Is there a way to get these people out of our fie
... keep reading on reddit β‘
Just had to drop off a π to a friend (health care professional) so that they could test before starting work tomorrow.
All good until you consider that the way I got my π was by using an alternative address when it was ILLEGAL to post them to SA and the reason I needed to give one of my precious stash to the HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL was that the supply they had ordered has been REQUISITIONED by the government. Extraordinary. People being tripped up by factors outside their control trying to do the right thing.
π = Rapid Antigen test, you know what us old ppl are like with emogys
Disclaimer: This is far less likely to succeed at small firms. Aim for companies with several hundred employees at least.
Anyone (including irresponsible, financially unstable abusive people) can birth/father a child with virtually no questions asked.
If we really are concerned with child welfare shouldn't we put people who want to birth/father a child through the same tough screening process, or lower the bars for adoption? People who enter an adoption process are likely dedicated an responsible adults - which is true for many of the ones having their own children, though often not. The point is that we put zero effort in screening one group and enormous efforts to screening the other.
Hello everyone. I hope you don't mind me venting out for a bit here.
Earlier this year, I took a new job at an international bank where I'm paid 6 figures. This is significant jump for me as it's almost double what I made previously. This is considering I'm based in the UK where salaries are relatively low compared to places like the US.
Before I started, I was expecting it was going to be mind numbingly boring, and I was prepared to put up with that sort of arrangement for the the money they're willing to pay me. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to be put in a team of highly motivated people, with our lead being very particular about code quality principles, best practices, etc. which mostly align with my personal views. Most of my team are juniors, but they're very smart and quick to learn; they're probably better than half of the experienced people I've worked with. In general, the team I'm in are great. Everyone's open to suggestions. I can speak with my boss' boss anytime (or at least setup a meeting if I find a free slot, which can be very hard).
We are currently working to modernise the tech within the company, but I'm starting to feel like there's too much intertia to get the ball really rolling. While people in my team are motivated, we are limited in what changes we can affect because there are so many rules in place, and so many "legacy" tools and processes. Some of these tools, I am told, are fairly recent development, but if you've worked with actual modern tools, they feel very outdated.
The firm is also heavily reliant on Microsoft suites, and what's worse is they're all pared down. I personally prefer working on Unix or GNU/Linux, so not having access to a working POSIX shell is irritating. I was hoping we'd at least get WSL, but even that is not available. Containerising workloads also doesn't seem to be a top priority, which is fair enough; not every company or product needs to run on containers. However, I'm yet to be convinced it wouldn't benefit us to move towards this direction.
People in my team recognise many of these issues, but my impression is that most of the (more) senior members have worked in this type of environment for a long time, so they seem mostly desensitised to it by now. They'll agree with me when I raise concerns about these issues, but at the same time they recognise it'd be hard to change and/or they need to deliver something soon. I end up having to live with what we've got.
I guess I'm just starting t
... keep reading on reddit β‘
Bureaucracy has always been stupid. People at the top making inane rules that don't make sense when they're actually applied is a story as old as time.
The issue we have now is that world's relative stability over the past half century has meant institutions haven't been overthrown in a long time. Rule books only ever get longer and longer.
How much of your time is spend punching in passwords and filling out forms? You can no longer open a website without agreeing to the conditions for the cookies. You can't order a pizza without registering for a service. Every, and I mean EVERY business has a loyalty program. Security checkpoints have become more and more common in more and more places. We're using bio-metrics just to turn on our phones at this point.
I've read stories of teenagers living in their cars unable to get work because they don't have any ID paperwork or an address for them to send it to. People living in the streets not because they don't have the money to get an apartment but because they can't pass the credit check. People without access to banking are increasingly unable to use basic services that are becoming cashless.
You used to be able to work around it. The people running customer service used to be able to cut you a deal or make a work around if you had a serious issue. Fake a discount, use someone else's ID, here and there to make the system run smoothly.
These days when you talk to the humans who are in charge of answering the phones they have no power to do such things. The only power given to the bureaucrats at this point is whatever is in the script, whatever options are on the screen are the only options they have. Most of the time they have no idea why the software is creating your problem, wish that it wasn't, but they have no recourse to fix the issues. They aren't even in the same country as the main office. Banks, energy companies, telecom companies, nobody is at the wheel anymore. There's just "a system" and not even the people running it know how it works or why anything is set up that way.
If there's no recourse to remedy the issue with bureaucracy it will only continue to grow. At this point it's a leviathan that is incomprehensible to the people who feed it.
If you want to know how the AI overlords will take over it's not going to be because the software takes control of the drone bombers, it's going to be because it locks everyone out of their bank accounts.
It is time that Portuguese people stopped tolerating incompetence, laziness and/or corruption in their public servants.
Since I have arrived I have been astonished to witness behaviour by public servants that defies any understanding. From being referred to "a friend (of the public servant) who can smooth the path for your request" through to a total lack of understanding of the documents required for a process to being completed, I often leave their offices with no further progress, no understanding of what is next required and an anger that could roast a pheasant.
My latest experience was with a woman (who apparently insists that her staff refer to her as "Doutora"). I waited for 30 minutes in an otherwise customer-less room while the counter staff consulted with Doutora on whether she was prepared to see me. When I presented the doutora with the required apostillated copy of the certificate that was required, she did not seem to understand what she was looking at.
- Its not in Portuguese: I showed her the translation within the document
- Its not an original: Thats why it is apostillated copy
- The certificate needs to in Portuguese: So you want an original certificate from another country in Portuguese? Can you tell me whether Portugal would ever produce an original document in Polish or any other language? If not, why do you think another country would do this? That is the sole purpose of the apostillation.
- It is not right document: So what is wrong with it so that I can explain to the people in my country?
- The apostillation just shows that it is not fake, otherwise I cannot say.
This woman, and too many others seem to have a belief that they are special and since she can get away with this type of behaviour, she continues. If you try and make her realise how unhelpful she is being, then she will dig deep and find that she has a whole new reserve of being even more unhelpful.
No wonder Portuguese people are so unfailingly polite. They have been at the mercy of these leaches for generations.
Eugyppius: A Plague Chronicle:
>We are witnessing an unprecedented, comprehensive failure of policy, medicine and science. The world will never be the same.
>Hundreds of thousands of poorly informed dim people in the middle bureaucracy bought very hard into the propaganda they helped create, and they now believe that vaccines, not recovery, are the only solution to Corona; that SARS-2 is only weakly seasonal if at all and that infection waves are driven entirely by human behaviour; and that fomites are a significant transmission vector and masks will save you.
>Omicron, of course, is qualitatively different from all prior SARS-2 lineages, and establishment mouthpieces have been open about this so far. If they arenβt able to take this exit, they will have to wait for the ideological fervour of the Corona enthusiasts and the vaccinators to subside, and that could take a very long time.
Don't be discouraged by this post's introductory framing:
>Complex human institutions, which have eschewed rigid hierarchy and command discipline for a looser, consensus-based administration, are characteristic of western societies and their liberal democratic governments. Such institutions have a lot of idiosyncrasies, and among them is the inability to pursue any kind of complex strategy.
>I know that a lot of you think the vaccines are themselves the goal, and for some of the grifters and opportunists in Pharmaceutical Land thatβs surely the case. Nevertheless, imposing medications on people who donβt need them is pointless, it cultivates unnecessary opposition, and it is the sort of the thing that, in the longer term, might even entail serious political and legal liability.
https://preview.redd.it/fjrx5sh0yj081.jpg?width=967&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=73dba710f1161e5d793752faf13d5d0463a893b7
But of a hard question to articulate on here.
Do you recon over the past 70 years the more accountability via paperwork etc that has been introduced has ended up hamstringing frontline police work to some extent?
This isnβt to say βIt wasnβt worth itβ, only to recognise reality that while great strides have been made to make the police more transparent/accountable, post 80βs/90βs the amount of paperwork/duplication of information that has been enforced has created somewhat of a law of diminishing returns.
Are there any practises which youβd personally get rid of which in reality have no bearing on accountability but weβre introduced as such? Has the pendulum swung too far the other way in some regards?
https://aeon.co/ideas/what-did-hannah-arendt-really-mean-by-the-banality-of-evil
Reading this article it seems that in recent decades more and more dissenting voices of her view have come forward and that her initial analysis was flawed.
It also strikes me as peculiar how she mentions that Eichmann did not think of his actions as evil, as he could not view his actions from the viewpoint of his victims, and that this is proof that he was "normal". However, doesn't this lack of being able to emphasize with others show that he was a Sociopath, so very much not normal?
Really this is the most inefficient leh. I go other orgs they really donβt take long to process anything.
Months leh, just for posting ah. Seriously. When I ask when will I get it, they say weβll tell when you get it. Donβt ask.
Taking MC much better, my mind is at peace and I donβt suffer that much.
But take MC, posting delayed. Such a irony.
I find the general concept of bureaucracy quite interesting, and I'd like to learn more about it. Scott has written about his personal challenges with medical bureaucracy, but AFAIK nothing about it on a higher level. Are there any good articles/books that do a deeper dive with a focus on theory, preferably that don't require a background in economics?
it took me FIVE MONTHS to get my birth certificate despite paying extra for ββexpedited shippingββ. i read the name change procedure on my state website over and over to make sure im not forgetting anything. i get all the forms i need, i go to the court, and ONLY THEN do they tell me i have to go to the law library and the county clerk first. none of this was mentioned on the website.
after i get my court order then i have to scramble to get my new social security card, drivers license, and passport by myself because even though this country can see my butthole through my webcam if theyβd like they canβt bother to change their info on me when i ask them to. oh and did i mention this whole procedure will cost me like 400 bucks total??
greatest country in the world babeyyy!!!!!!! π€ͺπ€ͺπ€ͺ
Hello everyone
I've been struggling to understand Ε½iΕΎek's interpretation and apparent endorsement of the Hegelian monarch and what the implications are for contemporary politics. My understanding until now is as follows: the monarch is required to depoliticise the bureaucracy. People require a big Other to socially function. They need a figure of authority to assure them that the working of state machinery (bureaucracy, politicians etc.) is legitimate and to show them what to follow. In other words, it is a purely ritualistic role. Also, it is important that the monarch is in such a position not because of any of her/his skills or credentials, but purely because of the contingency of her/his birth as monarch. This is because she/he needs to be a pure Master, one whose legitimacy is grounded in nothing but the position of being a Master ("a king/queen needs to be stupid"). I know this is connected to the idea of the "contingency of necessity", but I don't really understand what this means nor why this is important (why is it important for the king/queen to be stupid). Does that mean that someone elected (e.g. a prime minister) cannot fulfil the role of the monarch because they were elected for their skills? Why would the people require a stupid big Other?
Considering the seeming necessity of the figure of the monarch for Ε½iΕΎek, is, therefore, anarchism in general completely incompatible with Ε½iΕΎekian/Hegelian/Lacanian thought? Do people really require someone like a monarch to function as a society? If so, is it possible to imagine an anarchist version of this (let's say that people participate and make political decisions at an assembly and then hold a lottery where one member will be selected to perform the purely ritualistic role of legitimising the community's decision)? However, isn't Ε½iΕΎek central point that "there is no big Other" and anarchist principle par excellence? If the realisation that there is no big Other (that all social authority is devoid of any natural basis) can help free us from reliance on a form of authority, would that entail a different social system without the need of figures like a monarch, even if purely ritualistic?
I arrived 4 days ago. I know I need to do the empadronamiento. Have an appointment for the 24th but they ask for the NIE that has been certified. To have the NIE they want me to have the empadronamiento!! I have an appointment at the police on Feb 4th! Does anyone know the order of how to get my residence here? I am an EU citizen. Thanks!!
