Enthusiastic Bureaucrats

Day 9 Wednesday 18th August 2010

The home of enthusiastic staff

On Wednesday morning we went to Kameoka City hall to see about getting our septic tank pumped out.
While I was there I took the opportunity to observe the bureaucrats that work there in action.
Now all the staff there are in an open plan office on the other side of the counter, unlike Waitakere City where they're all hiding from the public in their offices upstairs.
All these dudes have computers on their desks but they are strictly for show as nobody uses them.
Everything here involves paper. Forms, certificates, requests, invoices.....all on pieces of paper, piles of it everywhere.
At 12 o clock some electronic music starts playing.
It’s a really strange tune...like funeral music being played on a kid’s toy keyboard.
Apparently it's lunch time.
Nobody seems to take any notice however and the paper shuffling continues. Then, slowly, one by one, the worker bees start pulling lunchboxes and drink bottles out of their drawers and cupboards.
Unbelievably these people don't leave their desks for lunch.
In fact they continue working while they slurp their noodles and munch their sushi.
At one point one guy had a rubber stamp in one hand and chopsticks in the other.
People are coming up to the counter all the time and the city hall staff are just dealing with them.
Can you imagine trying to get a Waitakere city employee to do something during his lunch break?
After a while more upbeat electronic music starts and an announcement says "Lunch is over and we are ready to enthusiastically start our afternoon tasks"
Enthusiastic bureaucrats.....never thought I'd see the day.
Anyway, we get an appointment to have the tank pumped...9AM tomorrow