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The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

robin_reala

Comments (318)

  • 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.
  • 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"
  • kerblang
    Under HIPAA requirements emailing personal medical info is a massive no-no. Admittedly, this is for the patient's protection, and of course being blind is not much of a secret... but it's completely understandable that email would be strongly discouraged. Nobody wants to get in trouble for breaking the rules.Honestly, being able to accept a fax is great, although I would think any properly outfitted modern office that does accept fax would be able to route them straight to document storage rather than a printer. There are probably even internet services that can just act as a fax dumpster and hold PDF/image file for perusal at one's leisure. Yes even the govt can figure this sort of thing out.
  • stockresearcher
    The ending is a little hard to believe.My sister has a job somewhat like this for a school system. Multiply the number of working hours by the number of workers, divide by the number of active cases and the number of hours each case takes to resolve. The answer is that a large number of cases will not be done by their deadlines.If someone wanted to send her a 500 page fax, she’s just going to shrug and work on something else. If she gives it even a passing thought, it would be “this ass better hope his fax finishes printing before the deadline for benefit cutoff”
  • 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.
  • perching_aix
    I found this story very surprising in a number of ways, so I gave some of the details a quick search.According to the docs linked, there are two forms at play, SSA-454 and SSA-455. The author likely had to have an SSA-455 filled, as his condition is of a "Medical Improvement Not Expected" type (this differentiation does exist). Seems that this needs to be done every 5-7 years.Both can be filled online apparently though, self-service style (not sure how accessible that is for him though):https://www.ssa.gov/disability/reviewFaxing and physical mail to a specific office seem to be additional options. Doesn't even sound like the fax and mail rule is office specific, seems to be a Social Security Administration originating internal policy.Am I missing something?
  • newer_vienna
    I cannot get over the malice seeping through this author's writing. Happiness does not come from making others miserable.
  • 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.
  • bmurphy1976
    I worked briefly with an idvidual who had this extreme bureaucratic mentality. I just can't even imagine how you can talk to another person and have no empathy at all for their situation and only care about the process. I also know processes exist for a reason, people will abuse things, and these processes are designed to prevent abuse.I don't have an answer. I just know that my empathy is too strong. I could never be so rigid and would not thrive in a career requiring that level of disconnect.
  • cowthulhu
    The author really lucked out that the government employee was not actually malicious. I can think of a good few ways she could have made life much more difficult for the author, even if he was likely to ultimately succeed.
  • 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"?Edit: exact words were "Do you continue to have <REDACTED>" where <REDACTED> is a genetic disease.Edit edit: I feel sorry for those having to follow these scripts.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • zarl
    I guess "I harassed a random low level employee because I took a request to fax documents as a personal insult" wasn't as catchy of a title?
  • 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?
  • 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
  • rdtsc
    > Robert Kingett is a Blind, and gay, obscure writer. He writes fiction where Disabled heroes get their happy endings and nonfiction where life can, sometimes, be educational.Now I wonder if this is fiction, even if the person is real and they are blind.
  • 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.
  • bambax
    > For the recipient, a fax is a physical reality. It requires paper. It requires ink.Not in my time it didn't. It was thermal paper that grew grey after a while (or a short exposition to direct sunlight); it came in rolls and each page was cut after it was "printed" and fell to the floor where it curled. 500 pages of this would have created a huge, unmanageable mess.
  • justin66
    I found the bureaucrat was a more sympathetic character than the author, and that is saying something. Part of that is because of the bits of the author's story that don't add up. It's apparently "truthy" rather than true. I guess maybe that works sometimes.Mostly it's because I don't think the SSA employee was malicious at all, although viewed through a lens of bitterness perhaps they could be viewed that way. But the author was unabashedly malicious.
  • cwmma
    I have had to repeatedly attest to my insurance that treatments and meds for my 6 year old son with a genetic condition is not work related. My 6 year old who I will point out is unemployed. Usually it's just a popup screen but occasionally it's a scary letter that threatens to not pay for surgery if not properly filled out.
  • 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.
  • glitchc
    The problem with government services is the rampant fraud. In such cases, fraud is often guilt-free since the government is perceived to have infinite resources. This tempts otherwise honest people to "try their luck" free of conscience, and in most cases, consequence. These silly rules and barriers are meant to increase friction for fraudsters. Unfortunately it comes at the expense of legitimate claimants. I feel your pain and I also feel hers.
  • kayodelycaon
    How many fax lines still go to a physical machine that prints on paper?It’s a lot less paper to have a pdf of the fax emailed.
  • looneysquash
    When the government imposes these rules, this is an outcome they callously ignore.Sure, we can rightly criticize the author for their abuse towards this working class government employee.But then to some degree we're guilty of what the author is guilty of. We're fighting each other.Let's focus our outrage on the people who made these rules. And that keep making more rules like them.Not that we shouldn't have rules to prevent "welfare fraud". But that it's unacceptable for such rules to make it harder to receive benefits that you're entitled to.And for many of our representatives, making it more difficult to receive benefits isn't just a side effect of bad anti-fraud policy, it's actually the point.Let's focus our outrage on them and demand change.
  • 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.
  • CrzyLngPwd
    Plot twist: Karen's fax machine turns the incoming fax into a PDF, which is saved on the network, and an AI processes it, sending her a summary of 300 words or less.No government workers were harmed.
  • BigTTYGothGF
    And then everybody, including the fax machine, stood up and clapped.
  • anon
    undefined
  • wittyusername
    I don't believe this is actually real, but it was great to read nonetheless.
  • 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.
  • breppp
    Although I didn't enjoy this fiction of "angry man against system" genre, he did touch an important truth about the fax machine, which this story doesn't properly expand on.A fax is very useful to bureaucracies because it is hard to prove a fax was ever sent or received at all. It might never arrived and wasn't retried, might have been printed as empty pages, maybe someone else picked it up.This is why it is so useful when someone on the other end wants to delay (the equivalent of closing a bug as can't reproduce). This is why governments like faxes and why this story is so unlikely (no chance anyone will call back in that event)
  • palmotea
    This reads like fiction.> I opened my preferred internet faxing service. This is a tool that allows me to send a fax purely through digital data. It would cost $20, exactly the amount someone had donated to the blog last week, but if I didn't do this, I would lose all my benifits. It costs me zero paper. It costs me zero toner.> ...> For the recipient, a fax is a physical reality. It requires paper. It requires ink. It requires time.I doubt it it would actually happen that way. My guess is there's a very high chance that the recipient is also using some kind of internet faxing service. So no actual paper was harmed by this prank.> Two hours later, my phone rang...> "Sir, please. You have to stop the fax. It’s… it’s been printing for an hour. It’s jamming the machine. We’re out of toner."Oh yeah. Total fiction. Can't you stop a real fax machine by hanging up the phone? They work with dial-up. I wouldn't be surprised if there's also a "cancel print" button.
  • happyopossum
    In 1998 I worked IT at a government facility and one of my responsibilities was e-fax. Nearly 30 years ago we didn’t print paper copies of everything that was faxed to us or that was sent as a fax…
  • maerF0x0
    I cant wait for useless jobs like Karen's from Compliance to be replaced with a highly capable AI that is tuned to think on it's feet (so to speak).Yes, I realize there will be cynics who say "The difficulty is by design to deny benefits", but I also think a lot of well meaning policies are hamstrung by the implementation (especially of software). Claude + Code for America can fix this.
  • dolphinscorpion
    Could Karen retaliate by saying she never got the required proof? I think she could cause a missed payment or two. Probably it's not Karen, it's the stupid law that requires a piece of paper every x years.
  • 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.
  • haritha-j
    Take a job helping the disabled claim benefits they said. It'll be nice and you can help disabled people they said.
  • dwedge
    I enjoyed this read, but:> For the recipient, a fax is a physical reality. It requires paper. It requires ink. It requires time.I wouldn't be surprised if it was also digital.> I imagined Karen’s fax machine. It was probably an old, beige beast sitting in the corner of a gray office. It was likely low on paper. It was almost certainly low on patience.I think the rest of the article was also their imagination.> "Sir, please. You have to stop the fax. It’s… it’s been printing for an hour. It’s jamming the machine. We’re out of toner."People only speak like this in fan-fiction.
  • bigbuppo
    I love malicious compliance, but it's more fun when you suffer along with them.
  • unsupp0rted
    People are judging OP and/or judging Karen. A lot is being lost in translation.When you get a certain drone with a certain way of speaking down to you ("this is the system obviously, you faceless person who is just as dumb as all the other faceless people"), then it's infuriating and I can see why OP went to bureaucratic war.At the same time, give the drone a break. She's doing what she's been trained to do, in the framework she's permitted to operate in, and she's got bigger problems than you.When I was younger, I went to similar bureaucratic wars to prove a point... to whom? What for?It's not helping anybody.
  • undeveloper
  • anon
    undefined
  • RobotToaster
    I hate to burst your bubble, but I imagine they use a fax server to receive faxes. Which just makes the refusal to accept emails even more objectionable. Likely they only accept faxes solely to make it harder for disabled people.
  • icegreentea2
    As another post mentions, this definitely fits into the wider genre of morality/revenge/malicious compliance porn. Regardless of if this is real or fiction, AI generated or not, it's still porn.Porn isn't bad, but thinking that porn adequately reflects reality, or that behavior within porn is blanket appropriate for real life is.. not good.
  • dntrshnthngjxct
    Inspiring, Nietzchean even.
  • dentemple
    This is proof that you don't need vision to create a thing of beauty.
  • ChrisMarshallNY
    I love the story (I have close family that has to go through the same crap -it's truly nasty. They deliberately try to intimidate people into giving up their benefits).But I have also learned that pissing off bureaucrats can have severe consequences. They may be petty, but some of them (like SSI/Medicaid people) have the power to truly mess up your life.
  • tokai
    I don't know if the US is different, but in my experience dumping your whole medical history like that would just not count as providing "updated medical evidence". They would just tell you to comply and throw the 500 pages in the trash.
  • renewiltord
    Bloody hell. Cerebral palsy, legal blindness then leading to total blindness, and gay. I hope this person lives in a place where at least the last is acceptable because otherwise this is one of the most unlucky rolls you can imagine. They seem to have built a life regardless however. Good for them.
  • Angostura
    I read this:>For the recipient, a fax is a physical reality. It requires paper. It requires ink. It requires time.... I assumed that there would simply be a messaging system attached to an OCR at the other end - no physical fax machine
  • 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.
  • spandrew
    Yea, the front service desk worker doesn't deserve that shit. Dick move.
  • jeffrallen
    I hope this didn't really happen, but I loved reading it.
  • 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 text that wasn't cut from the TTS engine... "Claude can make mistakes"
  • Papazsazsa
    This site is so nice.
  • refulgentis
    AI slop fantasy of a blind jerk getting "revenge" by sending a 512 page fax to a disabilities office, and the government employee calls to BEG for them to stop the "whir-chunk" from the fax machine.
  • rvba
    So basically the blogger is wasting resources to spite some givernment drone.bad foe other taxpayers (who need to pay for this fax paper) and bad for environment.Probably bad for other disabled too - their faxes wont reach in time.There is some disability fraud, they have to check.Maybe stop voting for right wing, so someone changes the system though.
  • mock-possum
    A protagonist in a pathetic revenge fantasy so insufferably smug that they actually reward themselves with a cookie at the end. Gag me.
  • hannahnelson
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  • perfmode
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  • plombe
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  • draw_down
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  • nine_zeros
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  • gos9
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  • TyrunDemeg101
    Chefs Kiss, thank you for that bit of schadenfreude to go with my morning coffee.
  • wkandek
    Fictional, but how far away from the truth? I enjoyed this interview with the CIO of the IRS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4odAXoqRT8 who describes his troubles with replacing the fax based system. Security is mentioned. The specific section is around minute 15.
  • newsoftheday
    I enjoyed the story and yay for him then read after the end, "Robert Kingett is a Blind, and gay..."!?!?! What does what the author does in the bedroom have to do with the story I just read? Nothing. I don't give a damn what the author does in their bedroom.