Coping with Bureaucracy

Throughout my lifetime I have had many encounters with bureaucracy, this seems inescapable if you have to deal with banks, insurance companies, telephone companies, energy companies, and so on. I have to admit that contrary to what many believe, I have rarely encountered much in the way of problems with governmental agencies (this must sound like heresy to some). The Post Office, Social Security, Veterans Affairs, Medicare, Passport offices, and even the IRS have always treated me courteously and fairly. I cannot say the same for large private businesses that have given me loads of trouble over the years. I have stories of encounters that would “make your blood run cold,” so to speak. Insurance companies, telephone companies, and banks have been clearly the worst offenders. Here, however, I wish only to deal with a University bureaucracy and how I and my fellow graduate students learned to cope with it. Three of us in particular seemed to have particular difficulties with the University bureaucracy. This was typically over rules and regulations that were not intrinsically very important but seemed to be of enormous importance to the bureaucrats that were in charge. They usually involved things like one person refusing to sign something until someone else signed in first, and that person would tell you the exact opposite. Or it might have to do with a late change of class or registration, a library fine, stuff like that. Interestingly enough, the three of us developed our techniques independently of each other but we did eventually come to discuss them with an appropriate measure of hilarity.

The three of us were of approximately the same age and were also at approximately the same stage of our graduate education in the field of anthropology. One was Black, one was Foreign (Sinhalese), and one (myself) was just an ordinary White student. LeRoy (not his real name), the Black student, had learned from experiences growing up, and being married to a White woman, that for him the best defense was a good offense. When he encountered opposition to his request to circumvent a rule, or break one entirely, he would immediately demand to see “your boss,” someone with authority, someone who will understand the problem (implying that the person he was speaking with did not understand it). He was very emphatic in demanding to see a supervisor or someone who had the authority to conceivably waive the rule in question. This usually worked, as remember these rules and regulations were basically pretty “Mickey Mouse” to begin with, but also because the person being confronted would not want to admit they could not handle the situation, and certainly did not want to see their supervisor involved if it was at all possible to avoid it. I can’t say that LeRoy always won, but he often did, and his strategy served him well. He did not receive his PhD, it is true, but this was not because of the bureaucracy, but, rather, because he decided to do something else (music).

Our Foreign student from Sri Lanka developed a quite different approach. He was handsome, well-mannered, and spoke English fluently with a slight British accent. And he was smooth, a charmer, and very intelligent. When he had a problem and was told it couldn’t be waived or solved or changed, he refused to take that for an answer. He would say, with the utmost dignity, “Yes, of course, I understand the necessity for such a rule as some of the (implied American) students might abuse it. And it is a fine rule, a necessary rule, a rule that one should of course respect (by this point the woman he was addressing would be trying not to swoon), but of course,” he continued, “such a rule should not apply to me, a poor Foreign student who is so unfamiliar with your culture, and who so wishes to succeed here in your country.” Like our friend LeRoy, Chandra (not his real name) did not always succeed, but he usually did. I think he could probably have charmed the birds down out of the trees.

My own approach, which had been honed by many previous bureaucratic encounters, was much more American, aggressive, direct, louder, embarrassingly boorish, and much more demanding. I would simply raise my voice (louder the longer I spoke) and announce to the world at large (whatever that world consisted of at the moment, usually a room full of other people) what a stupid, ridiculous, and useless rule it was. I would claim that it was preventing me from graduating (or some other nonsense) and that it simply had to be waived. I would ignore their attempts to quiet me and simply refuse to listen to them. By this point they were usually so intimidated, and also embarrassed, they would give in. Some even said to me, “Okay, okay, we’ll let you do it, but don’t tell anyone else,” and then usher me out as quickly as possible. As I knew which rules really were ridiculous, and avoided such confrontations when I was pretty sure to lose, I did pretty well. After a couple of such outbursts the secretaries and other staff recognized me on sight and were sometimes prepared to capitulate even without much of a fight.

The University did not, of course, offer instructions in how to deal with the bureaucracy it had become, these were necessary survival skills we developed on our own, without them I doubt we could have successfully navigated the tangle of obstacles that we believed had been designed to thwart us in our ambitions. But you had to know the “enemy” as otherwise they did not work. It seemed that the more absurd the rule or regulation the more successful you were able to circumvent it. None of these techniques would work if it was truly a matter of “life or death.”

I was truly impressed once when I witnessed a performance of my own technique so masterful, so talented, you might say even “professional,” it was a thing of beauty. It occurred in a very large branch of a very large bank. There must have been at least eight or ten tellers and the usual array of lending officers and other officials sitting at desks interviewing suckers (sorry, I mean customers). A young woman, I’m sure she could not have been more than 25 years of age, nor could she have been more than about five feet tall, pleasingly plump, (zaftig, if you know what I mean), and also cursed (or perhaps blessed) with having a genuine “little girl” voice, brought the entire bank to a complete stop for a few moments. Her outrage was so intense, her complaints so loud, her anger so great, her demeanor so aggressively demanding, but at the same time childishly plaintive, the place fell completely silent. It was a virtuoso performance so gifted, so powerful, so awesome, so mesmerizing, I don’t have the slightest idea what it was about. But she was quickly ushered into the manager’s office and emerged in a very short time with a smile of success that could not be mistaken. Not only that! The customers that had witnessed her performance applauded as she departed the scene of her victory!