Bureaucracy

Back on April 22nd I posted about a form I had been remiss in returning to the office at one of my universities, and why I was so reluctant to fill it in. Having blogged about it, I then forgot about it again. After all, my unconscious mind reasoned sneakily, I had ALREADY thought about it, so therefore it was as good as done, right?

On Thursday one of the secretaries in the university ran after me as I was leaving the teachers' room.

"I don't think you have filled in that form yet," she said accusingly. "It was due three weeks ago."

"Which form?" I asked innocently.

She showed me. I jumped when I saw it, remembering the blogging, and tried not to look guilty.

"I'll fill it in right now," I assured her, and went back inside.

That was when I discovered that I didn't have all the information with me. The secretary watched me leaving gaps all over the form.

"I'm very sorry," I told her, "But I seem to have left most of the papers at home. I can't remember this information. This one is either room 501 or 505, and I think it's building B2. Or B1. These might be 11-207, or 11-209, but I'm not sure which."

The secretary sighed and looked up the information for me. It took five seconds and there it was - my name, classes, majors, and times. I gaped, closed my mouth firmly, and started copying it onto the form.

"Who is this form for, anyway?" I asked, thinking there had to be a halfway logical explanation.

"It's for us," she told me. "If you call in sick we have to inform all the departments which classes are cancelled."

She didn't even have the grace to look embarrassed. Or, more frighteningly, perhaps she didn't see anything to be embarrassed about. Is it possible that she didn't even NOTICE that she was asking me to fill in a form telling her information that she had just looked up and given me herself?