Just so there is less confusion I work in driver training in the state of Washington for a private company under the authority of the Department of Licensing (DOL)…This is my story.
Where to start? Every time I take a client on a road test (the drive test portion of getting your license) I have to fill out a little form, on this form there is a spot for the name of the school I work for, a spot for the location (city) of the school I work for, AND a spot for the schools number…the number which is unique to each school and stands for School X location Y. Writing the name/location takes about 5 seconds which I suppose isnt to bad for 2 completely redundant bits of information until you realize that there are 170,000 road tests in Washington each year, and that if you found a person with perfect memory who could look at a list of school numbers and instantly know the name and location of each you could pay this person to do this instead. At 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, it would only take them 6 fucking weeks. When I asked the head of the DOL directly why we had to fill out 2 completely redundant bits of information instead of just the number I was told “Because” (True story bra!)
That is 6 weeks of government mandated Pissing away your life on truly trivial bullshit, but it gets better, there are these things called ESCR reports (or something like that) that have to be filled out also. These take roughly 30 seconds per client to compile and are then sent to the DOL…We compile them FROM THE DOL’s OWN GOD DAMN DATABASE. Thats right, We the driving instructors of Washington state are spending 11 months (combined) each year sending the DOL information that they already have.
Adding up even these 2 items on the list of stupid shit the DOL mandates pisses me off to no end, but it gets better. Among the many things I am required to teach my Drivers Ed students under government mandate is Meth. Yes in drivers ed I have to take time to talk about saying no to meth. Call it 15 minutes of class, multiply this by the number of students (WAG 100k per year state wide) I will ignore the instructor in this equation and you come up with NEARLY 3 FUCKING YEARS of human life thrown away on shit that has no relevance to the matter at hand. Toss in “Backing around a corner” (stupid shit we do on the road test up here in WA because testing people on shit that might get someone killed is silly but testing them on their ability to jump through bullshit hoops designed by semi retarded chimps is really important) at roughly 20 minutes per student and now you are at about 6 years worth of human life tossed out the window on shit that has no reason other than bureaucratic inertia and plain old human dumbfuckery.
Dear Luddites {aka you stupid fucks at the DOL}
Pen and paper is archaic. Your personal Beliefs are a shitty way to create mandates for driver training. You are old, Out of Touch, and Ignorant as fuck about the industry you work in. You moan about how you cant shut down shitty schools that are breaking the law but you never post school rankings for the public to see, (hint, Shit schools will go under when people stop coming to them) You claim you want the industry to improve but continue to offer fuck all when it comes to actual improvement. When Asked point blank when you were going to start offering feedback to Instructors and Schools regarding their standing (safety wise) compared to other schools and instructors you honestly thought the question was about the drive test…(ok the Head of the Dol thought it was about the drive test, I cant speak for anyone else there) as if the drive test has a single thing to do with safe driving. Here is a simple suggestion, Find all those people in the industry who keep coming up with these crazy ideas that you cant understand or even follow their train of thought and offer them your jobs. Cause you people suck. (note I have met these people that work at the Dol, they are good people, passionate people, I like them all for the most part and I wish them the best…in another industry)
TL;DNR FUCK THE FUCKING DOL UP THE ASS WITH A BUSTED BROOM HANDLE LOADED WITH RUSTY NAILS AND THE BLACK PLAGUE
[ol]
[li]You have spend an extra 5 seconds filling out redundant information on a gov’t form.[/li]
[li]You have to spend another 30 seconds filling out a different form.[/li]
[li]You have to tell your students not to do meth.[/li]
[li]You’re pissed off about these things.[/li][/ol]
I’m still working on that last long paragraph. I may have to get back to you on that one, or let someone else attempt to decipher it. I suspect it contains what you are primarily pissed off about, but fuck if I know what you’re talking about.
May I suggest you either find a line of work that doesn’t aggravate you so much, or just try not to take it so seriously? It ain’t your whole life, man, it’s just a job.
I took my driving test when I was sixteen. I’d been warned about a notorious red-haired witch of an employee who seemed to delight in failing applicants, and sure enough she was the one who did my test. And sure enough, she was the angriest, bitterest, surliest person I’d ever met. I passed, just barely— a detail that she snarled at my mother before grudgingly granting my permit.
I haven’t thought about her in a long time. Thanks, Critical1!
Ugh, seriously. I thought I was going to read about how your dog had cancer, your mom got fired, your sister was homeless, and all kinds of drama like that that would make you say ‘fuck my life’. But no, I get a weak-ass rant about fucking paperwork? I want my money back.
I’m a flight instructor, which means I deal with the FAA. I fill out lots of their forms, some on paper, some digitally. If I could spend as little time per student as you do on such things I’d be in heaven.
I teach public school. For redundant, hand-written records, check out the cum folder for an ELL or SpEd kid. Everything has to be documented in three different places, and then all stuck in there.
And actually I am fine with the “write the number and the name” system: it’s like zip code and city/state. Enough people transpose a couple digits or something that it saves time to have some sort of redundancy.
Pretend for a moment that your time on this earth is limited, and that your time spent doing things like learning is even more limited, then pretend that when you come to the end of your days you will look back on your life and reflect on all those endless hours spent pissing around on shit that matters to no one at all.
In all seriousness, I love half of my job. I love teaching. In order to teach I have to work with people who think that a computerized database is the work of the devil and instead use paper files in individual folders spread out over multiple locations and accessible to multiple people, any one of which can remove them from their proper spot and take them anywhere else. I cannot tell you how much fun it is telling the 8th customer that week that it will take about 6 man hours to track down their data so that their kid who is done with drivers ed can actually get their license.
You know, I can sympathize on a theoretical level - wouldn’t life be so much better if we never had to spend one second on redundant, excess or limited-value tasks?
OTOH, best of luck finding a job that has no such minor bureauwanking involved, that “waste” several minutes of your day writing information on official forms. As several have said and I can agree with… some of us would love to have a job that wastes only a few minutes a day on such stuff.
Methinks you really need a beer, a martini, a pill, a good night’s sleep or just a good BJ. Geddover it and count your blessings. (THAT will take you some time.)
I used to be a special ed teacher, loved it. A fair amount of paperwork. It increased exponentially when word gor out that I actually kept up with my paperwork, and took it seriously. So the director started giving me some of hers to do.
