> Maybe they feeling a bit of the pain themselves might make them more likely to speak up. If this becomes a miserable job that no one will stay in, that might provoke a change.

Unfortunately, it might also just cause anyone who wants to do good to leave, leaving people who just need a job and don't care about doing good.

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scottlamb 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> Unfortunately, it might also just cause anyone who wants to do good to leave, leaving people who just need a job and don't care about doing good.

I don't think the author would have acted this way toward someone who said "sorry, I know it's a burden, I know it's stressful to be at risk of losing these benefits, and I've told that to everyone I can repeatedly." So how much danger is there really that the inconvenience of reloading the fax machine is pushing out someone who is trying to do good?

(For the sake of argument, I'm going with all the details of the story, including that this caused Karen any distress at all. I think it's more likely a real office like this has a setup for which getting a 500-page fax is no big deal at all. And if it really is a DoS on their processing, the consequence I'd be more worried about is causing acceptance to slow down enough that other disability claims are not processed before their deadline.)

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squigz 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I don't think the author would have acted this way toward someone who said "sorry, I know it's a burden, I know it's stressful to be at risk of losing these benefits, and I've told that to everyone I can repeatedly." So how much danger is there really that the inconvenience of reloading the fax machine is pushing out someone who is trying to do good?

It's not just the faxing that causes people to act the way Karen (supposedly) acted - it's the anger and maliciousness being directed at them by numerous people, all day, every day, even when they do try to be sympathetic to the fact that the system fucks everyone. But there's only so much empathy one can muster.

(Not to mention the various other factors that push good people out of government, such as working for decades to make the systems better only for them to get worse.)

To be clear, I agree with you to an extent; if instead of being malicious and directing anger at the people doing their best to help, people like the author more calmly expressed their frustration with the system, maybe they can bring it up with their superiors, as you said.

All of it's a mess, and not a single facet of this issue is without blame - not the recipients, not the bureaucrats, not the politicians, and certainly not the voters.

	▲	scottlamb 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I hear you...to an extent. I just got off the phone with Comcast Business Class, asking for a refund after I had 26 hours of downtime in the past week. Not a company with a great reputation for customer service, and the agent I spoke with was probably not exactly earning a six-figure salary. He was empathetic. The outcome was unsatisfactory [1], but he was polite, he said he understood how important availability is my business, he put me on hold for a while, said he tried for more with his manager, and I believed him. That's all it takes, not like a master study in empathizing with your bitter enemy and de-escalating conflict. I'm mad at Comcast, but I'm not mad at him. [1] A discount that was less than the delta between consumer-class and business-class prices, when the latter doesn't seem to actually be providing better availability lately.

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mrguyorama 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Have you seen how much public sector employees taking calls get paid to be abused all day?

If you want people with limitless wells of compassion, pay better. Public sector jobs generally get to scrape the bottom of the barrel and compete with the local grocery store.