There is a light beyond these trees.

Today is not a day I will be dilatory. A coworker is out ill. Sickness here means that everybody must take on the pieces of that person’s daily assigned cases. If you have an adjournment, if you have any openings, you pick up the slack. Pitching in like this is how it should be. The people we are set to see are taking off time from work and making plans for travel to the hearing site. Sometimes these plans to get to the hearing site can be very convoluted and involve asking ex-spouses to drive a person there. At this point I have an opening and thus I am thinking it will be filled. No catch up time today. 

Right now I must go out to a server and pull down old case files to prepare for tomorrow. What this means is that someone, a clerical staffer, has seen that we held a pervious hearing and that a decision was rendered. If it has been handled correctly, and that can be a big if, the sheet I have in the current case file jacket will have a reference number that will lead me to the prior Order. Problems with this assumption can include, the film may have not actually been created, the document was destroyed in the microfilming process or the film ordered is not the correct one. Any number of problems may exist with this search but I have to check. 

Over the years there has been a reduction of clerical support for my job. The net result is that about 30-35% of what I do now used to be done by someone making 1/4th my salary. But in government it is all about headcount. If you reduce the workforce by 20% that number is touted. The fact that you are using higher priced resources for lower valued tasks is not brought to the fore. The reduction of the workforce by a 1/5th with a reduction of efficiency by 1/4th and a reduction of costs by at best a 1/10th is an equation that just does not make sense to me. 

Large organizations are just inherently flawed.