Tank Karazhy was an amiable guy and a great listener, just the sort of guy you want to talk to when you wanted to vent. I soon became a regular at his office.

I collapsed in the chair with a sigh.

“Tank, how the hell does any work get done around here?”

“Mmm?” Tank looked up from his laptop and swiveled around in his chair. “No real secret. Never give up. Eventually things do get done; it just takes tremendous amounts of time and effort.” “I figured that. It’s just getting really tiresome to get something done while working against your own team at the same time.” “Team?” Tank chuckled. “That’s the first misconception you have to get over here. There is no team; it’s just a group of petty clerks. This extends into management as well. If you haven’t found that out by now, you will. If you don’t expect any teamwork, you might be pleasantly surprised once in awhile.”

“Man, you are so right. I turned in a travel request form a month ago, and Sally just told me that because I didn’t get the dollar amount exactly right, I would have to redo the entire form. Like hell I will! It took a month just to get all the appropriate signatures on that form. That amount is just an estimate anyway; once the City approves the travel, it will pay whatever the actual cost is. If this was such a problem to begin with, then why did she sign off on it the first time?”

“Ha. Typical clerk behavior. There is no point in appealing to their sense of logic; they are literalists when it comes to rules. That’s bad in itself, but the real killer is when you combine that the unprofessionalism. This is the most unprofessional place I’ve ever worked. I’m 56 years old and have been around the block a few times, so that’s saying something. At any given moment, the outcome of any task here depends entirely on someone’s mood. To complicate things ever further, Sally takes perverse pleasure out of saying ‘No.’ You know Jimmie? He’s always running delivering stuff, so we wanted to get him a City cell phone. Sally said, ‘Temps don’t get cell phones.’ Of course that isn’t true, but it delayed Jimmie’s phone for several weeks.” “Ouch. So why not just get rid of her? Or move her, or whatever.” “Fire someone? Impossible, given our Discipline without Consequences policy. I’ve been here two years, and the best we could do is get someone indefinitely suspended. And that took several hearings, mountains of paperwork, and over a year to achieve. You can’t officially move people, although we did manage to move one just before you got here. But that was because we actually offered her a promotion to a different position.”

“Discipline without Consequences?” I burst out laughing. “That’s a good one. Let me guess, the person promoted was Delita?”

“Yeah.”

LOL. So that’s what happened. Delita apparently had nothing better to do than walk by the front desk five hundred times a day, and she always gave me special attention. Apparently my position was formerly hers. Obviously she missed the action of the front desk, so she wanted her old job back – at the higher salary, of course. Apparently, her plan was to kill me with kindness.

I sighed. “You know, a crappy team is much worse than no team at all. At least when you are alone, you don’t have to rely on anyone else. When can I expect some competent teammates?”

“Don’t expect anything around here, if you want to remain sane, because you’ll almost always be disappointed. If you hope instead of expect, you’ll be a lot happier. But to answer your question, we’re working on it, but it could be a couple of months given how HR works here. You see, just as we can’t get bad people out, it’s difficult to get good people in.”

OMG, how much more stupidity can I take? I paused for a good ten seconds to collect myself for the next blow. “Ok, hit me.”

“Well, you see, the City pays relatively little yet maintains relatively high standards. The old saying should actually be, ‘Beggars can’t be choosers…unless they are governments.’ Despite this, enough good people trickle in to keep the system afloat. You are probably familiar with this already since you’ve worked in the public sector before. The kicker here is that the City is a stickler for rules, so if you don’t meet the ‘minimum qualifications’ you have absolutely no shot at getting the job.”

“That actually doesn’t sound that unreason…”

“Yeah, that’s the thing about rules around here. They sound good on paper, but in real life, they are impractical. Consider your own case. You know why it took so long for us to call you back? We were trying to figure out if you actually qualified for any admin positions. You see, we can’t just hire anyone we want – we must choose a title from a catalog of existing job titles formulated by Downtown. Even though you are obviously overqualified, on paper you may not enough admin experience.” I laughed. “Let me see here…you can’t get rid of anyone, and you can’t hire anyone. No incentive to improve. Apparently communism is alive and well…in America, of all places.” “Welcome to the CCCP.” Sound familiar? Share your story below.