Yesterday's blog on bureaucracy, "Government has no corner on bureaucracy", was getting rather long, and so I stopped before I thought of too many more. Here are three of those.
Very early on, before downsizing became a big buzzword, I counted 21 levels of management above me - supervisor, x manager, manager of a, y group manager, group manager of b, z director, director of c, and so on. If every manager had five people reporting to him, then they could organize the whole world and beyond.
At one location it was a standing joke that if you wanted to mail something outside the building you should take it to the public mail box outside. It would get there at least a day faster than if it went through the company mail room.
Years later in another location an accountant wondered why so many companies leasing equipment weren't making payments. He discovered that our company wasn't sending out invoices.
