I’LL TRANSFER YOU NOW

The post intended for today has been delayed by bureaucracy, so that has become my target.

Perhaps I asked for trouble, calling a business at 3 p.m. on a Friday in the hopes of reaching a representative, but I also had left a message the day before. No call back, and no hope remaining, I shook my head at this dysfunctional system I encountered, then shook it again in recognition that the system was actually functioning -- but as deflection against callers, rather than aid.

It makes me wonder if there’s a bureaucracy handbook, and what the name would be for the form I’d encountered:

An initial switchboard transfers calls to other departments, but there is no main switchboard in those individual departments, which are distant and out of line of sight (possibly even on another floor or in another building). Calls go to workers’ direct telephone numbers, even when those workers are away or talking to someone else, and calls that are not picked up go into workers’ individual voice mail. The voice mail may or may not suggest another number to call “in an emergency” or “if you need to talk to someone immediately,” but those numbers reach someone else’s voice mail.

The initial switchboard is contacted again, told of the troubles getting someone to answer the telephone, and callers are transferred again -- right back to the first phone number that didn’t pick up and, hence, back into voice mail. Pleas to the initial switchboard to be connected to a live person bring the explanation that the request is impossible to fulfill (the department being contacted cannot be seen from the switchboard) and the phone system is not set up to ring at an “overflow line” until someone picks up.

The caller may either keep calling extensions in that department until someone picks up or leave messages on each person’s voice mail in the hopes that one, or all, will call back.

It’s an elegant bureaucracy because the system disguises its own flaws. If a caller reaches someone, there cannot be a problem, so there cannot be anything to complain about; if a caller can’t reach someone, there’s no one to complain to. If a caller reaches someone and complains about the system anyway, they will simply be given that classic response: “But that’s the way the system’s set up.”