Racing Turtles

love how the ming dynasty has a long series of really competent and hardworking and idealistic emperors who each get on the throne and go i’m going to be the best emperor ever, unlike my good-for-nothing predecessor who let the bureaucrats make all the decisions while he sat back and worked in his hobbies! and then they realize that the squabbling confucian bureaucracy has gridlocked the government so badly that the emperor couldn’t make any decisions even if he wanted to and they’re like ohhhh i get it now

i’ve seen people use the word “childish” to describe the zhengde emperor’s marie antoinette thing where he made all his ministers and eunuchs cosplay normal people in a fake marketplace with him, but honestly i think he was onto something. pretend with me for a minute that the most important thing in the world is not which faction’s interpretation of an eight word phrase in the analects is correct, but rather whether or not you can sell enough beancurd to make rent. sixteenth century touch grass

i think this is probably true of every office, but there's a middle aged woman working in business who doesn't hold any particular place in the chain of command but is Sovereign. i was running support and she has access to more secure network drives than i do. im pretty sure she has an admin account. i was having trouble with my parking pass and my boss just said to talk to kristen- one day later i had parking in any garage on campus. she's not even in charge of parking in our building

This is also true of academia. In pretty much any department of the university — in my experience at least — there’s a person with a small-but-private office and an unassuming title (probably including a word like “secretary” or “assistant”), usually an older woman, and she actually runs the place. Faculty defer to her; department heads come and go, but Jill has been there for thirty years and knows how everything works, and she’s the person you go to if you want to get anything done. You’ll know her because when a professor directs you to her they won’t say “you need to talk to the Office of So-and-So because this falls under their purview”, but “you need to talk to Jill.” Her official job title is basically irrelevant because her actual role is acting as eminence grise for this whole operation.

I’ve personally had the experience where my advisor told me “you should do such-and-such certification, go talk to Jill,” and I went to talk to Jill & she said “actually you can’t do such-and-such because XYZ,” so I went back to my advisor to relay this, and he just kind of shrugged and was like, “well if Jill says no, then it can’t be done” and that was the end of it. Complete veto power, no higher authority to turn to, because the only reason Jill can’t do something is if it’s literally impossible.

Honestly there’s probably a whole dissertation about invisible labor and gender dynamics in there waiting to be written.

The one in my undergrad department was Linda C, and I think her hypercompetence must have risen to the point of allowing her to manipulate time itself, because in my experience, every time you needed to talk to Ms. C, you would end up chatting with her for at least an hour (which was both enjoyable and informative) and yet she got so much work done--it just didn't seem physically possible.

Take secretaries and administrative assistants out of any organization and you'll see it crumble in no time. They are the holder of the secrets to understanding red tape and other administrative nightmares.

The whole project of corporate IT was trying to get rid of this type of person and it's why nothing works anymore and we're all dying

I was scheduled for a medical appointment 15 minutes before the clinic's admin staff return from lunch break, and the medical staff do not know where the check-in forms are kept. No one has any idea whatsoever what to do about this. Unprecedented situation. Suppressed panic.

I asked the front desk person whether they could tell me what insurances the dermatologist took, so I could pick a compatible one. Apparently only one staffer in the building could ask the computer system that question, and she wasn’t there.

It's WILD to me that we, as a culture, make such a huge deal out of government bureaucracy when CORPORATE bureaucracy is this manifestly incompetent.

In an odd inversion, my cis grandfather was marked as female on his DEATH certificate.

afad

I’m male whenever I’m on Brazilian soil because when I applied for a visa, the lady didn’t believe I was a cis woman and put male on my documents even after I complained twice, so I’m also amab (Assigned Male At BrazilianBorder)

my bestie is a cis woman and is amad (assigned male at drivingliscense)

While this is funny this really should highlight to people how deep transphobia runs. It diesn’t matter if you’re cis or trans, strangers in the world will just DECIDE based on apparent visual indicators that simply arent accurate. Cis women are not excempt from harrassment and being accused of being “secretly a man”. All arguments about single-sex spaces crumble when perceptiona of what women SHOULD look like simply arent accurate at all.

And even for simple admin errors, it highlighrs further how much these systems do not care about you. They won’t change your gender on your papers regardless of if you are or aren’t trans. It’s a simple mis-click that could result in you being accused of something like fraud and no one is going to listen to you or take your complaints seriously to fix it before that happens.

Tranaphobia is not exclusive to trans people, its a far wider issue and its time transphobes (and TERFs especially) picked up on that reality and realised what theyre actually doing to themselves.

working in a library, i encounter a lot of people who are in the process of filling out important forms, sending important faxes, and copying important documents. and the more important these things are, the more stressful, meaning i end up assisting a lot of really stressed people with a lot of really stressful paperwork, and have thus developed the ultimate line to immediately validate and empathize with their situation

“they don’t make it easy, do they?”

i nearly always use this line at some point in the conversation & it works without fail, because there is ALWAYS a they and they are ALWAYS not making it easy. you don’t have to specify who “they” are. you don’t even need to have an approximate idea of their role in this process.

job application? disability paperwork? insurance documents? financial aid paperwork? in any situation, the person visibly relaxes & enthusiastically agrees, because someone understands their plight: they are out there & they are NOT making it easy

my favourite thing about imperial radch is that when breq realizes she is part of an imperialistic hellscape that she cannot escape, her reaction is basically 'i think i will cause problems on purpose' and does so by weaponizing bureaucratic red tape against a dictator

these are way too good to leave in the tags

#you should fear me not bc im an ancillary but bc im a bureaucrat #Ancillary Justice #absolutely phenomenal (via eternal-wandering-one)

someday i’ll be done talking about homestuck but not today so here’s my headcanon: once they get to earth c they discover one of the reasons echidna determined that karkat was so important is that it turns out hes some kind of fucking public administrative savant. he is just terrifyingly good at bureaucracy and nobody knows why. dave is pretty content to fuck off and let troll kingdom govern itself, terezi’s busy, jade just sort of checks in occasionally, but karkat vantas? he was BORN for this. like if leslie goddamn knope was a bisexual teenage boy who wrote profanity laden dissertations on the cinematography of bridget jones. jade has a cute idea for a public works project and karkat has all the paperwork filled out and submitted in triplicate with construction started in about three hours. as far as anyone can tell he mostly just sits at his desk and yells at everyone (nobody else even has a desk, or an office, but he insisted on getting one) but somehow shit just Gets Done and everyone is impressed and a little unnerved

like listen. usage of his leadership skills? jack noir parallels? it’s funny? karkat gets to be useful and fulfilled and accomplished at something for once in his life? it’s perfect. c’mon. 

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The worst President. Ever.

Search is on for 7 missing U.S. sailors, cause of ship collision off Japan

@elucubrare i believe this is your department

I would read this

Changing.