ganns@hound.UUCP (R.GANNS) (02/06/86)
Another point of bureaucracy is to shield individuals from personal
accountability for incompetence, malfeasance, and indolence.
When I used to work for Dept. of Agriculture, my personnel record
kept getting fouled up -- each time there was an update, a mistake
was made, and always to my detriment. Finally, I had the opportunity
to pay the personnel office a visit (it was several thousand miles
from my main work location) and confront the people who were
causing me the trouble.
When I enquired as to who had been responsible for several blunders,
I was told that it was not possible to trace any particular item
back to its handler. The system worked like this:
Personnel files with attached items for update were circulated
among the half-dozen people in the group responsible for
the updates. Each person in turn filled out those items
which struck his/her fancy at the moment, then passed it on
to the next person in the group. At the end of the process,
no one outside the group could tell who had done what on any
given record, and the group members had conveniently short
memories.
The individual telling me this managed to keep a straight face
while describing this to me, and thereby won my admiration for
a fleeting instant. A VERY fleeting instant.jay@imagen.UUCP (Jay Jaeckel) (02/07/86)
> > Another point of bureaucracy is to shield individuals from personal > accountability for incompetence, malfeasance, and indolence. > And yet, at the same time, bureaucracies also usually disclaim any INSTITUTIONAL responsibility or accountability for their screw-ups. Thus, when you get scrod by any of the millions of bureaucracies that run your life, it's usually hellatiously difficult to get ANYONE, whether an individual or the bureaucracy, to acknowledge or accept any blame, or even to try to fix the damage. So, if so often seems, once you get scrod, you STAY scrod. And the institutions have NO motiviation to clean up their acts either to prevent it from happening again. If the cons and pros (if any) of bureaucracies are to become an on-going discussion, is there some other more specific newsgroup this should be moved to? -- Jay Jaeckel ...{ucbvax,decwrl}!imagen!jay Disclaimer: All the usual . . .
dkatz@zaphod.UUCP (Dave Katz) (02/10/86)
In article <1639@hound.UUCP> ganns@hound.UUCP (R.GANNS) writes: > . > . > . > > Personnel files with attached items for update were circulated > among the half-dozen people in the group responsible for > the updates. Each person in turn filled out those items > which struck his/her fancy at the moment, then passed it on > to the next person in the group. At the end of the process, > no one outside the group could tell who had done what on any > given record, and the group members had conveniently short > memories. > > . > . > . This sounds incredibly like the practice with firing squads of issuing some live and some dummy rounds so that no-one could tell who the executioner REALLY was. ;-> D.K.
dkatz@zaphod.UUCP (Dave Katz) (02/15/86)
In article <245@imagen.UUCP> jay@imagen.UUCP (Jay Jaeckel) writes: > ... > > If the cons and pros (if any) of bureaucracies are to become an >on-going discussion, is there some other more specific newsgroup this >should be moved to? > By God, I think we've found a born bureaucrat. D.K.