Catch 22

I love working for the government! It offers an unending source of amusement (laughing my head off in slit-your-wrists frustration). Last week I was told I had $29,000 to spend--$14,000 of it on technology/furniture upgrades and $15,000 on books/resources. That's the good news. The bad news is that I had 10 days (8 business days even though the accounting office doesn't work on the weekends) to spend it or lose it. Shouldn't be too hard, right? Right...

Add to the "do" list the fact that I was trying to complete 6 months worth of training in less than 1 month before I go to San Antonio next week. I also lost a whole day trying to renew my base access privledges. I got those renewed the day they expired. Unfortunately, this time the access didn't include computer access. Which meant that I could get to my job location, but I couldn't really do my job. Add another day lost trying to renew computer access privledges. (And, no, I didn't wait til the last minute to do these necessary tasks. I started a month ago, but unfortunately, no one seemed to know just how I was supposed to accomplish the task.)

OK--the $15,000 for books and resources has to be spent in $3,000 chunks--$3,000 in Amazon, $3,000 in Barnes and Noble, $3,000 in Bound to Stay Bound, etc. Fortunately, I have some staff members who have been awesome, putting in long hours helping me spend money.

OK. So I have $14,000 to spend on upgrades. Shouldn't be a problem. More than half the money was going to buy switches and connectors. Oh, wait. Anything over $3,000 has to go on a Form 9, with three price quotes. Oh, and they have to be from government approved vendors. Oh, and if it's computers it has to go through the computer guy. Oh, but he's leaving today at 1:30p (aka 1330).

OK, here's a another good one. Other technology requests have to go through Com (which I assume is Communications or Computers or Commies or something). And, oh yeah, they have up to 30 days to approve your request. Hmmm... I have 10 days to buy this stuff or lose the money.

What's really funny is that this is pretty much the norm. I can't get approval for anything until I have the money to buy it. Once I have the money, I have typically a week to ten days to buy. Approval takes up to 30 days. I'm not sure how I'll ever get those connectors and switches.

Now I understand "Catch 22" (book by Joseph Heller). I always thought it was a spoof on the military. Now I know it was dead serious.

April Fools?? The joke is that this isn't a joke! But Happy April Fools Day anyway!