Bureaucracy means 'bureau' and 'crazy'?

Bureaucracy means 'bureau' and 'crazy'?

JAKARTA (JP): As a teacher at a university, I had to get the
rector's signature on an important document a couple of weeks
ago. I was quite confident that it would only take a minute since
I heard the rector was nice and easygoing.

Armed with this attitude, I headed to his office. My
confidence diminished a bit when his secretary told me that since
I was a teacher at the institution, I had to get a letter of
reference from the bureau for academic administration.

So I went to the bureau and explained my purpose to the person
in charge. He assured me that all the papers would be ready and
signed by the following day. Well, while it wasn't as easy as I
first hoped it would be, at least everything would be finished by
tomorrow.

Or so I thought.

The next day, I went back to the bureau as instructed to pick
up my papers and found myself up against a stumbling block.

The man I talked to the previous day was not there, replaced
by a woman. She looked at me with glaring eyes demanding what I
was doing there. I explained that I had come to collect my signed
papers.

"What papers?"

I told her. She stared hard for a moment before she went to a
desk covered with papers and fumbled through the mound looking
for my documents. Finally coming upon them, she read through
each critically.

"Don't you know you have to have a reference from the dean for
this?" she barked as she spotted the first flaw.

My heart sank, but I calmly said that I would get the letter
of reference and be back with it after lunch.

As promised, I returned to the bureau after lunch. The lady
was sitting at her desk glaring at some papers as if trying to
will them out of existence.

I politely disturbed her concentration and handed her the
letter of reference. After scrutinizing it for a while, she
spoke. "This is not exactly what I wanted."

By nature, I am a considerably patient person but this lady
was really stretching my ability to grin and bear it.

"Do you want me to go back to the dean and get you another
letter?" I asked, a little edge creeping into my voice.

"Not really, but this is not the kind of letter I was
expecting."

"Well, that's what I got from the dean."

"OK then, if you want to put it that way." She stopped for a
moment, thinking hard of some other way to make my life
miserable.

She finally found it. "Your papers weren't typed up properly."

"I typed every word of it according to the model the Ministry
of Education and Culture gave to me." I took out a fax sheet from
the ministry and handed it to her.

She skimmed it and could not put her finger on a defect, which
I suspect disappointed her to no end.

"When will my papers be ready?" I asked.

"Try calling me some time next week," she said in a tone that
suggested, "if I'm in the mood, I might come round to it some
time this year".

I pride myself for walking out of that office without losing
my composure, although I did explode later that night when I got
a call from a friend.

He happened to stop by the bureau that day after I left. He
met this lady and she complained to him about how incompetent I
was in this kind of thing. After having her say about me, she
returned all of my papers to him with instructions that she
wanted it done "properly" this time. That's when I started to do
my exploding.

"Welcome to the wonderful world of bureaucracy," my friend
said.

Welcome indeed. After this incident, I realized that
bureaucracy is the combination of two words: bureau and crazy.
Combining the two words, some Greek scholar from ages ago decided
to change the letter z to the letter c, because it was easier to
pronounce the sound s than the sound z.

Taking the two words above, bureaucracy has the following
meaning -- the process of driving other people crazy because of
the work which takes place on a desk.

I personally think that the only way to deal with bureaucracy
without going insane is to persevere. Never let bureaucrats get
you down, because they take pleasure in the suffering of us
common people. It makes them more powerful. The more we persevere
when dealing with them, the weaker they become.

Any way is considered legal when dealing with bureaucracy.
Until recently, maneuvering through bureaucracy in Indonesia
meant spending some money. The more you spent, the quicker you
saw the results.

However, I did not want to give the lady the pleasure of both
squeezing me like a bug and spending the money which I have
worked so hard to get.

I sidestepped her instead. Due to the secrecy involved, I am
not allowed to disclose the path I took. The most important thing
is that all my documents are now finally settled and I feel
absolutely great for outsmarting the lady. It is the ultimate
reward for traversing the wonderful world of bureaucracy.

-- Laila Faisal