Bureaucracy Rocks

I learned more at another staff meeting. We are now required to enter duly-witnessed releases of information into a specially-created section of the computerized database, in addition to having the client sign hardcopies and giving them to the Priestesses Of Paper Pushing.

What happens from there? Well, the Priestesses approach the Sacred Scanner in a reverent manner, and while murmuring the ritual obesiances, scan each release of information into another, different section of the database.

So, why do both? Why duplicate the work that way? YOU MAY WELL ASK. Turns out that once they are scanned in, there is NO WAY to retrieve the hardcopy releases. They have been consigned to a loathsome hell not even imagined. We will never see them again, other than...you know...going to the paper file and finding it in there. They keep all that stuff, of course, until ten years after the last person involved is dead and civilization has fallen. Which means there are really three copies.

The eminent mathematician was so right in Jurassic Park when he said that when we invented the computer we thought we were eliminating paper; instead we only eliminated thought. I would be hard pressed to come up with a better example.

The best part, for me, is that special release-of-information section of the database. The client never sees us use the computers and has no role in generating this kind of information release. I just pull up a screen, type in a name and address, and use my password to sign it, leaving the client's most confidential information to be released to my private army of burglars, for all anyone knows.