Comment by omonra
10 years ago
Yep.
It's human nature - if the people she faced deal with people who are trying to scam the system 90% of the time, they will be conditioned to deal with such individuals.
Then when the 1 out of 10 comes across who is genuinely NOT trying to pull a scam, it will be very hard for them to turn their attitude 180 degrees.
Sorry, although I buy the human nature argument there, from a government organisation point-of-view, that kind of behaviour is utterly unacceptable. If it's too difficult for people to do their jobs properly the way the system is set up, change the system. This isn't an impossible problem; we have many state bodies that have to deal with similar situations - police - and they simply should not be able to get away with this.
But - given the rules in place, she actually did not have the right paperwork to give a paid talk at the conference.
Ie I think the majority of the ordeal stems from this - not ill-handling on the part of staff who work there.