Comment by recursivedoubts
6 hours ago
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"
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
I see this type of an argumentation very often and I strongly disagree.
You're removing all responsibility from an actor that is a part of a bigger thing. Imagine if you slapped someone on his hand for doing something wrong, and he or someone else argued what you did is wrong because it wasn't that hand that has offended.
I'm an antitheist but the Bible (gospels) put it well "The student is not above his master" [translation mine] - which means if you follow said master you have to share responsibility for his doings or the doings of the gang as a whole.
From the perspective of the effect, if you make life of an employee miserable, the employee is more likely to resign or ask for a raise, this does apply some pressure.
Moreover, consider what happens if your argument convinces too many people: malevolent actors can just wall themselves with "innocent" people and get away with pretty much anything.
I find it far more effective to make friends with and be kind to that employee, and then describe how I know it isn't their fault but this one aspect of the thing that their company does really sucks, right? They're then able to carry that specific complaint from one of their best customers up the chain.
There are a thousand reasons why someone might be miserable, might resign or ask for a raise, but at the next monthly meeting or whatever opportunity they have for receiving suggestions, an employee who actually likes you will be more likely to speak up and get something done.
This has worked for me at least in the B2B space, where I'm affecting one of 50 state applications engineers or something like that. I'm aware that this isn't exactly the same as the federal government that employs like 3 million people, but the principle is the same.
If you got on Karen's good side, she might grouse with you that sending and receiving faxes is archaic, that mail is slow, agree that printed paper's not that accommodating to blind people, and acknowledge that it's cruel and wasteful to ask people to prove their chronic, incurable disabilities every year under threat of taking away their benefits through these platforms. You could work together and laugh about how funny it would be to communicate the real costs and hardships with her supervisors if you literally faxed 1,200 pages of a PDF, wearing through multiple toner cartridges and reams of paper, generating a box that she could drop on the table with a "thud" to emphasize that they should stop doing that.
That might create change, especially if it happens for multiple employees multiple times a day.
Making a bureaucrat miserable because they have a lot of paperwork to do is not going to create change.
> From the perspective of the effect, if you make life of an employee miserable, the employee is more likely to resign or ask for a raise, this does apply some pressure.
Not meaningful pressure, though, at least for large organizations. This is a variant of the flawed "vote with your wallet" argument: One wallet changes nothing. Even 100 or 1000 wallets change nothing.
These huge businesses and huge governments are too big for one person at the bottom of the totem pole to make a difference. Sure, they may share 1/N of the culpability for what their organization is doing, but if they rage quit, they will be immediately replaced with another body. The organization won't even notice it.
Individual human beings acting individually are totally irrelevant when it comes to the behavior of large organizations.
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> From the perspective of the effect, if you make life of an employee miserable, the employee is more likely to resign or ask for a raise, this does apply some pressure.
No, all you're accomplishing is being an ass to that person. They're a replaceable cog in a machine. And often their role as just as much to be a punching bag for assholes like you, to take the hits instead of who's really responsible, than whatever other business function they're performing. The people responsible aren't idiots, they know what they're going.
The only thing being an ass to someone who's just a cog accomplishes is making yourself into an asshole.
Absolutely agree. Also, the kind of Karens described in the post usually enjoy their position and the meager power they hold over other humans. They need to get bitten sometimes.
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> I'm an antitheist but the Bible (gospels) put it well "The student is not above his master" [translation mine] - which means if you follow said master you have to share responsibility for his doings or the doings of the gang as a whole.
If you're talking about Matthew 10, I think you read that bible passage exactly backward. Jesus was saying not to worry about any persecution caused by following him, because the responsibility is not yours. They are really persecuting him, "the master", and if you just keep doing what he says you will come out on top, even if you are killed, and they will get theirs in the end.
(Not that I agree. As an atheist, it feels coercive. But that's clearly what Matthew 10 is saying)
> if you make life of an employee miserable, the employee is more likely to resign or ask for a raise, this does apply some pressure.
Perhaps, but the question to ask is not “how to apply some pressure” but “how to apply pressure in the place where it’s most effective.
No amount of beating low level employees will change whether they can accept pdf sent by email or not.
And also, they are not supposed to use their intuitive ideas about what is and what is not dangerous use of software. When they do use their intuitive ideas, hacks happen. Karen here doing what she was told and accepting only formats that her organization security team told her to do is Karen doing the correct thing.
We are on HN. People who are responsible for overreaching unreasonable security rules ... are basically us. And we are all paid way more then Karen, but are the first to call Karen an idiot when the hack happens. Karen does not know why pdf is different from doc or whatever. Nor is she required to know.
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This is exactly what I do with telemarketer scammers. I have no limit of depravity that I draw from in attempt to offend them. No limits. And exactly for the reasons you describe. Get them to crack and quit the company.
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The Bible of course also says "if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee", which is where I thought you were going with this at first. The Bible says a lot of things.
It's tricky, because _sometimes_ they do. And the system doesn't give you guidance on whether you're talking to someone who (officially or not) can change the process. So, based mostly on our personality, we all push a different amount before giving up.
Relatable example: I needed to schedule a Pediatric appointment, her assigned Dr was on vacation, and the first receptionist stonewalled on switching Drs within the practice. The second one did it in 2m on her side and guided me to updating insurance in 2m on my side.
Another similar example: Since it's tax time, I had to call a us gov office with a question. The first rep claimed "their system was down" and couldn't help me. I hung up and called back. The second rep was just nasty and stonewalled me by inundating me with security questions and refusing to "verify" my identity, so I eventually hung up and called back a third time. The third rep answered my question within a few minutes, and was a thorough pleasure to deal with.
I mean, I get that these guys might not be getting paid, with the government shutdown tomfoolery, but come on!
As an alternate framing, with the paperwork be giving her what she needs to go to her boss and escalate, and their boss as needed - the paperwork as a magic ticket for everyone to advocate. To qualify that, the fax is a limited resource, and I'd be concerned about how what other things the fax might be needed for to help other people in a timely manner...
Perhaps the fax-related expenses would be the magic ticket their boss needed to justify security scanning of emails with PDFs. I just listened to Trump brag for ten minutes about replacing the thousand-dollar signing pens.
The post is tagged non-fiction, but it ignores the option to "Complete your Disabilty Update Report Online (https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/text-cdrs-ussi.htm), which I found after following the link in the first sentence.
The form is an embedded iFrame from "Adobe Acrobat Sign", supposedly pure Javascript . It would be a bigger story if this form were not accessible to the disabled.
The form includes a place to attach two PDF, text, or image formats. "Attachments are limited to 5MB and 25 pages".
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Other responders have replied well, so I will offer a slight augmentation: Yes, this is bad outcome for the bureaucrat, through no mistake of her own. A wrong has been committed against her - but not by the author - by her employer, and the system which employs her and sets these regulations. They cannot (Although they will if asked) claim ignorance or innocence: It is their fault alone for this experience.
In this case the problem can't easily be blamed on "the system". Government benefits are this way because politicians have for years blamed "benefit cheats" and "welfare queens" and other boogymen, people have voted based on this, and now the law is you have to prove you're still congenitally blind every year. The system is working, it's actually doing what the politicians and their voters want.
Explain that to the Karen, then... and let her suffer, instead of the poor blind taxpayer.
He never chose to be blind. He pays his taxes. He is the customer.
She chose to be part of The System. She is paid to provide a service, within The System's rules.
I have zero empathy for her. Everything is working as intended.
They attacked a fax machine, I don't think it has feelings. The woman will get over her frustration at seeing it print for two hours.
I also been on the customer service side and it's really annoying getting angry persona after angry person trying to push their frustrations on you for something you have no control.
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This isn't a happy counterargument or anything, but (bad as it is) this is this person's job. Or rather it is the job. Their employer has customer service in order for it to buffer—in a cost efficient way—the one or many layers of people above this person from their (profitable) bad policies. It's a punching bag. And it's that because bad policy + punching bag is more profitable than good policy. It might even be the business/market. If the frustrating call leads to 50% of callers giving up (or not calling at all) and just paying something they might not owe, that's a nice net ROI. You might build a business around that, one that wouldn’t have the margins otherwise. You get the callers caving because they feel bad yelling at the unfortunate employees, meanwhile it's in the company's formal protocol to only correct it (or escalate the ticket to someone who could) after the customer has yelled long enough.
There are bad customers for sure, but we also cheat good customers out of what they’re owed until they’re “bad.” The customer can yell or eat the cost. I think I can both feel bad for the employee and not place much blame on the customer given customer service as a quasi profit center.
>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.
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.
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> if i was in her position, i would shrug and hand my boss the 500 pieces of paper.
yeah honestly. If I was in that position I'd probably think it's funny and just stick the whole stack in a folder and laugh about the dumb process.
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.
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Right, shouldn't make her workday stressful, she's just following orders.
I file this under " don't be a dick, especially to the disabled". You wonder why most bankers avoid a lot of this, despite handling one of the most stressful aspect of modern humanity? It's becsuse they tend to be thr friendliest talkers out there. They know the reputation and trust of the banking system is what keeps their money in. They can be just as slimy as a used car salesman in tactics, but we're still interfacing with a human, and humans generally like to feel like they matter.
I'll admit, this is the authors bias. And we know such hackers are not the best a social cues. But taking him as his word: I can 100% visualize the kind of tone Karen made here at the author. The kind that says "I've done this 1000 times and I know how this works. I know most people won't bother. I just need to get person over with and move on". An all too familiar tone in this cold, lonely world.
I'm not going to say she deserved it. But I have no sympathy either. And sadly, this is the only legal channel we have for this without any lawyer funding. I don't see any other way to really make them listen than to reveal enough inconvenience in the real world, not in a civil matter in a townhall.
>Like, does this guy think this single woman is responsible for the kafka-esque trap they're both in?
If there's any class of individual in whom I'm willing to place greater than average trust in their ability to read vocal tones, it's probably blind people. Just sayin'.
A few thoughts about the world this situation exists in:
1. Whenever I am dealing with a problem, I always try to say to the person helping me "I know you are not the person responsible for my issue." My goal is to help them not feel that my frustration is directed at them.
2. Government is a special area, especially when it comes to benefits, because a lot of regulations are in place because some random politician got a law passed/amended in order to convince their constituents they were fighting fraud and laziness. This is quite often done with no thought to the downstream effects.
3. I consider myself to be an empathetic person, but there have been times in my life when I have had to work in a job that was very anti-customer. Because doing nice things for customers was punished, I fell into a pattern of finding ways to not do nice things for customers and actually got some enjoyment out of the logical puzzle of denying them. I'm not defending it by any means and I'm quite regretful about it, but I can understand how someone can fall into that mentality.
4. I believe the real failure here, like so many other things, is the system design. The disability benefits system in the author's case seems to be providing benefits to permanently disabled and temporarily disabled people. The review process should be differentiating between these two groups. As the author points out, they are never not going to be blind.
I think a better way to communicate the frustration would have been finding the fax number for the minister responsible for the government department and faxing THEM the documentation, as they have the power to change things.
While I do agree generally, there are a couple things to note
1. Author was made to pay for the bureaucracy and a rigid rule, and found a way to revert that. Now Karen pays the price for the bureaucracy. In the end Author made it a 0 sum game while there was not necessarily a need... and yet fair is fair, he was entered in the game without asking, and he played it.
2. > She has no power, absolutely no power
I doubt if this is true. In the end she said "fine we'll mark the file as updated" while having received only partially what Author sent. This shows she had permissions to change the status of their file, and agency in determining if she should.
In the end I'm not sure if it was worth making someone else suffer, there was probably that 2 pages file that they needed to send, which would have been enough to send everyone on their merry way. Beyond just creating suffering to someone else, that could have very well ended with "fine, we'll review those 500 pages, I'm not sure if we can do that by the deadline".
Concluding she had permission and agency suggests she had intrinsic motivation to not apply that agency. If we assume the motivation is nefarious, then the main character is the victim. However, quite more likely, she is also a victim of the system, whereby were she to apply her discretionary agency to reduce the burden on the main character, she takes on an equal or greater burden herself. Once the burden had already shifted onto her, she accepted that she doesn't have any options to prevent it.
My partner works in the office of a prominent Mayor. As a relatively low-totem-pole guy, he has to double-check every vitriolic email sent to the office of the mayor.
Now with AI the screening could be better, but in general every letter has to be read because often people in need of immediate support write very evil things. Think of a dehydrated and irate senior caught in their attic. In a last ditch effort they mail the mayor a racist scree, but they do in fact need help or they will die.
There are lots of people in the government actually trying to help you, despite how depressing their job is
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
> There should be a political call to action here
A real problem in both benefits claiming and immigration systems is that there are voters on the other side loudly demanding that the system be made more hostile and kafkaesque.
And bear in mind that there are quite a few politicians willing to monetize that by actually implementing those more hostile and kafkaesque rules.
Yea, it's a mistake to think everyone wants things to be better, and that we just need to organize. There is a huge, motivated voting block out there who want to make things worse, at least worse for people unlike themselves, and they are organized and fighting back (and usually winning).
> 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.
Really? Are you sure?
The UK disability system is notorious for compliance hurdles. Quite a lot of people including relatives of mine have had claims denied by the bureaucracy, applied for review (which is done by an external judge), and had it reinstated.
It was even worse when the system was outsourced to ATOS.
I've also heard stories about the Norwegian NAV. I don't think this is confined to any one country.
It's not hard to understand. There's constant political budget pressure, and narratives about "scoungers". So the system gets set to default-deny and told to limit the cost of claims by any means necessary.
I didn't say there is no compliance hurdles or the benefits are supposed to be easy to get.
I said that the author insinuates the woman is actively, even personally trying to stop him from getting the benefits, instead of following a rulebook. Which is quite surprising to me, as my experience tells me most employees don't care about saving money for their employers unless they're very strongly motivated to do so.
> She was counting on the friction of the physical world to make me give up.
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The USA federal system is similar from people I've spoken to. They basically tell you most applications of benefits will only be approved on appeal.
I'm almost certain this is from the UK, and here we have a government that is absolutely obsessed by the concept of benefits fraud. Every real analysis has shown that virtually none exists, but it is a good excuse to tighten up the government budget by trimming some fat (disabled people).
Depends on what kind of dole you are on. Unemployment isn't terribly difficult. Disability is nigh impossible. Took a decade for one of my family members to get it. From what I've seen they want to see you're broke and jobless for a very long time before they will believe you.
Mere disability re-verification is pretty minor when it comes to bureaucratic insanity. For comparison, in the UK, in recent memory almost a thousand postal service contractors were wrongly convicted of crimes based entirely on a broken government accounting system that constantly got tbe numbers wrong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal).
Great point. I was originally in favor of the fax barrage because I've also been frustrated navigating bureaucracy but you made me reconsider.
These types of problems usually persist because it's hard to know who is responsible. It's not just the customer support person or the president/governor - I assume the invisible senior leaders in-between hold a lot of power.
I'd happily support an investigative journalist who exposed exactly why these problems exist and which individual humans are responsible.
It's her inconvenience vs money he relies on to live.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease and this is the sort of thing that might make Karen suggest to her boss that they accept PDF files.
>might make Karen suggest to her boss that they accept PDF files.
I'm not sure what state or country this was written in, but requiring physical copies or a fax is very likely a legal requirement.
And unless enough bureaucrats complain to their boss, that law will never change. Regulations don't get handed down from the gods or something, they can be changed if enough people want it. There are plenty of countries these days where a PDF is enough.
What makes you think this is about her? It makes no difference in her job (I assume) if things go smoothly or not. It needs to hurt the operational procedures so it reaches people in power to change the rules to be meaningful. What makes a fax more secure than an email?
Also how could she just decide that the disability status is accepted without checking the documents. That is just fraud...
man
Exactly! Whenever I feel offended by someone, I remind myself of David Foster Wallace's message in "This is Water." It's become a positive reflex for me, one that safes me from a rush of aggression as we all know it. However, I still find myself cursing fiercely in my car from time to time, it's just a stronger reflex, it releases some energy and I know I'm hurting nobody anyway
https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/
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.
The people saying "how dare you hurt that ablative layer" are no less evil than those implementing it IMO.
But hopefully erratic behavior of such callers may actually bring some change because Karen is definitely going to complain about him once the manager asks why the fax machine is down.
If you are being paid for making people's lives miserable, expect some misery in return. That's how it is.
to be fair, if the author is truthful in his description of this Karen it sounds more like somebody who uses whatever leverage they have to make other people miserable. Did you see Everything, Everywhere, All at Once? Those people exist in real life too.
We don't have to assume there is a good guy in the story. The resulting piece that the author made, due to the vitriolic tone, is not qualitatively different than a troll post designed to paint the disabled as stunted and bitter.
Nevertheless, assuming it's true, the author did expose the lie of Karen or rather the system. It wasn't the real evidence that changed her mind, according to her comments, it was the punitive arm-twisting applied to them by the DoS of the fax machine.
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained”
I'm with you that TFA comes off as mean spirited and needlessly so.
But having worked in large orgs in highly regulated and bureaucratic sectors (aerospace), sometimes things don't change until the process fails spectacularly.
Policy like "we can't accept email for security purposes" comes from total fucking morons in sub-C level upper management who have no insight into how the business actually works, for whom it's easier to say "no" than it is to say "yes".
It's entirely plausible that this episode (which I bet blew through a lot of PPNS budget in toner) caused some mid level manager to report the process breakage, kicking off a review of whether they really need fax.
> sometimes things don't change until the process fails spectacularly.
This. This is the only feedback the bureaucratic system can hear and sometimes even that is not enough.
It seems Arendt's notion of "the banality of evil" has culturally diminished over time. The sentiment you're pushing is the very basis for Sergeant Shultz's character in Hogan's Heroes[1]. It also doesn't change the lack of any route towards a higher-up, so the tired "they're just an employee" defense really doesn't matter when, for all intents and purposes, that employee is the only way for the author to interact with the bureaucracy they're (very obviously) being ushered through with zero concern for the high-stakes outcome.
In short, the answer to complacency isn't "more complacency".
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Banner
Working for an organisation which systematically abuses and degrades disabled people is not a morally neural act. If you're life is difficult then that's sad, but not an excuse to exact that difficulty 100 fold on other people.
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.
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." - Sir William Blackstone, 1760.
It's amazing how we still haven't learnt that.
"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.
> 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?
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.
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and likewise, "hate the cogs" takes are equally worthless. All nuance is lost, the cycle repeats again.
Yeah and wayyy more importantly cops don't get fired for not escalating and killing a guy!
What good does hating the cogs do though? Make noise to the people who can change the machine.
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.
When you hate the machine as a whole, the cogs are also in scope.
It increases costs for the machine, and eventually it realizes that cogs are cheaper when they're not getting yelled at all day.
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.
Depends on your goal. If you want a better machine maybe hating the cogs doesn't help.
If you goal is to not have a machine at all for some particular thing, then potentially no one wanting to work a job that does that thing might be an effective way of abating the machine from doing that.
Although inconveniencing bureaucrats handling disability benefits is probably a poor starting point no matter what your opinion is.
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> "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."
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.
This experiment feels related
https://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 endings
Perhaps "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.
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
Seems potentially libelous to claim this person isn't actually blind.
I don't think that's what they meant -- they're describing a series of three imaginary phone calls. (I did misread it that way at first, though.)
read it again
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
> 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
I can get my drugs from people like this but you can’t because you prefer this system. Having chosen a system with heavy import controls and an overbearing government regulatory agency, all of which you are likely a huge fan of, there’s not much point to being upset that it yields high prices through an opaque system. The thing you want creates the thing you don’t want.
One might as well rage at getting wet when you stand under the shower and turn it on.
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> 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.
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If you think there’s no free will then you won’t argue with me when I say I think there is.
But they will argue with you, for it was predestined.
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i don't believe that to be the case at all
but, 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?
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.
right