Sunday
May292011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Dealing with the civil service
May 29, 2011 Bureaucrats Lubos had posted up this clip from a new Spanish movie about dealing with civil servants. Looks like fun.
May 29, 2011 Bureaucrats
Reader Comments (13)
Public servants, being a servant to the public is not a meaning of their function they seem to understand, now where's my stapler ;)
¡Que mujer!
Ah, the old saying; Smash the system! Fill in the forms properly.
DPdlS Indeed!
I wonder if she's available for planning applications :)
Fantastic send up which sadly reflects our public serves mentality too, or at least an awful lot of them in my experience. Whenever I have cause to ring any of the public sector, I always pin them down to as exactly what they are going to do and ask how they are being measured - usually by asking what target they are working too. Without fail this has always hurried them along knowing they can't easily fob you off.
It's amazing how many people will accept "as soon as possible" as a legitimate answer to the question "when can I expect an answer.
Asoon as possible (to my mind) is a statement without meaning.
My worst experience of having to deal with the public sector was a couple of years ago when we heard they were going to close the Loch Tay south-side road for roadworks, and needed to find out exactly where and for how long. So I called the local council:
Me: can you put me through to the roads department please?
Council employee (CE): No, maybe I can help?
Me: Ok, maybe, I need to know where exactly and for how long the road along the southside of Loch Tay will be closed due to the planned roadworks...
CE: Which road?
Me: the south-side Loch Tay road. It is a C road but I don't know the number.
CE: Whereabouts is Loch Tay?
Me: about 10 miles west of Aberfeldy and about 25 miles north-east of Perth. It is a large loch, 14 miles long and a mile wide, with a village called Killin at the west end and and village called Kenmore at the east end. There is a road along the north-side, the A827, and a road along the south-side, and it is the latter I am asking about.
CE - whereabouts?
Me: Do you work for Perth and Kinross Council, and if so do not think you should have some basic geographic knowledge of the local authority area? If not, do you have access to a map and do you know you how to use it?
CE: I'll put you through to the roads department...
The roads guy was very helpful.
Good video. I have lived through many such experiences in several countries.
However, it does not reflect what happens now in Spain. One of my sons recently did the very same thing in Madrid (registering as a self-employed professional for tax purposes), and it took him 5 minutes without any fuss. It's mostly automatic.
Sure, the video makes it look easy.
¡He caído en amor!
You have to understand bureaucracy.
The first imperative of bureaucracy is to survive. Therefore, if anything comes to your desk, kill it. If you cannot kill it, sit on it for three months before you pass it up to another level of idiocy. That way, they cannot do without you.
The second imperative is to realise that POWER does not come from being able to say "Yes". POWER comes from being able to say "NO". If you do not exercise your right to say "NO", you are finished as a bureaucrat.
A pox on them all!
A true conversation.
Roads and traffic department.
"I would like to report malfunctioning traffic lights"
"Why?"
"Because I have been queuing up to reach these traffic lights for the last 40 minutes and when I reached the lights the on coming traffic and both side roads were completely free of traffic but there was a 5 mile queue behind me"
"Well we got three out of four right, that's 75% accuracy"
No-one ever accused Kafka of being a fool. Never seen anything suggesting he exaggerated either.