Being Bureaucratic

Philosophy Forums Psychology and Mind
1

I wasn’t exactly sure where to put this thread, maybe Social Sciences would have been better. I suppose some would have this thread relegated to Mundane Babble, but I think the subject and context will end up being just a little better than that, if not much better.

Anyway, one thing I have found is that being bureaucratic can often be very entertaining and rewarding if you are throwing the book at someone because you seriously dislike them or they are a hinderance to your well-being.

I suppose a good example of this would be the other day when I had a guest meet someone to go out to dinner and they met in the lobby of the hotel. The person the guest was meeting for dinner straight told me to **** myself for no good reason whatsoever. All that I did was I had this person come into the lobby and plop down on one of the sofas and the person doesn’t even say anything when I give a customary greeting. So, the guy’s sitting there for about five minutes and I ask him if he needs any help with anything and for no reason at all he tells me to fuck myself.

He and the guest go out to dinner and the guest comes back and goes back up to her room. Apparently, she borrowed his cell phone for whatever reason and he forgot to get it back from her so he comes in about an hour later and asks what room she is in?

“I’m sorry, sir, what room who is in?”

“What room Rebecca is in, I’m expecting an important call and I need my goddamn phone.”

“I apologize sir, but it is the Regulation of ************ Hotel that you are going to have to do a little bit better than, ‘Rebecca,’ as I am certain you understand, there are many people named Rebecca and I cannot go around wantonly calling rooms based upon just a first name. Would you know Rebecca’s last name?”

“No, I don’t know her last name. I was going to tap it, but it turns out she’s a bitch, I just need my fucking phone, what room is she in?”

“Unfortunately, sir, it is the policy of *********** hotels that we not disclose the room number of a guest regardless of whether or not the person asking knows the first and last name. What I can do, however, is call the guest’s room and ask if I may send you up.”

…five seconds passes

“Why aren’t you calling the room?!”

“Whose room?”

“Rebecca’s fucking room!”

“I must reiterate, sir, that it is the policy of *********** hotels that we may not wantonly harass our guests simply because someone is looking for them and happens to know the guest’s first name. Unfortunately, at this time–”

“Wait a minute, you were here earlier, you saw me leave with her! You little fucking shit, you fucking know exactly who I am talking about and exactly what fucking room she is in–”

“Sir, please allow me to assure you that vulgarities will simply not alter the situation in which we find ourselves. I would certainly hate for it to be made necessary for me to ask you to leave the premises, however, if you continue to use such profanity in a public area, I am afraid that I may have no alternative.”

“What am I supposed to do then?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Hey, why don’t you just let me use your phone to call my cell phone and hopefully she will answer it?”

“Why, what an excellent idea, I never thought of that!”

Anyway, the guy got his cell phone back because she answered it. She later came down for some coffee and informed me that she found him to be a complete asshole.

The point that I am getting at here is that if you take someone who is a total prick it can be rewarding on so many different levels to be in a position of authority over that person and go by the letter of the book. It is this fact, however, that leads me to believe that it may be that the majority of bureaucrats may simply suffer from some kind of inferiority complex and deliberately seek positions of authority in order to serve some sort of need they have for power and that they may dislike people in general regardless of whether or not any specific person has done anything to them personally.

Because if that guy was a really nice guy, I’d have just phoned the room and said, “The gentleman that was with you earlier is down here and believes he may have left his cell phone with you. Should I send him up, or would you like to meet him down here?”

Essentially, the hard time I gave that guy (because he is an asshole) is only a fraction of the hard time that a true bureaucrat gives everybody.

Thoughts?

EDIT: The individual in question was not actually named Rebecca, for privacy and security purposes, I have not even provided the correct first name of the guest in question.

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It is probably a good or fair thing when the ‘bureaucrat’ in question reacts appropriately or has good intuition, etc. But is not such a good thing when the bureaucrat is not a good guy or gal or wields in error. It sounds just fine in the situation you mentioned. But in a way it was obvious to tighten the regulation notches. He had pretty much put himself in the potential trouble category - setting off rapist, bully warning bells - and thus should move more slowly toward information, guests, access, goals in general.

Generalizing is the human/confused thing. For example - maybe this guy beats up half the women he has a date with. After encountering you, he goes off and the next day he is chatting with a colleague about fucking little hitler bureaucrats. The colleague, who does not know him well, has had an encounter with someone at the Bureau of Transportation who followed guidelines to a T for no good reason making him make a 50 drive when the guy could have just stamped a form and he knew that.

So we have two guys talking - the one you met - a dangerous dick - and his colleague - a nice honest person - and for a moment they bond about asshole bureaucrats. But in the former case the bureaucrat was right on both for practical concerns - safety of guests - and in terms of justice, and in the latter case the bureaucrat was out of line and just some sadistic dick enjoying the little power he has.

3

MoreSillyStuff,

Exactly, I couldn’t agree with you more!!!

Where my question comes from is because obviously the job of hotel manager is not, by definition, a bureaucratic job. Working at the DMV is. Being the guy that a cop has to fill out twenty pages of forms for and ask the cop 3,475 questions when the cop fired his gun at someone that was firing at him, that’s bureaucratic, by definition.

My question, now that we have both acknowledged that there are times where being bureaucratic is acceptable, is (in all seriousness) do people that go for jobs that are, by definition, bureaucratic by and large have some kind of inferiority complex?

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I can only project myself onto the entire world’s population and say yes. I mean at least in part. Though I have to say bureaucratic or creativityless jobs can be sort of relaxing. I knew a brain surgeon who retired, but they did work doing people’s taxes. He found it meditative and pleasant. I suppose the lack of ‘oops now you can’t walk or remember your teen years’ moments made tax form filling in sort of like knitting.

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I’m actually stuck in a bureaucratic job which i hate - absolutely loathe - i think in order to enjoy having a position like mine one either has to be not terribly bright (i.e. the intellect of, say, a gifted sixth grader) or have some sort of neurotic malfunction resulting in control issues like an inferiority complex or mild meglomania - it also helps to have a fondness for paperwork, since bureaucracy is built on paperwork - checklists, signatures, insipid verbiage and redundancy, redundancy, redundancy. It’s a bacteria, a mold of bullshit that feeds on paper, growing exponentially wherever there is law, regulation - all it really does is defer liability indefinitely so no one has to make a decision until the question finally lands in the lap of one of the aforementioned freaks of nature who actually enjoy their place amidst the forest of bullshit and are willing to exert power arbitrarily. I work for a person like that - smart, but perversely fond of exercising arbitrary power over people. I don’t know if it’s a form of conceit or what - but there are definitely control issues involved, i wouldn’t be surprised if it were frustrated parents who wanted but were never able to have children - i know a lot of those in my line of work . . .

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Very interesting.

I only like exercising arbitrary power over someone if they piss me off, or I have other good reason to. I would not like a job where I am forced to constantly exert arbitrary power over people.

I do like paperwork, though.

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PM thanks for that I enjoy a story where the dickhead causes his own demise.

But to the meat of your OP,I fly constantly and schedule changes coupled with lifes liitle surprise leaves me out in the cold occassionally and I am left to deal with an employee (note I said employee rather than proprietor, a person who is doing the job for a wage). These people are not share holders they certainly feel obligated to complete the transaction, but they are not obligated to take abuse for an issue that is usually beyond their control, and that is when the person behind the counter becomes a bureaucrat. They distance themselves from you as a person by being all official. They feel safe in the knowledge that their actions are pissing you off but at the same time they are sticking to the job spec of their position.

I have found that you catch more flys with honey than you do with vinegar, sometimes they can not help and you are going to be disadvantaged but sometimes they go that extra mile for you because your relationship to them stays at person to person and not escalated to angry client and employee playing bureaucrat.

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Pav–

Bureacracies run on rules. Rules can be used to facilitate or to frustrate personal agendas. In the OP you were using the rules to frustrate that guy’s agenda. In that case you were intentionally using the rules to that end. The same thing can occur unintentionally when a bureaucrat does not know how to work the rules effectively.

You were using confidentiality rules. Those have a two-edged effect. They are designed to protect a client’s privacy. But they can also be used to prevent client from accessing information like you did.

Bureacrats can use rules passive-aggressively which was basically what you were doing. They are prevented by the rules from directly acting aggressively toward clients so it is one effective strategy that is left to them. People who are acting rude should be aware of this. You could have kept the game going without ever helping the asshole get in touch with his date.