Just Do Your Frickin Job

[forsyth]

It's amazing how much really really really easy stuff gets neglected just because people don't do it. Like people who throw paper towels on the floor when the trash can is less than three steps away. Or people who work retail and can't bother to do the most basic freaking parts of their jobs. I work retail. I know it sucks. It really does. Most of retail work is utterly and completely pointless in the grand scheme of things, you're trying to sell people stuff they don't need, to make money for the company, and the money doesn't go to you hardly at all.

Man, put that way, I wonder why I even bother to do any work. Retail is thankless and mind-numbing and repetitive and lots of other things, but it's about a hundred times better than the kind of work most of humanity had to do to get by for most of history. So it irritates me when somebody doesn't bother to do something that takes all of like two minutes and is really easy. Especially when I have to do that thing, on top of all the other things I'm already doing.

Now to seemingly switch tangents.

One of the most marvelous creations of the Enlightenment is bureaucracy. The vast and rules-bound strata that, run properly, ensure that everybody has to fill out the same annoying forms to get things done. Lord or pauper, you still need to fill out these forms. The entire idea of a professional, neutral, staff of administrators and others is STAGGERING when you compare it to the way everything had been run before, which was based on nepotism and political infighting. Not that either of those are absent in a professional bureaucracy, but they're greatly reduced when run well.

Many of the greatest problems of bureaucracy come from the fact it's run by people, the same kind of people who are too lazy to put their paper towels in the trash or to clean up the section they're assigned to in the store. But in general, when people are hired to do a job, they do it, at least to some extent. Otherwise they get fired.

So when I get annoyed by people who don't manage to do the very easy tasks of their jobs that nothing much really depends on, imagine what I think when I see a headline like this: Most Katrina Aid From Overseas Went Unclaimed.

This isn't a matter of simple incompetence. This is, at best, STAGGERING incompetence. This wasn't just money they turned down. They turned down offers of search and rescue teams. Medical care, housing, all sorts of things. Yeah, there's lots of offers of aid that couldn't really help, like Greece's offer of cruise ships for hospitals that wouldn't get there for months. And y'know, this is the US, we're the richest damn country in the world, we should have had the resources to do this all. And we did. But due to the same staggering incompetence (being generous), a major US city was effectively destroyed and people were stranded without rescue or supplies for days.

But there's a very simple reason why this happened. Most of the people who were chosen to be in charge of emergency response, along with man of the other bureaucracies and other professional civil service agencies of the government, weren't picked for their competence. They were picked for personal loyalty, or for favors. And they weren't just given bullshit posts they couldn't screw up, like ambassador to San Marino. They were put in positions where people's lives were at stake. And guess what. They fucked it up.

The people in charge of our government don't believe in the idea of neutral and professional civil servants. That's why they try to turn "bureaucracy" into a dirty word. That's why they don't care if the people they appoint are even slightly competent for the post they're given. They are, at heart, aristocrats, as petty and venal as any seventeenth century lord. They don't want professionals giving unbiased opinions or evaluations, because those might disagree with what they want. And because it's something beyond their control. So they try to destroy it, first by saying it's useless, and then by trying to prove it's useless once they get power, by not even pretending to care how well things are done.

"Government can't do anything right! Elect us, and we'll prove it!"

Comments

[megpie71.livejournal.com]

I'm just trying to remember the P J O'Rourke quote... I think it runs something like "Democrats say government will make you richer, taller, stronger, faster and get the crabgrass out of your lawn. The Republicans say that government doesn't work; then they get elected and prove it."

That said, I've been a public servant in the Australian system. We have a similar bunch in here, trying to turn the Australian Public Service into an obedient lapdog, but so far their efforts have been met with only minor success. Yes, the people at the top are largely political animals (they have to be, working with politicians). But the middle and lower ranks are generally people who have a job and they do it, and they get angry with the notion that their job descriptions should change every three years or so. It's almost ironic that one of the most heavily unionised bodies in the country is actually the Australian Public Service. What's annoying is that it's become necessary.

Maintaining a certain amount of transparency, honesty, fairness and impartiality can be difficult at times. At times, you'll be handed policies you really *don't* want to implement, but you have to do a good job of it, and make a decent fist of the notion. To do otherwise would be unprofessional. It can be very galling when you're the one on the ground, trying to do your job the best you see fit, and the policies which come in from higher up say that you haven't the authority to make critical decisions (this is endemic in most bureaucracy - decisions tend to be passed up the levels to a ridiculous height, simply to avoid giving people too much responsibility). It can be frustrating having to deal with procedures which appear to have been designed to take up as much time as possible (particularly when you *know* you can't spare the time to do things by the book).

Part of this is because bureaucracy is largely seen by politicians as a handy place to shuffle off the blame to. Bureaucrats, not unnaturally, respond to this by creating a very straightforward paper trail which shows precisely where the decision is taken (usually at a fairly high level of the management process) and what action needs to result from that decision (as decided by policy and procedure). Then there's a lot of paperwork involved in ensuring that the whole business is documented, so that if in future years, someone questions the decision, the bureaucrats can effectively "show their working" (as per math problems in school).

The Westminster doctrine of "ministerial responsibility" was a neat check and balance to the whole business, as well. "Ministerial responsibility" basically decreed that the minister who was put into a particular portfolio was responsible for the actions of their department. This meant that the minister in question had good reason to scrutinise their department, and to make sure that procedures were being followed. If major evidence of wrongdoing came up during a particular minister's period in charge, the minister in question was supposed to resign the ministry. This doctrine has unfortunately slipped into abeyance over the years, as politicians become more and more reluctant to take responsibility for the actions of the bureaucracy, and the bureaucrats become less and less willing to take risks for the politicians.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

Oh, believe me, I know about having to do things you don't want to. All day, every day, I have to sell people things I KNOW are complete trash, utterly false, or just plain bad.

And I suppose there's something ironic about me defending bureaucracy, but these are strange times.