If supermarkets worked like bureaucracies...
Instead of going to the supermarket, choosing your food and beverages from the shelves, going to the
checkout, then home to eat and drink, you would:
1) Fill out a long form on-line or on paper, packed with nosy/silly questions that have
nothing to do with the true matter in hand, written by people whose English falls far short of
first-rate, and/or whose skill at designing and programming on-line forms has yet to be recognised
as skill, on a computer system that took three years to build at a cost of $90 million, which
works out at $2 million a year per programmer.
2) Submit the form.
3) Wait.
4) Wait.
5) Wait.
6) Have the application rejected, because question number 65 was not answered according to rule
E5.2.1 (which asks the impossible, but the bureaucrats love it because it can be used to delay
things
for ever, and to their joy messes up countless lives).
7) Re-submit the form, with, you hope, Rule E5.2.1 satisfied with a letter from an MP or Councillor
or JP (which, in your starving desperation, you may have forged).
8) Wait.
9) Wait.
10) Wait.
11) Have the application rejected, because question 67, which you answered the same way as you did
the first time, is now said not to be compliant with something only vaguely stated, but there is a
question 'around' it. Never on it, just nebulously 'around' it--somewhere circling out near Alpha
Centauri, you assume.
12) Loop round (7) to (10) several more times, and see other nebulous questions imported from
'around' Alpha Centauri and flung at you--as you grow ever thinner.
13) Call the Call Centre in an attempt to clarify 'around' and bring it home to 'on'. Wait for an
interminable length of time while your ear overheats and you are forced to occupy yourself listening
to countless repeats of 'This call is important to us, please wait', interspersed with music chosen
by tone-deaf persons devoid of taste.
14) The Call Centre at last answers, only to put you through to 'Someone Who Can Help You', but has
you find been replaced
by voicemail--but just as you go to leave a message you are cut off.
15) Carry on waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting...
16) Your friends and relatives call the undertaker, because you have starved to death.
Instead of going to the supermarket, choosing your food and beverages from the shelves, going to the
checkout, then home to eat and drink, you would:
1) Fill out a long form on-line or on paper, packed with nosy/silly questions that have
nothing to do with the true matter in hand, written by people whose English falls far short of
first-rate, and/or whose skill at designing and programming on-line forms has yet to be recognised
as skill, on a computer system that took three years to build at a cost of $90 million, which
works out at $2 million a year per programmer.
2) Submit the form.
3) Wait.
4) Wait.
5) Wait.
6) Have the application rejected, because question number 65 was not answered according to rule
E5.2.1 (which asks the impossible, but the bureaucrats love it because it can be used to delay
things
for ever, and to their joy messes up countless lives).
7) Re-submit the form, with, you hope, Rule E5.2.1 satisfied with a letter from an MP or Councillor
or JP (which, in your starving desperation, you may have forged).
8) Wait.
9) Wait.
10) Wait.
11) Have the application rejected, because question 67, which you answered the same way as you did
the first time, is now said not to be compliant with something only vaguely stated, but there is a
question 'around' it. Never on it, just nebulously 'around' it--somewhere circling out near Alpha
Centauri, you assume.
12) Loop round (7) to (10) several more times, and see other nebulous questions imported from
'around' Alpha Centauri and flung at you--as you grow ever thinner.
13) Call the Call Centre in an attempt to clarify 'around' and bring it home to 'on'. Wait for an
interminable length of time while your ear overheats and you are forced to occupy yourself listening
to countless repeats of 'This call is important to us, please wait', interspersed with music chosen
by tone-deaf persons devoid of taste.
14) The Call Centre at last answers, only to put you through to 'Someone Who Can Help You', but has
you find been replaced
by voicemail--but just as you go to leave a message you are cut off.
15) Carry on waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting...
16) Your friends and relatives call the undertaker, because you have starved to death.