Amazing Incompetence

Through most of my life I have had a feeling that I'm not quite doing things as well as I should, and that I'm going to get in trouble as a result. This was particularly true in my last couple of jobs where the workload was not very large. My character is such that I dislike pointless working, busy work, or just doing stuff to look like you are working. Allied with my mood changes so that I sometimes I have loads of energy and other times very little my working style has been bursts of efficient activity interspersed with periods of loafing. Because I am lazy I like to get things done and out of the way, to remove the power of this guilt and because it requires the least amount of work to simply do things efficiently, right away.

So I often feel as though I am not particularly hard-working or competent in getting things done (in contrast I very rarely feel incompetent or ill-equipped in terms of thinking about or understanding things). This is close to my default position, and I have learned to identify how useful this can be. However, from time-to-time my default position is challenged by the activity in the world around me. The actual amount of stuff that gets done by apparently busy people is revealed, the person in the business suit with a brusque attitude and a go-getter vibe turns out to have no clue what they are supposed to be doing, and professionals simply cannot perform basic functions. My reaction then turns to bafflement at the number of people who simply cannot do things who remain employed.

The last few months have revealed a particularly heinous example of the pervasiveness of incompetence. This is our experience with our local post office. I have mentioned this before here but the depth of idiocy continues to the extent that I am beginning to suspect malice. I will try to keep this as short as possible.

When we first moved in we were receiving lots of mail from previous tenants. I went to the post office to make clear that we were the only residents in our house. Over the next couple of months the amount of mail we received dropped dramatically (while the previous residents' mail continued to arrive) and we started getting reports of mail being returned as undeliverable. I returned to the post office and explained the situation, but the situation continued to worsen until I returned a third time and was given a phone number of those who were in charge of forwarding mail. it turns out that when I said we were the only residents this was reported as us having moved with no forwarding address. I asked for this to be changed and waited. There was no change and I returned to the post office and met with Laura, a supervisor who promised to make the change herself and send out a letter from the post office to check that it had been successful. In the week following we received no letter from the post office and four times as much mail for previous tenants than for ourselves. I called Laura yesterday and she asked me to call today at 8:30am so that I could talk to her and the carrier simultaneously. I called today and Laura won't be in until 11am.

My point is that this is a level of incompetence of a mind-boggling level, the inability of a post office to deliver mail with my name on it to my address despite multiple complaints, and yet everyone there is still working. This is a government job, but I have seen excellent work by government employees and have had arguments with those working in big business who claim it would be impossible for government workers to be any more incompetent than big business.

When I compare my life to the general public I start with the knowledge that I have been luckier than the vast majority, but that I have also made far fewer deeply dumb decisions than many. That my present situation is easier and more pleasant than most, that I have an enviable life in many respects is not simply a case of me being lucky but also me being very competent at life. Today I need to go and be angry at strangers, which is some distance from my favorite thing to do, but pleasantness has not worked.