inaugurating the Carnival of the Bureaucrats

Faceless bureaucrats — show your faces! I am now welcoming submissions to the new (ugh) Carnival of the Bureaucrats.

Rules:

1. Submissions must come from bloggers with a day job in a bureaucracy.
2. Except as provided in rules 3 to 5, and subject to the waiver procedure established under rule 7, to be eligible under rule 1 persons must work in an organization:
   1. that has been in existence for at least a generation, where a generation means:
      1. the lesser of one-half the average lifespans of males and females; or if such data is not available
      2. thirty-five (35) years;
   2. that produces mainly documents edited at least twenty-five times, where
      1. edits made higher up in the editing chain to edits made lower in the editing chain count as separate edits
      2. conflicting edits made to the same text by different departments count as separate edits
      3. where more than one department is asked to prepare the same document under different directions, edits will be accounted separately for the different versions of the document;
   3. that has at least 500 employees, such that
      1. there is at least one manager for every three workers;
      2. ten meetings for every tentative decision; and
      3. it’s always the other person’s responsibility.
3. All persons with jobs in traditional media (newspapers, magazines, television, radio, and phone companies) are eligible.
4. All persons working in government, so long as they have not participated in “re-inventing government” initiatives, are eligible.
5. Any person who has received from an employer a matching pen-and-pencil set, a clock, or a longevity-based service plaque, is eligible.
6. Posts on any topic are eligible, but posts may not include the phrases “stupid bureaucrats,” “dumb bureaucrats,” “mindless bureaucrats,” or any other similar terms that the organizer may specify in the public interest.
7. Waivers to these rules will be considered upon request.