Efficiency? In Government?!?!

Kazzy

One man. Two boys. Twelve kids.

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7 Responses

  1. EB says:

    That seems way more confusing to me, actually. Were they at risk of running out of internet, so they had to be concise?Report

    • Kazzy in reply to EB says:

      It does? Re-typing it out is certainly more “idiot proof”. I tend to have high — often too-high — expectations for my fellow humans. But it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me to expect people to apply the same definition across different contexts.Report

      • Mike Schilling in reply to Kazzy says:

        It wouldn’t have been hard to write a script that read the other page, did the substitutions, and displayed the result. No hand-copying required.Report

      • Kazzy in reply to Kazzy says:

        Oh, no doubt. But to me, there is a certain beauty in saying, “The answer is the same as the one I just gave you… just sub X for Y.” That is how most normal, quasi-intelligent people would respond if they were involved in a verbal exchange and were asked such questions. It is explicitly not appealing to the lowest common denominator. And it’s efficient.Report

      • Damon in reply to Kazzy says:

        Trust me Kazzy, even if you expect the worst, you’ll always find someone to break the “idiot proof” ness.

        I used to work for a billion dollar company getting Operating companie’s financial forecasts for the next 5 years-full balance sheet, income statement, etc. Every year, my group of 5 would rewrite the instructions, review it, get it peer reviewed, boss reviewed, vp reviewed to ensure it was CLEAR TO ALL WHAT TO DO. 48 hours after sending it out we’d get a question. Most were of the “didn’t read it”, but there were a few so that reflected such a dense mind that you wondered how they were able to function. Yah, I was sending these requests for info to VPs of Finance in operating compaies that were 500M to 1B plus in revenues–people alledgedly competetent, and well versed in finance….

        Right……Report

      • Kim in reply to Kazzy says:

        Damon,
        “You, you’re the CFO now!”
        “What does the CFO do?”
        “he writes reports to our investors! We’ve got one due tommorrow.”

        the SEC (who mandates the filings) was not
        amused to find a few pages of literally “blah blah blah” in the middle.Report