Aaaarrrrguh!
It’s Wednesday? Already?
***????SPECIAL REPORT????***
If this report were any more special you could buy it at McD’s.
And I’m not clowning around!
mcdonalds.wikia.com
Any government.
…and I need this filing done in an hour!
My cat and every government in the world have one thing in common: The same mantra
After a month back on my job, it felt like this:
Just when I thought that paperwork and I had come to an understanding…
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…I was presented with the horrible truth:
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The people at the non-profit organization are fantastic!
It started out simple enough. Once upon a time there were groups of parents all over the USA who wanted to give their forgotten children something to do during the day. They relied on volunteers, bake sales and donations to run their local non-profit organizations.
Then the state of Florida said, “We will give you money.”
It wasn’t much, and often didn’t come in at a reliable time. But a group of advocates worked very, very hard to get more money and have it doled out each month, not whenever a social worker got around to doing it.
So then the state of Florida said, “We will partner with the federal government and both of us will give you money.”
People from other states heard about Florida’s windfall. They didn’t try to get this program in their state. Noooo. They flocked into Florida like a cloud of vultures to benefit from the money that was supposed to be used for Floridians.
What was meant to help 5000 people IED’d into an explosion of need that threatened to kill the program and everyone associated with it.
Instead of the state saying, “You have to live here 10 years before you’re eligible for this program,” they said…
“Let there be forms,”
And there were forms.
Then they said, “Let there be rules and regulations.”
And there were enough rules and regulations to kill off the dinosaurs.
And behold, the plan to plan to do the plan was created.
I was hired to write over 200 of these a year, get them completed before the deadlines, and send them out in quadruplicate.
Oh, but it gets bitter better.
- LEVEL 1: The government generates a program and puts paperwork into rule. It means they make laws instead of congress, which is unconstitutional.
- LEVEL 2: The government subcontracts with one giant agency to monitor the entire program. The state monitors the monitors.
- LEVEL 3: For the next level under that, the government hires other subcontractors to oversee ALL the subcontractors who provide direct care services to the people who are receiving services.
- LEVEL toilet bowl (4): Level 3 sends Level 4 the paperwork out of which 100+ different types of forms are generated.
- Why 100+ different forms? Because the F@#&*%$ government can’t get their act together and make the 10+ agencies — whose laws we have to follow– CONSOLIDATE THEIR PAPERWORK!
Level 1, the state & feds
Level 2, monitors
Level 3 sub monitors
<—I am here….level 4
I wish it were as simplistic, but this system puts the pyramid scheme to shame.
In the scheme of things it’s a lot more like this.
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I’m somewhere near the vanishing point…I think.
Subcontractors at level 3 who haven’t done their job right will walk into my office at times, and I’m supposed to do this:
They have learned to avoid me because my face will become indelibly paired with this:
I know I shouldn’t be catty, but…some days I just can’t help being sar-cat-stick.
Did I mention how hard it is to get 100 overworked, underpaid, and rarely appreciated people to get paperwork into the office at the right time…and how greatly it resembles trying to herd 100 terrified cats?
It helps to be a professional nag armed with a healthy dose of OCD.
The non-profit recently had an audit. I just found out that my insistence on doing paperwork that my former boss said was unnecessary saved 2-months of payback.
I’ll be smiling about that for days.
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If you ever experience temporary insanity and think you can trust ANY government, always remember this truth:
nudge. wink. report. 
I love that Friedman quote – soooooo true. The government equating filling out of forms with progress is at the very heart of government. Present company excluded, of course.
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LOL! If you want to be excluded, you can stand on the other side of that line along with me. 🙂
I wish the people who came up with the forms would try to the job that direct care staff fulfill every day. Maybe if they had to do the job until they found a way to make the forms doable.
But alas, I’m just dreaming. 🙂
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Exactly. I’m in private sector, but one of my sisters is a social worker with the state, and the bureaucracy associated with her job is mind-numbing, and part of the reason they don’t have nearly enough time to oversee their gigantic case loads properly. 😦
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That is true. In some social services in Florida, that job is now contracted out. The caseloads are smaller, but the responsibilities are higher and so is the paperwork. There is a lot of talk about consolidating forms and doing them electronically, but that “talk” has been happening for 20 years.
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I worked for the government, in communications, for many years. I eventually learned that 20 per cent of the employees did 80 per cent of the work. Those people I put on speed-dial immediately and that decreased my stress level 100 per cent. I also got them something extra nice for Christmas. The others got squat. *grin*
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That’s about right.
Government hires people at the top who don’t do the job of the people they are “managing” at the bottom, and expecting results. It’s like putting the tip of the pyramid on the ground instead of at the base and wondering why it keeps toppling over. 🙂
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