Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2012

I wonder, is there any such thing as a bureaucracy that isn’t dysfunctional?  This thought occurred to me, as I was frustrated trying to register my son for high school earlier today.  Currently, he’s visiting family out-of-state, so I was to register for him.  Two weeks ago, we called and were told that would be fine, as long as I had the completed packet with me.  I did. 

Arriving at the school in heat reminiscent of a humid convection oven, I stood in line and had a few of the forms taken from me and filed.  Arriving at the third station, I was told that I didn’t have the passport registration form.  I mentioned that according to the paperwork the school had sent, I was to get that in the line I was currently in.  That’s when the “fun” began.

That woman smiled and told me that, no, I needed to go stand in a half-hour-long line to get said passport from the main office, despite it being printed that here is where I was to get it.  Not being a mind reader and not wanting to be unpleasant, I smiled at the woman and told her thanks for the info and that I’d be back.

I went the end of that line and sweated my way through the next half hour without any aid of shade, only to be told when I reached the head of the line that as of this year, parents would not be allowed to register for their kids.

What?!

I explained how my son was out-of-state and we’d called two weeks back to make sure it would be all right for me to register him, as I’ve done other times with my other kids.  The woman repeated that I would not be able to register for him.  That he had to do so in person.  When I asked when and where that information had been posted so we might have been made a ware, I was told, “Oh, I don’t know, but I’m sure it showed up somewhere.”

Really?  Did she just brush me off in such a flippant manner?

At this point, I had to return to reclaim the forms that had already been taken from me.  Ironically, when I showed up at one of the stations, the exact woman who had received that form from me told me she had “no idea where she’d put it.”

OMG, is she kidding?

Counting to ten and smiling at the woman, I waited patiently after encouraging her to look again.  That it had to be there since I’d just given it to her.  The woman finally found the missing form and handed it back to me but not before chit-chatting with the other woman at nearby stations about if they were aware that parents couldn’t register for their kids this year.  One of the women, a mom I assumed, smacked her bubble gum noisily and said, “Oh, yeah, I think I heard something about that.”

Did I mention this was the same woman who had also taken one of my forms?  The very form I handed her to register for my son?

Good grief talk about being inept!

Heading home, armed with the needed registration forms, I called my son and explained that he would have to register himself.  Course, he was upset, having been completely on top of making sure I’d get him registered, even going so far as to send me a friendly wakeup text about it early this morning.  It was then that I got to wondering….

 My junior son was capable of being more organized than the bureaucratic process necessary to register him for school.  So…if an eleventh-grader is more organized than the adults who collectively comprise the bureaucratic process, then what chance do we stand of expecting much from said bureaucracy when it comes to educating our kids, much less getting them properly registered?  Also, due to the disorganization, I had to wonder, is there any such thing as a bureaucracy that isn’t dysfunctional?