AuthorThe Faceless Bureau

I am a local business owner in a small town. A typhoon recently hit the island where my business is and left massive flooding in our area. My home and parts of my business have been submerged in water for days, and I expect to spend a lot of money on repairs to get my business back in operation after the flood subsides. My employees, all 20 of them, live in homes affected by the flood and they need help from the government to recover. The way that works here is through social security system calamity loans. The government provides a temporary loan to help people in a crisis and those people...

Working for or telephoning a customer service helpline is a thankless task. Last week my mobile phone plan ended, and with it the discounts I had enjoyed over that time. I needed to call my provider to determine if I should remain loyal or take my business elsewhere. The call surprised me, not by the relatively short time spent on hold but by the process I encountered once I spoke to a customer service rep. I called the number provided and explained that I had been receiving a discounted price with additional benefits for the duration of my phone plan. Now that I was free to sign with any...

Several years ago when I was a student at a university overseas, I returned home for a few months to complete an internship requirement. I needed a local credit card, but instead of opening my own account, I arranged with my dad to become an additional cardholder on his account instead. This meant I could avoid the hassle of applying at a local bank, especially since I didn’t have an income at the time and that I would only need it for a short time. The application to become an additional cardholder was quite straightforward. The hard part came when I received the card and had to activate it...

Two things are driving me mad: big bureaucrats who make stupid rules, and littlebureaucrats who refuse to break them. I recently went through a bureaucratic nightmare trying to extract my savings from a frozenoverseas bank account. Finding a way to communicate with them was the first hurdle. Theyrefused to deal with me via their own “secure mail” system because it wasn’t secure enoughto discuss personal information. They couldn’t help me on the phone because I failed tocorrectly guess the answers to the verification questions that were based on informationseveral years and even more countries...

I was recently involved in a minor collision with another driver’s car. The other driver was at fault,so I needed his details to get the cost of my repairs covered. I took photos of the damage to bothcars, and the other driver, somewhat reluctantly, let me hastily photograph his licence plate anddriver licence at the scene. Unfortunately, I took the photographs so quickly that I didn’t notice that one of them was blurry.When I returned home, I found that the information on the licence wasn’t clear. I couldn’t makeheads or tails of it, but I needed to give that information to my insurer so...