Monday, March 23, 2009

Fun With Government Bueracrats

I can honestly say that I have never had an experience with government ineptness like I'm having right now. I am trying to get a no-cost (key phrase, NO COST) extension on my grant to finish up my project. The original letter was sent to the agency in charge on October 30th by UPS next-day air. We have the proof it was delivered and signed for. There is some evidence a government bueracrat read it and then sat on it. For months. I called in early December and they promised it by Dec. 19th. That day came and went and no approval letter. I then went to the next person on my list. She assured me it was approved and we should be getting the letter soon. Well, still no letter.

Fast forward to last week. We've been assigned to a new government bueracrat and she says "this is a highly irregular request and we'll see." She's also promising a "complete investigation" of what happened. Yeah, right.

We have a full e-mail to send to her tomorrow that has documentation of all our steps and hopefully they will see the light and just freakin' approve the extension. I could understand a little better if we didn't have a good excuse or we had waited until now to request it. But no, this was requested in OCTOBER (original contact was early Sept.). That's five months ago. Only in government could you be so inept at your job and actually get paid for it. What really burns me is that this is my (and your) tax dollars at work.

And this is the group you want managing health care? Seriously!?

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