Anyone with a few years in the working world will agree with this…bureaucracy sucks. ‘Never underestimate the stupidity of people in large groups’.
I have been working for a living for close to 32 years now and I dislike (hate) bureaucracies. In one way they actually perform a function in that a general and uniform code of behavior and ethics is established but the downfall is the sometimes complete depersonalization of the individual being served. And in a corporation whose job is to serve those who need help in whatever way…this depersonalization is downright sad.
Case in point:
My job was to model so-called ‘normal’ behavior for an individual recovering from substance abuse who also had a co-occurring mental instability. To perform my job I went to see this individual, who we will call Tom, every working day to bring him out in society and teach him how to interact in any conceivable situation.
And I started this job right after Tom, who was living in his own apartment, relapsed and threatened physical violence to his case manager which landed him in a ‘lock-down’ ward for the violently behaviorally disturbed.
Yes, I was starting at a disadvantage but I persevered for a year teaching Tom all the ways to survive in the real world. But I could not overcome his fear of being independent.
Tom learned rather quickly that in a hospital situation such as his the person who ’screams’ the loudest will get the attention…negative attention, maybe, but attention nonetheless.
Tom learned that violent behavior was the way to get everyone at the hospital focused on him, especially the female nurses whose attention he so desperately craved. Yes, it got him physically restrained but it also got him a woman holding his hand and speaking softly to him for an hour or so to calm him down.
Anyone with a basic concept of behaviorism will see how reinforcing this was…
Tom was now not allowed to own or see any violent or sexually explicit movies but this did not bother him; whenever he was in the mood for such movies he would merely borrow the DVD’s from fellow inmates and watch them.
Tom now listened closely to staff for guidelines as to his behavior. For instance, if the local doctor said, ‘low fat diet’ then Tom would make it his business to ‘pig out’; in fact he ballooned up to 350 pounds when this happened.
Whatever staff did not want, Tom did…he was manipulating staff and the bureaucracy. I was relegated to a side attraction, a vehicle for upsetting staff in that I took him into the world for him to perform his mischief but the real ‘golden ring’ was the female nurse attention.
Suffice it to say that Tom’s behavior became worse and worse to the point that he threatened suicide by smashing a CD and threatening to cut his wrists. It was all a ploy in my mind, because I witnessed this, but the CD proved sharper than Tom realized so he actually did cut his wrists. I remember the shocked look on his face as the blood gushed from his arm.
Later, my place of employment who really serviced those in a somewhat stable frame of mind, gave up and we dropped him…
All that potential wasted…
And when we dropped him I was not allowed to give him any advance notice of when I was leaving or to even tell him I was leaving for fear that this would cause his violent behavior to escalate.
I remember that last day being with Tom, eating out and planning what to do the next week, all the while unable to say ‘goodbye’ to this person I had grown to care about over the past year.
In this case the bureaucracy did Tom an inservice which I got to witness first hand; instead of helping him in a proactive way we merely reacted to his manipulatory behavior. The real victim here is Tom….
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