Les Bonnes Choses

Looking back, there have been a number of recurring themes in the sorts of things that motivate me to write. One of them is the thought that being a productive member of society often involves doing wasteful things in order to waste money on useless things. Nothing epitomizes this better than the bureaucracy. Interestingly, business-minded people must be aware of this, because the first thing to get cut after a corporate merger is middle-management. And yet, it persists.

Am I being uncharitable in my rather negative description of the sorts of make-work clerical positions that currently have me riled up? You decide: I arrived at school today to find a message in my email inbox from the Northwestern HR department, asking me to call regarding a benefit for which I had applied that entitles me to a contribution towards Jude's preschool costs. The entitlement depends on my income, which they determine from the previous year's IRS filing. As a newly-arrived Canadian, I have no such documentation, but was told to provide the equivalent Canadian documentation -- I provided my CRA notice of assessment from 2008. The problem was in an inconsistency between the value I listed as my income, and the fact that my CRA assessment indicates that I have been living in the sort of squalour normally found in the slums of Calcutta. Once this issue was sorted out, the HR contact informed me that, during the Open Enrollment period, I would have to re-enroll for this benefit. This entails re-applying on the HR website, and (here's the punchline) because I will not have submitted anything to the IRS, will require me to come into the HR office again and provide the very same documents she had in front of her. Now, keep in mind that the Open Enrollment period begins in 12 days. All I could think of was suggesting she seal the documents into an envelope and in a couple of weeks, open it up and pretend it was a big surprise!

Now, I'm not suggesting that this woman doesn't deserve a livelihood. It's just that the money spent paying her to make my life more difficult might be better used. Hey, they still haven't figured out how to pay for healthcare down here, have they?