The Nation's Pulse/ Bouquets from Your Bureaucrats
Kenner, Hugh
BOUQUETS FROM YOUR BUREAUCRATS From the Department of the Army (San Francisco), for A- B- C- Distribution: " . . . 2. The hazards of walking (b) This inattention coupled with reading or reviewing...
...Carrier's air-conditioning, which in defiance of God's express intentions has rendered the Potomac Basin habitable year-round...
...He no doubt did not want to derail its progress toward its target date, undervaluing the fact that when target dates are met something really expensive may happen...
...Colonel Hughes will have responded, Mr...
...And once it had been effected, not even Temporary Regulation B-5 ("dated September 21, 1979, copy attached"), on "Procedures for Conversion," could ward off such consequences as confronted the Agency for International Development, when the new, larger GSAapproved paper proved "too large to fit the stationery drawers of many standard GSA desks," and AID was driven to such measures as "exchanging desks for others in stock...
...Staffs should never be lean, nor distribution channels scant...
...Could Tricia's balls have generated a proper gale-force Washington blizzard of memos we might all have been spared Watergate...
...He may even dictate his manner of "routing" what he dictates: "The above drafts come to me first for review, and I give them to Mr...
...An insufficient paper empire to occupy him is something historians may wish to connect with Haldeman's later difficulties...
...Chapin also, and conceivably Haldeman responded to their responses, but that was merely a three-way exchange...
...One is Mr...
...That incredible numbers of these papers have to do with paper itself-its sizes, its grades, its orientation in the heaps into which filers gather it-is something we should be grateful for, since it normally bodes no action whatsoever...
...That is from a Coordinator, Title IX Team, in HEW's Region IV-Atlanta...
...Gregory for recording...
...Clemens...
...Calls from taxpayers for Information Requests should be referred to the Freedom of Information Reading Room at National Office...
...and wearing footwear of unusual design are responsible for the great majority of mishaps...
...Houghton Mifflin, $3.95...
...Carlson's copier, which in defiance of human sloth enables any Selectrified mumble to, no, not *The Hazards of Walking, and Other Memos from your Bureaucrats...
...There deposited, it requires a response...
...A second is Mr...
...BOUQUETS FROM YOUR BUREAUCRATS From the Department of the Army (San Francisco), for A- B- C- Distribution: " . . . 2. The hazards of walking (b) This inattention coupled with reading or reviewing documents while walking...
...Specialist through the Incentive Awards Coordinator, to advise the recipient that something by Hugh Kenner he had suggested could not be approved since action was already initiated in its area...
...The typist returns them to Mr...
...Nixon and Tricia for balls as soon as possible," went to Colonel Hughes, copy to Mr...
...True, people had to carry those desks, which created blue-collar jobs...
...From a Section Chief, Illinois Department of Labor: " . . . On April 30...
...Indeed we should wonder if the IRS man was altogether wise in withholding the envelope window suggestion from the Task Force...
...Washington's most momentous event of 1979, the conversion of all official paper from 8 by 10.5 inches to 8.5 by 11-a mere 11 percent increase in area and a gross underestimate of bureaucrats' verbal inflation-was not only missed by every political observer but came to pass no thanks to a Task Force insufficiently torpid...
...Less busy folk have proved less harmless...
...I then told you that I am in charge of the section, even though it is not 8:30 yet...
...The suggestion pertained to the location of windows in envelopes, an aspect of "the Envelope Program" that was even then occupying an "Envelope Task Force," its target date for completion a mere six months off...
...Gregory for typing...
...His evaluation of Suggestion 42-EP/EO 132 was routed to an E.O...
...Haste, you see, makes waste, and it is alarming to notice, here and there, tremors of some bureaucratic itch to get moving...
...Up at the New York State Office of Mental Health, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1983 25...
...Internal Revenue Service, to all agents: "Recently an employee received and apparently answered a telephonic request for information...
...Haldeman's most famous memo, "The President would like to have the bowling ball man come in and fit Mrs...
...Gregory will return the typed copies to the originator for review for typing corrections and/or sign off...
...Edison's dictating machine, which affords the year-round inhabitants something to do there...
...On and on: Government talking incessantly to itself.* Its larynx is Selectric, its resonant sinuses are Xerox...
...Introduction by Charles Peters...
...trickle down "channels of distribution" as in the old days when its scope was contained by the illegibility of the sixth carbon, but instead to be flushed through those channels with hydraulic force, ending up on as many as a thousand desks, miraculously multiplied, a pristine turd...
...Chapin...
...Gregory's version is not preserved, but it is evident that he and incalculable numbers of others have little time to dream up public harassments...
...Hugh Kenner teaches English at the Johns Hopkins University and is the author of many books, including A Homemade World and The Pound Era...
...When I pointed out that you were aware that I had asked you not to plug it in, you replied that it is not 8:30 yet...
...Thus one reason the Chief, Office Services Section, Facilities Management Branch, Internal Revenue Service has never done time in the jug is that memo-writing keeps him harmlessly busy...
...Gregory for his record of typing completions...
...It grows lonely near the top...
...going up or down stairs with both hands occupied (not holding the handrail...
...Edited by Carol Trueblood and Donna Fenn...
...For bureaucracy's days are enabled by expensive mechanical toys, three in particular...
...The originator, after corrections and sign off, will route the typed report or letter to me for sign off and routing to Mr...
...at 8:25 in the morning, I noted that you had again plugged in the coffee pot...
...The bureaucrat's categorical imperative is simple: Don't just sit there, dictate something...
...And the third is Mr...
...Copies of mailed letters come back through Mr...
Vol. 16 • April 1983 • No. 4
