Les Bonnes Choses

And this report, from the department of I Can't Fathom It Done Any Other Way is courtesy of the auditing company responsible for verifying the status of dependents claimed by Northwestern employees in their benefits packages. I understand the motivation behind the audit, but you'd think the company hired to carry out the audit might have a better handle on the manner in which may appear the various forms the documentation for which they asked. Verification of my children, for example, required the submission of long-form copies of their birth certificates. Period. Fine and well if your jurisdiction has long-form birth certificates. The one in which mine were born does not. And so they could not be verified -- at least, not without a phone call to the company during which I had to remind myself that the person with whom I was speaking was not the short-sighted idiot to whom my irritation should be directed. Assuming that Northwestern - an organization with enough foreign employees to warrant an International Office - paid for the service, you'd think the company they hired would have the wherewithal to apprehend that children are very often born outside the United States.