Bureaucracy in Action
May 2, 2007 · Print This Article
One of my clients is a Fortune 500 company. They need some help setting up some software for their developer teams. According to their contractor policy, no consultant can come on the premises unless they have a signed PO. That seems to make sense, but here is the problem: They recently upgraded their PO system and it didn’t quite go according to plan. No one in the entire company can create a PO. So I can’t come on their property until the system is fixed.
What would be really ironic is if I was the person they needed to fix their purchase order system. I wouldn’t be able to fix it until it was working. 
Joseph Heller would be proud!
And to think the person who made that decision gets paid the big bucks.
I’ll tack on a friend’s experience to this:
She lost her driver’s license. To get a new one, she needs to fill out a form, and get it notarized. To get the form notarized, she needs government-issued photo ID.
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