Discussion

The 'Paperwork Flood': How I Drowned a Bureaucrat before dinner.

wittyusername: I don't believe this is actually real, but it was great to read nonetheless.

TyrunDemeg101: Chefs Kiss, thank you for that bit of schadenfreude to go with my morning coffee.

cl0ckt0wer: The fax machine we had in the office would convert the incoming faxes to email for us. Maybe that's a security violation for them but I find it difficult to believe they don't have some sort of all digital receipt system

neoCrimeLabs: Yeah, there are also business that provide this as a service.

ai-inquisitor: This entire post is clearly AI generated. My internal AI detector didn't kick in until the sixth paragraph. More slop for the feed.

hyperhello: I’m impressed the author was able to learn and handle all the UI while blind. The corner of “just works” computing they live in could be beyond what I’ve ever experienced.

r_lee: it's fiction (seemingly everything is on the site?). maybe the title should reflect that

moss_dog: It's tagged nonfiction.

r_lee: it's fictional, it says that in the bottom

nanoxide: It's also tagged "nonfiction" though

mzajc: It's tagged "nonfiction" just below the title.

sidewndr46: For a second I thought this was one of my friends. He had his eyes removed due to a medical reason (already blind). He recently had to go to a vision doctor and take a vision test. To confirm to his insurance that he was indeed, blind.

dentemple: This is proof that you don't need vision to create a thing of beauty.

actionfromafar: Regulatory capture.

solfox: Great read. While I admire the spite, I question the wisdom of pissing off a government employee with the power to deny your benefits.

tyingq: Sounds like it's not real but...It reads like an indictment of the government employee personally, rather than the rules and constraints that employee is forced to use.Probably fair to comment on the interaction, whether the person was rude, and so on. But blaming them for not accepting email is kind of silly. They are not empowered to do that kind of thing.

hrimfaxi: The person is an agent of the system. That they bear the brunt of the reaction is the system working as intended.

tyingq: I guess. Faxing it to someone involved in why the rules are that way would be more satisfying to me.

solfox: It actually doesn't say that.

hyperhello: Apparently we have a case of discerning truth by whether we’re downvoting someone saying it’s fiction.

pluc: Whenever I read stories like this about how hard it is for US people to keep getting the little they've been getting I think of people on the other side. It takes an evil compliance to be the Karen in this article. Zero empathy, zero compassion, you're a row in a spreadsheet. If they'd start caring a little and standing up to what is very obviously wrong, the US would be a much different place. Apply that same logic to "the deep state", military men, etc. It's pretty crazy how much of their situation is their own making, yet they'll happily blame the other side.

miek: While I refuse to work for the govt (my soul would rot), I have family and close friends that do, and the this story (w possibly exaggerated dialogue) is entirely believable.

miki123211: I, as a user with 10k+ karma on HN, can testify that the author has all the hallmarks of a real blind person (active in blind communities and so on). I don't have any evidence suggesting that the author ever engaged in deceptive behavior.In other words, my P(real) > 0.99.

john_strinlai: the bottom actually says:"He writes fiction where Disabled heroes get their happy endings _and_ nonfiction where life can, sometimes, be educational."the sentence continues after the "and".it is also tagged "non-fiction" at the top, as other people have noted.

tomq: Yeah GPTZero says 100% AI generated

speedgoose: I don’t like the AI writing style anymore. It’s very readable and it has great words, but it’s lacking imperfections. Like a raytraced 3D render of mathematically perfect shapes.

firesteelrain: Giving them a pass since he or she is blind. The text is also very large intentionally

hyperhello: It’s a neural network. You can see the macro pretending to be real aspects because our brain is neural too. Interesting, but not thinking.

mystraline: There's a LOT of similar content like this as fast-reading AI generated voice, over on YouTube shorts. The few I listened to were these kinds of GOTCHA HAHA moral superiority games.And then near the end of like the 3rd one was test that wasn't cut from the TTS engine... "Claude can make mistakes"

NGRhodes: This exact dynamic exists in the UK too.Lifelong and degenerative conditions.They have full access to bank accounts, revoked driving license, direct line to my consultants.Every form filled, every document provided.They still call to ask if my genes have fixed themselves.Not sure what verbal confirmation they're expecting - "no, I made it all up"?

recursivedoubts: Karen woke up this morning in her run down, rented flat. She briefly looks at the collections letter that showed up yesterday due to an unaffordable repair she had to pay for on her credit card. Another letter from her ex-partner's lawyer. As she rushes out the door (she spilled coffee on her one nice sweater, her favorite) her mom flashes through her mind... "What about mum?". She arrives at the office. It is an oppressive, sterile government office. She tries to ignore the overwhelming sense of helplessness and sits down to begin working. Her first call is a person screaming at her about their benefits. She has no power, absolutely no power, to help them due to the rules imposed on her by her superiors, but has to take the abuse regardless and explain the process she has no control over to them. The next call is a case she actually is familiar with: a person claiming to be disabled to collect dole. They aren't, but she has been told that this is a special case and she must work with them. She complies. She sits back in her chair and the phone rings again. An upset person on the other end..."I have the documents in PDF format"

fainpul: Everybody is formed by their experiences and genes and they act accordingly. There is no free will. If you realize that, you realize that you can never blame anyone for anything, because they had no choice to act differently. As a customer it's still hard to take, when someone who is clearly formed by years of professional deformation treats you like shit.

recursivedoubts: i don't believe that to be the case at allbut, of course, i don't have any choice in the matter, so what's the point of talking about it?but, of course, we don't have any choice in that matter either, do we?

fainpul: [delayed]

newer_vienna: I cannot get over the malice seeping through this author's writing. Happiness does not come from making others miserable.

Papazsazsa: This site is so nice.

ramon156: This. There's something about most cultures that I am slowly am realizing; we always know how to complain and shift the responsibility. And no, you're not immune to this. You're not immune to anything, really.Medical departments aren't about helping you out anymore. When you work in a hospital, you do what your rule book says. If someone doesn't have their paperwork available, you cannot help them. That's your boss's fault, not yours. This makes it easy for you to not feel guilty, since your job is to follow da rulez.How did we get here? Why can you not just give them their pills and charge them the real amount. Why do we need this bureaucratic hell and pretend we're here to help people. We're not. We're here to squeeze you until we cannot legally ask for more.

spicymaki: Aside from the AI writing the blog itself seems to have a false timeline. It says there are posts from April 2017, but the domain has only been up for a year. There is all of this promotion about books, podcasts, volunteering to support the author.What is this about?

looperhacks: I know it's fiction - but in reality, Karen is likely just as annoyed by this as the author. The spam should go to the person in charge, not the person who is forced to deal with this every day

stavros: It is more important that actually disabled people can easily collect assistance than that we catch fraudsters, though I suspect the US, as a culture, has a different opinion.

fainpul: This is not a US thing, this is a bureaucracy thing. You can enjoy that worldwide (at least in every "civilized" country).

cucumber3732842: >It reads like an indictment of the government employee personality in general, and the rules and constraints that employee is forced to use.Fixed that for you. That's how it should read.Not only is the system questionable in a "the bricks may be individual defensible but the road goes right to hell" way but the kind of people such a system first creates (nobody signs up to be a cop just to strangle black guys, nobody signs up to work in the disability office to give legit cases the runaround, these people became this way) and then retains are not necessarily great.And before anyone screeches at me, yes there's plenty of areas of private industry that are just as bad.

wholinator2: I agree wholeheartedly! This is exactly what i was thinking the entire time. Like, does this guy think this single woman is responsible for the kafka-esque trap they're both in? Will the 0.5% uptick in toner cost for the year cause the administration to rethink their requirements? He's just taken the immense weight and pain he holds for this process, undeservedly, and placed it upon another undeserving person, then laughed at her anguish.Yes, life is hard, but surely we can bear our troubles in a way that don't make others harder to bear. Or at least aim your troubles at someone who has any power at all to change things! Find a better way to fight the system, that isn't just stabbing other people trapped in the box with you

kayodelycaon: [delayed]

mock-possum: Whew, is it? The text size is gigantic, on mobile I’m seeing about 3 words per line, really not a fan of this typography.

justonceokay: If you think there’s no free will then you won’t argue with me when I say I think there is.

pavel_lishin: But they will argue with you, for it was predestined.

harvey9: I'm grateful for that. I never liked the hn default size even when my eyes were younger.

tyingq: It may read that way to you. It does not to me.

calcifer: > It says there are posts from April 2017, but the domain has only been up for a year.I don't know the author, but presumably the blog predates the domain.

renewiltord: The lesson is obviously to have an ablative layer of suffering people strapped to the front of your organization. No one can fight you without hurting them so you are invincible.It’s commonly practiced and we can see why.

cucumber3732842: "cut those cops strangling that guy over bootleg smokes some slack, they have a tough job"These sorts of don't hate the cogs hate the machine takes are worthless because they create an instant exploit where the machine can be as bad as it wants as long as it hides behind the cogs.

lotsofpulp: > Why can you not just give them their pills and charge them the real amount.You can, you would just end up without income at best, or charged with a crime and imprisoned at worst.Also, all these complexities in healthcare exist due to 90% not being able to afford it, so the complexities are to paper over politically unpopular subsidies from various groups of people to other groups of people, in varying amounts. The other part of it is the nebulous costs of liability, that potentially reach into the millions for each interaction.

spicyusername: never blame anyone for anything That's actually not quite true.Assigning blame, via agency or otherwise, and the associated social or legal consequences are additional signals in the environment that influence and change behavior.If the actions of an individual were involved in propagating some chain of events, then it's perfectly valid to respond to their involvement, via social stigma, punishment, etc, regardless of whether or not there is "agency". The knowledge and anticipation of a similar response changes future actor's behavior, with or without free will.This discussion itself is exactly an example of this in practice. If there's no such thing as agency, then us talking about what someone should or shouldn't do, given whether there is free will, have any influence on anything, except that it does because interacting with these ideas themselves change behavior, with or without free will.This is what people mean when they say we should just ignore the question of free will entirely, because it doesn't really factor into how we should design the social contract.

forshaper: I don't need blame to hunt an animal for food or slam someone who's biting me.I don't need blame to swat a mosquito that's trying to live, to remove a cobra from my living room, or to quibble about fine print with someone in such an annoying way that I eventually get what I want.

voidUpdate: > "She said it with a challenge in her tone. She knew who she was talking to. She was talking to a blind man living below the poverty line. She assumed that "fax it" was an impossible hurdle. She assumed I would have to find a ride to a library, pay twenty cents a page, and struggle with a physical machine I couldn't read. She was counting on the friction of the physical world to make me give up."

iso1631: This experiment feels relatedhttps://theinquisitivejournal.com/2023/04/07/the-power-of-pe...Presumably the blog writer has never worked in a corporate hierarchy, let alone at the lowest of the low of being in a call centre. They sound like a horrible person whose interactions with the outside world being driven from being terminally online (the choice of Karen was telling)> He writes fiction where Disabled heroes get their happy endingsPerhaps "Karen" was disabled, having lost both her legs from a drunk driver as she selflessly threw herself into harms way to rescue some innocent kids. I hope she gets a happy ending.

simgt: You can usually tell these people apart though, they sound empathetic. The one in the story doesn't.Most of these bureaucrats have more power than what they want to let us think, but that means taking the risk of being told off for having been kind.

WindyMiller: [How confident are you that this writer uses AI?](https://sightlessscribbles.com/posts/the-colonization-of-con...)

shimman: People forget that AI is trained on mediocre writing too, not everything a person writes is fire. Most of it is a mediocre, too long, and hard to understand; just like the outputs you get from LLMs.

rdtsc: > Robert Kingett is a Blind, and gay, obscure writer. He writes fiction where Disabled heroes get their happy endingsNow I wonder if this is fiction, even if the person is real and they are blind.

john_strinlai: for some reason, you forgot to copy/paste the rest of the sentence, which continues with:"and nonfiction where life can, sometimes, be educational."

john_strinlai: >then laughed at her anguish.anguish? as in, "excruciating pain" or "agonizing torment"?i dont understand where the "anguish" comes from. he didnt yell at her, berate her, hit her, cause her to be fired, submit a malicious complaint, or anything of the sort. he sent her a long fax. oh no!if i was in her position, i would shrug and hand my boss the 500 pieces of paper.if you are just a cog in the machine, it is not mentally healthy to take on the responsibility of more than a cog. caring is the responsibility of non-cogs.edit: today i learned that sending a long fax is apparently a method of torture, causing mental anguish to the receiver. my bad. profuse apologies to anyone i have sent a longer fax to, i had no idea the mental damage i was causing. i can only hope that god will forgive my sins.

mothballed: This is exactly how it's handled from my limited dealings with the machine. Literally no one gives a shit if you make their job 'harder.' They have an endless treadmill of things to do. Whether it's your 500 page fax or 500 people with a 1 page fax is of no consequence to them. They will work at the same pace either way. In fact their boss might like it because they can try to use it to argue for more headcount which is one of the ways to gain more prestige/power for the managers.I know the things HN hates most are analogies and anecdotes, but here's a chance to torture myself by offering one. I sat down on day at the BMV, to register a kayak. Literally everyone is my state except the wildlife enforcement officers think the whole idea is absolutely absurdly retarded. This was in a jam packed BMV with a long line. No one but one elderly lady even knew how to do it, because most people don't submit themselves to such a stupid idea as registering their kayak, even though it was required. A lady sat down with me, PECKED all the information in over a period of 15 minutes. Then showed me the form. It had the wrong hull number on it, so I told her, and she had to redo it all over again pecking it in for another 15 minutes.After this she still got the hull number wrong. Another 15 minutes later, and she got the hull number yet again. Finally She did it again and still got the hull number wrong yet again and I just gave up and accepted the registration she gave me even though it was completely worthless to me. Not a single person at the BMV gave a single shit that this took this long nor the fact it would hold everyone up, everyone has an endless list of shit to do and there will be more waiting for them tomorrow. If it causes the machine to slow down they could not give one single fuck. They are not the least bit bothered.

TeMPOraL: > Literally no one gives a shit if you make their job 'harder.' They have an endless treadmill of things to do. Whether it's your 500 page fax or 500 people with a 1 page fax is of no consequence to them. They will work at the same pace either way.As they should. They're in this for the long run. It's a marathon, not a sprint.Which means all the author did was to fuck over a couple dozen other disabled people trying to navigate the process. Good job.Were I the reader that donated them that $20, I'd issue a charge back now.

SomaticPirate: My exact thoughts. Too often we lash out at the person who is working within a Kafkaesque system as a lowly bureaucrat. Attack the system. Find the fax number for the chief of your social security administration. Get a letter sending group together. The democratic system is slow and terrible but atleast the author seems to live in one.There should be a political call to action here. Call xyz or work to change this law. Bureaucrats run on laws. Laws can be changed. I was able to get my local HOA to accept pdf uploads just be talking with them. Small example but change is possible. Not as fun as ruining someones day though

b3lvedere: Way back in the previous century my dad once told me that corporate had purchased a thermal fax machine for his department. He hated it and wished it would stop working.So i asked for its number and sent it lots of completely black pictures. The thermal fax did not like that.

afro88: What good does hating the cogs do though? Make noise to the people who can change the machine.

catapart: exactly this. I didn't put you in a bad job; you - and to a large extent, your society - did. you are the face of the machine that I am trying to deal with. if you don't want to be that face, go be the face of some other machine. but if you pick up a phone to talk to a client or customer, you are a representation of an organization, and you will be treated as such. fix you mind to understand that people are trying to find the right things to say to you to get what they need at that moment. no different from someone putting in quarters to get a soda from a vending machine. I do X, I get Y. if there is a breakdown in getting Y, I will try other things beyond X. so, in this example, I tried to be reasonable; I tried to make this simple for me while simultaneously making it simple for both you and the machine you are representing. if it is the machine that prevents you from accepting that simplicity, then explain as much as they let you, apologize like a human being for the failings of the machine you represent, and ignore literally all of the rest of it. you can only do what you can do. they can only get what they can get. no amount of hostility will change the policy, but hostility will surely get different (sometimes better; not often) results than acquiescence. recognize that it's not hostility towards you and - god forbid - enjoy the fact that someone else notices how fucking shitty the machine you work for is. if you're a real superstar, take note of the specific situation and place it somewhere you can provide a collection of specific situations for review.

KronisLV: > if you don't want to be that face, go be the face of some other machineHow dare someone take a job that isn’t very nice just to afford a living!That said, everyone kind of sucks in the situation.The Karen should have been nicer and shown more compassion instead of hitting the OP with that line about security (and maybe the whole approach should have been considered a bit more, since their requirements make it harder for disabled people to receive the support they need).And OP perhaps maybe should have filed a complaint or something, maybe contact a news org if they’re feeling wronged, instead of being petty like that. What if someone else doesn’t receive their services in a timely manner over that bullshit? It felt more like feeling triumphant over inconveniencing someone and getting back at them in a sense.I can’t say I don’t find that sort of thing relatable, but yeah it probably could have been handled better by everyone.

raincole: > It is a letter that arrives every few years from the government, asking a question that is medically absurd and philosophically insulting: "Are you still disabled?"It... doesn't sound like an absurd practice at all. There are curable disabilities. And what's curable changes along with the advance of technology. It sounds about right to review the situation every a few years.

63stack: Not that I'm entirely onboard with it, but often you don't have a channel to communicate with "the people who can change the machine", only the cogs in the machine.

bmicraft: The author may feel like this is true, but she probably probably doesn't care for the Kafkaesque nature of the system and doesn't stand to profit from their misery either.

Permit: > because they create an instant exploit where the machine can be as bad as it wants as long as it hides behind the cogs.The exploit is already there whether or not you blame the cogs. Did blaming the cogs in this instance solve anything? Are disability benefits reformed in any way?

rogerrogerr: Cogs receiving abuse (which in this case is a scary word for "feedback from the public who is paying you and is unhappy with your process") _do_ cause the system to change. It's really not that much different from writing angry letters to Congressmen:One letter "doesn't do anything", but a surprisingly small number of letters does. And the one Congressmen "can't do anything", but usually a small number of Congressmen can sway real change. HN often advocates writing angry letters to Congress because it understands this dynamic.You will never be allowed to talk to the people who made the fax policy; they hired people like Karen specifically to make sure that doesn't happen. The person who can talk to management is... Karen.These systems usually settle into a steady state where the interface with the public receives an acceptable amount of abuse. I guarantee that if a few people a month did what OP claims to have done, they'd figure out how to take docs over email pretty quickly.

foxglacier: It gives you satisfaction. That's the whole value and it can be worth a lot to not hold bitterness long after the problem has passed. I agree with your parent. The cogs are part of the machine, they don't deserve any sympathy just because they chose to do bad things for money any more than a robber deserves sympathy because he's poor.

voidUpdate: Perhaps Karen was made of marshmallow and worked at the cookie factory. We don't know. All we know is that the author says she was uncaring and unapologetic while asking a blind person with cerebral palsy to either fax or mail documents to them instead of sending them in the format they were already in

catapart: the author didn't make anything harder for anyone because the "fax" wasn't ever even printed, much less caused a backup or even a slowdown at all. the giveaway was having the karen call back to request the person stop. the initial phone call undoubtedly happened, but the fax was consumed by the same systems used in medical offices all around the country, which means that it arrived as a pdf in some repository and it was attached to the client's records in the system. the whole "it has to be a fax" thing is a HIPPA compliance measure about chain of custody, rather than a technological requirement. it "could" be an email, but the data can never at any point be stored in certain ways or in certain locales, or whatever. since most email can't guarantee that, the policies are to only use fax, but then they use a service or application (that provides financial and legal guarantees of custody) to receive incoming faxes as pdfs. sometimes, even as attachments on emails.

lenkite: In all probability, Karen is a ruthless bureaucrat who has been told to cut down on disability payments and has been assigned to her position so that she may perform the job of trimming the budget so that the local congressman can "donate" to industry.

scrollop: Unless you have an Out of Body Experience and who the hell knows if physics continues to be at all having an effect in that realm and thus perform Free Will is a possibility.

fainpul: I agree with you, except for the blame part.Of course people act accordingly to the system they're in. If they expect punishment for an action, or not, changes their behaviour. By defining what's punishable, we can change the course of action. But if you look at any action which already happened, you can't blame anyone for it, because it had to happen that way, given the circumstances.

foxglacier: That already happened is key to your idea and I think you'd have got a better response if you included it initially. It's actually quite a worthwhile concept. Blame can't change the past. The important reason we blame is to help our mind cope with the loss we suffered. But if you can succeed in coping by thinking the past is immutable, that's even better.

raincole: > She was talking to a blind man living below the poverty line. She assumed that "fax it" was an impossible hurdle. She assumed I would have to find a ride to a library, pay twenty cents a page, and struggle with a physical machine I couldn't read. She was counting on the friction of the physical world to make me give up.Does this author live in a country where the government staff has incentive to reject the dole? Some kind of KPI? Otherwise why the author assume this woman is actively trying to stop him from getting his benefit?I genuinely wonder that. In my country I've never heard that.

Etherlord87: Imagine what would happen if everyone did what the author did. The system would collapse. I think you put a wrong diagnosis that the author couldn't possibly affect the administration. Maybe not much, maybe there was only a chance, but statistically he did put some pressure on that organization.

apexalpha: The problem in the UK, and many other countries, is that they refuse to split Disabilities in "objectively measurable disabilities" and "not objectively measurable disabilities."Obviously, you can just objectively measure if someone is fully blind. Sure you can pretend, but that's very hard.On the other hand there's disabilities like anxiety, where the only option is to ask the patient questions that the patient may or may not have already looked up online.By not splitting the groups you are left with only two very bad options:A) Everyone gets a regime with a lot checks and rechecks to keep the system affordable and scoped to people who need it.B) You give everyone a lax, trusty regime that people will immediately start abusing by claiming they have anxiety or so.

tokai: >you can just objectively measure if someone is fully blindNo not really. Blindness is a spectrum.https://www.cnib.ca/en/sight-loss-info/blindness/what-blindn...https://www.perkins.org/what-blindness-really-looks-like/

BoppreH: And there's also fraud. If there's no periodic check, a single diagnosis from a corrupt doctor can give someone disability benefits for life.This might not be the right frequency, though, and only accepting post/fax is bullshit. Doubly so for short deadlines.