WARNING: SCREED AHEAD!
I have long said, yes, it is I who have
long said, at length, at long length, with bolding and italics, with
passion and fervor, I have long said – yes, it can be “the
system,” but it's also the
people in the system who screw
things up, who screw other people, who put themselves first, who are
very stupid, who are useless and worse, and who just don't give a
shit. It's the bureaucrats, not just the bureaucracy.
I saw
this in my first real job in the US Public Health Service, in the
bowels of the bureaucracy, in Arlington, Virginia, and then in
Rockville, Maryland. I saw people, public officials, bureaucrats,
who somehow got hired, couldn't be fired, and couldn't do anything
useful. The ordinary and the subordinary have to go somewhere, and
in the bowels of the bureaucracy I saw a lot of them.
So,
“the system” is getting blamed for United Airlines. Yes, the
system has something to do with it. The system apparently calls for
United employees to be favored over paying customers. It was the
boss, poor Oscar Munoz who had a heart transplant last year and
unaccountably came back to work, I guess because he was dedicated to
his work, who blamed the
system for the brutal
passenger removal by Chicago police. Really? They called the
Chicago airport police – this must be a branch of the fabled
Chicago police
– for a police action in removing a passenger???? Can that be
true?
And
then Munoz blamed the
system, and pledged that
there would be no firings? Really? His first concern was his
standing with the United personnel. This must bespeak the difficulty
he has had in reforming the infamously poorly passenger serving
United personnel.
I
have a good friend, Paul Levy, who used to run the Beth Israel
Hospital in Boston, who stoutly adheres to the “blame the system
and not the person” routine, and with whom I routinely disagree.
He says a nurse makes an error, the head nurse calls the nurse into
the office, asks if she meant to make the error, the miscreant nurse
says no she didn't, the head nurse then says, it must have been the
system then, and I will take the blame. As I say, I routinely
disagree. Yes, systems can be bad and often are. The two vials of
adrenaline with different concentrations of the drug can look almost
identical and be stored side by side, placed in that error-prone
position by some idiot who designed the stupid system, and the system
not corrected by a bureaucracy of nurses and the order-takers who
work there, so the error by the nurse in grabbing the wrong vial can
be understandable. Amazon routinely stores similar items far apart
so they will not be confused, but then they are a company ambitious
to do things right. But, most often, the nurse makes a contributory
error because after all, hundreds of times before the incident in
question, nurses have navigated the system correctly. So I say,
place responsibility where it is due, and the net can be wide, but
blaming “the system” is just abrogating the duty of being
responsible.
And
lots of times, as in the Chicago Airport Police-United Airlines
combined fiasco, the people in question are much more directly
blamable. Chicago Police and unnecessary violence – doesn't that
ring a bell? United Airlines and uncaring idiocy – another bell
rung, no? Two immovable bureaucracies and cultures.
And
more blame can go to the system – the monopolies that exist,
allowed personally
by bureaucrats and paid-off legislators and other officials, so that
UAL persists no matter what happens – what are you going to do,
take a bike to the next city?
So,
here is an article who calls it like it is, and then an exceprt from
the article, from the Fiscal Times.
“It was the
system! The “system” – rather than an employee –
decided to give a higher priority to United staff rather than paying
customers. The “system” didn’t think to offer a higher
incentive for volunteers, either. The “system” called the police
rather than a United employee, or maybe the “system” made
the employee sic airport police on their customer. Munoz’ response
seems to suggest that the “system” is so all-powerful that even
the CEO bears no responsibility for it.
“When those
in responsible positions want to avoid accountability, they blame
“the system” rather than the people who misuse and abuse their
authority.”
Systems
might be to blame, and those who set them up need to be held
responsible, too, not just the boob who pulled the wrong switch, or
worse, who filed a faked safety reports (PGE, our old friend.) Here
at UAL, I figure firing is probably enough. Culture is carried by
lots of bad apples, and in many bureaucracies the bad outnumber the
good.
Personal
responsibility is the key. Corporate officers need to face the
possibility of fines and jail time, personally. Public officials,
too, need to face personal consequences. Today, the paper says that
Munoz will no longer be considered to rise to Chairman of the Board
at UAL. Poor guy, he made a lot of missteps. But somewhere below
him is a culture of rot, protected by monopoly and workers combined
for their own welfare and not that of the public they should serve,
but don't. United sucks.
End
of rant. For a while, anyway.
Budd
Shenkin
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