in bureaucratic hell
Jul. 15th, 2014 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI've just spent two and a half hours on the phone with Medicare representatives, trying to straighten out a problem with my late mother's claims. That's on top of the hour I spent yesterday on the same thing.
Am I ready to disavow my liberal faith in government and let the lean and mean private sector take over our business? Absolutely not, and here's why.
1) Most of these people were actually trying to be helpful, even if they didn't know anything, and went beyond the call of duty in trying to get me information. Especially the last one, who was in the wrong department, but who listened when I explained that hers was the only department I could reach, and who really went the extra mile by contacting the right department (unreachable by outside phone) and getting a definitive answer, and chatting agreeably as we waited.
2) These departments that I was communicating with were those of a private contractor, not the government in the strict sense. And I reached them because I was given the number by a volunteer assistance program whose representatives also took a little extra effort to help.
3) All around, it was far less frustrating than the oceans of time I spent waiting on hold and being shuttled back and forth to the same numbers that had previously been unable to help me, and being assured that something was done when it was not done, and being told I should have asked the previous person to do something they'd told me they could not do, that I had trying to set up AT&T internet service a few years ago. In this case today, when I reported that someone else could not help me, I was listened to, and something else was tried.
Winston Churchill once said (quoting an old proverb, or so he claimed) that democracy was the worst form of government except for all the others. So I can say that government bureaucracies are the worst bureaucracies in the world, except for all the corporate ones.
Am I ready to disavow my liberal faith in government and let the lean and mean private sector take over our business? Absolutely not, and here's why.
1) Most of these people were actually trying to be helpful, even if they didn't know anything, and went beyond the call of duty in trying to get me information. Especially the last one, who was in the wrong department, but who listened when I explained that hers was the only department I could reach, and who really went the extra mile by contacting the right department (unreachable by outside phone) and getting a definitive answer, and chatting agreeably as we waited.
2) These departments that I was communicating with were those of a private contractor, not the government in the strict sense. And I reached them because I was given the number by a volunteer assistance program whose representatives also took a little extra effort to help.
3) All around, it was far less frustrating than the oceans of time I spent waiting on hold and being shuttled back and forth to the same numbers that had previously been unable to help me, and being assured that something was done when it was not done, and being told I should have asked the previous person to do something they'd told me they could not do, that I had trying to set up AT&T internet service a few years ago. In this case today, when I reported that someone else could not help me, I was listened to, and something else was tried.
Winston Churchill once said (quoting an old proverb, or so he claimed) that democracy was the worst form of government except for all the others. So I can say that government bureaucracies are the worst bureaucracies in the world, except for all the corporate ones.
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no subject
Date: 2014-07-15 07:59 pm (UTC)Naturally it doesn't always work, but it's certainly more reliable than the satisfaction one would get by thinking that if you don't like AT&T, you can just switch to Comcast. Now that's self-evidently stupid.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-15 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-15 08:17 pm (UTC)Did you read my last paragraph? Did you read my post at all? Did you think I enjoyed 3.5 hours dealing with bureaucracy? All I said was ... it could be worse, and with corporations it probably would be.
You say you trust the laws ... it's the government which makes and enforces those laws. As we are now sometimes seeing, the value of the laws lies in the trust the government deserves to abide by them, because if it chooses not to, it's trouble.