Jewish World Review Feb. 24, 2003 / 22 Adar I, 5763

David Martin

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Consumer Reports


Choosing a career as an obfuscation and complication specialist


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Welcome to the Bureaucrat Institute. Congratulations on choosing a career as an obfuscation and complication specialist.

Start out learning the basics from paper shuffling to the telephone runaround. Then learn the skills you'll need to add red tape to any organization. Here are some useful courses:

  • CABLE, PHONE AND SEWER REPAIRS: This course will teach you how to maximize residential street disruption. Use sophisticated mathematical models and computer scheduling programs to optimize the number of times any given street must be dug up to repair just about anything. What appears to the average person as random inefficiency actually requires skillful planning among numerous private companies and public agencies.

  • BILLING: Complicated service bills don't just happen by accident. They're the products of decades of deliberate development. You'll learn the complex formulas that connect dates and hours to interest rate increases and climbing or sliding scales. In the municipal arena, see how mill rates are related to school taxes and water usage to sewer charges. When puzzled customers come looking for answers, you can give them more than they bargained for.

  • RECYCLING AND WASTE MANAGEMENT: Learn how to complicate a simple idea. Start with the concept of recycling garbage with one blue box for weekly collection. Add a black box for paper products and a green box for organic waste. Be adventuresome. Add different colors for different materials such as cardboard, Styrofoam and more. Learn the vagaries of collection scheduling, including random pickup day rotation and holiday weekend roulette.

  • PARKING SIGNS: Let your imagination soar! Start small with the production of the standard "Parking" or "No Parking" signs and work up to sophisticated creations such as multiple assigned sections in a single company lot or odd/even day, alternate side-street parking. Get even more creative and try an abstract collage of different, inconsistent parking signs on the same street pole.

  • FORMS, GLORIOUS FORMS: Paper is the lifeblood of any bureaucracy. While others adopt the computerized option, you'll learn how to stick tenaciously to the paper path. Learn the difference between an LDC-01 (pink) and an LDC-02 (blue). Find out how you can create your own form while carefully adhering to the minimum $25 fee and triplicate requirements.

If you finish all these courses, there is always our postgraduate program. We have courses in everything from Principles of Mazes to Dealing with Pesky Elected Officials. When you've completed our course load, you'll be well on your way to a satisfying career serving the public above and beyond their actual needs.

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JWR contributor David Martin is a full-time bureaucrat and a part-time writer. He lives with his wife and daughter in Ottawa, Canada. Comment by clicking here.

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02/04/03: Dare to be average

© 2003, David Martin