The Madding Horde
By Mitch Berg
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
“Doc. No. XXX is stated as being expired, but was not listed on the spread sheet. Please make sure that this is inserted and in the future when you discover a new one please add it to the list. Thanks much.”
Another example of a clerical mind-set employee who knows the procedures, but not the reason for the procedures.
I started the spreadsheet as a way for me to track expired restrictive covenants that kept showing up in conveyances. Most of those documents were recorded by developers in the 1950’s, before suburbs had zoning ordinances, so they afflicted whole subdivisions with crap like “can’t build closer than X feet from the property line” or “building must be at least X square feet” and of course, the ever popular “cannot sell to colored people.” They expired under the 40-year law but must be manually removed each time I see one.
Unless the restrictive covenants reserved easements for utilities or drainage, in which case they can’t be manually removed but instead must be corrected to say “reserves easement.”
I created the spread sheet so I wouldn’t have to read the restrictive covenant document every time; instead, I’d glance at the spread sheet to see which ones had to be carried forward with corrections and which could be omitted.
The document in question is a deed that affected one single platted lot. It did not reserve easements. So I ordered it removed. Now that it’s been removed, it’ll never be a problem in the future. Do we need to list that deed on the spreadsheet? No, of course not. But she has to make a point of sending an email to the whole office reminding us to do it, just to be certain we know that she’s paying attention to every single thing we do, searching for mistakes to correct them, to prove how valuable she is. It’s “quality control,” you see. To enhance “customer service.”
Except it’s not a mistake, I deliberately chose not to clutter up the spread sheet with useless data. The employee knows the procedure but not the reason for the procedure, and therefore confuses the means with the end. Of course, saying so would be mansplaining, a hurtful and sexist thing to do, and elitist because I have a degree as well as ageist since she’s been here 30 years and it’s disrespectful not to respect her opinion, even if wrong.
You wonder why government isn’t fast on its feet – it’s because of all the ankle-biters slowing us down.
Joe Doakes
Government bureaucracy – where people are penalized for being too good at their jobs.
May 19th, 2015 at 6:50 am
One of the great benefits of economic downturns is that they allow private businesses to weed out people with a reduced ROI profile (GE’s bottom 10% rule). Unfortunately the public sector seems to actively recruit these Low Output Drones immediately installing them in a union like AFSCME or MAPE where you need extraordinary measures to extricate them. The unions love these people because they are a continual festering hotbed of grievance and entitlement in addition to being the equivalent of the Soviet “Political Officer” who sees, notes, and reports all.
My sympathies Joe.
May 19th, 2015 at 8:31 am
Bureaucracy exists to resist even the smallest change, and to mindlessly expand its butt-covering endlessly, no matter the cost in money or efficiency. Couple that with Civil Service rules and you have a recipe for strangling disasters.