Staplers and hole-punch
Paper, signatures, and stamps
Busy, busy work
Audit error, office closed
Oncoming apocalypse
---
“If you are viewing this instructional video, you may be having some glitches with your audit processes. Don’t panic. From time to time, any bureaucracy worth its hole-punch will need to conduct an audit.
Daily dandy-desk-documented fun
Standard sunny-systematised-stapled hijinks
However, sometimes, there is a clerical error, or worse, a process deviation. If this occurs during an ordinary, 8:45am-5:20pm workday, the standard review process can be implemented, commencing on the same day, should the error be detected before 12pm, and if later than 12pm, commencing on the next working day. The typical review timelines can then follow, ideally 3-5 business days for information gathering, followed by committee consideration dependent on the 6-weekly cycle and agenda length.
Expected. Thorough. Busy. Reassuring.
All systems nominal.
Stamping and signing rates above baseline.
Working hard, at a sensible, sustainable pace. Amiright?
Unfortunately, occasionally,
something cataclysmic happens
bottom right on the risk matrix
(likelihood=E (rare) x consequence=5 (catastrophic))
Hold onto your staplers…
A fault occurs during the audit.
An audit error in the error audit.
This results in the dreaded, circular,
Paper Ouroboros Paradox.
At this point, the
perfectly procedured
copybook committeed
faultlessly filed
bureaucracy
will implode.
The only way of avoiding POP is
a concurrent process to audit the
audit, we call this The Meta Audit.
The bookish amongst you may want to say
that would increase the circularity
(moving POP from likelihood=E, to D!)
Don’t worry, we run the Meta Meta
Audit to make sure that never happens.
Our favourite galactic bureaucrat avatars, the Vogons, were the first race to encounter the pure, paper-curling hell of TMA. That is why these instructions are written in poetry, of sorts. But not Vogon-authored poetry, of course, even though
the quality
and honestly
the policy
of the potential use
of these directions
or sections
or connections
for torture
Have never been directly investigated.
The KPI for TMA is known as the
Kafka-Cockroach Distance
measured in imaginary cockroach lengths (icL).
Under potential conditions of
POP, the TMA KPI KCD starts at
42 icL
and counts down with
every fatal meta error:
-Information presented to audit
committee in triplicate
instead of quadruplicate,
41 icL
-Audit presentation containing
27 slides instead of 26,
as clearly outlined,
40 icL
-Email about colonoscopy sent
to audit address list instead of mum,
39 icL
And so on.
You’ll know when you reach 17 icL,
You’ll see the cockroaches.
Conveniently, this makes measurement simpler
Now you know how to calculate your Kafka-Cockroach Distance, you can audit your audits with perfect assurance and insurance.
---
This bureaucracy
Kafkaesque catastrophe
Dear Douglas Adams
Thanks for giving me words for
Processing my processes
©2024
BLT Webster’s Word of the Day challenge (avatar) date 27th September 2024. Avatar can also refer to the embodiment of something (such as a concept or philosophy) often in a person.
