If you’ve ever had the misfortune of needing to deal with a government agency, you’ve experienced the Circumlocution Office. In a recent post my wife explained the Circumlocution Office and all of its bureaucratic glory. Taken from the Charles Dickens novel Little Dorrit, it’s essentially a term used to describe the nonsensical operations of government.
Vague and contradictory instructions on various government websites: That’s the Circumlocution Office.
Waiting for three hours on the phone just to obtain caller #74 status: Circumlocution Office.
Seven different forms on three separate databases requiring multiple user logins for the same issue: Circumlocution Office.
You get the idea.
Barely four months into 2024 and I’ve already had my fill of the Circumlocution Office, but the fun may have just begun.
Adventures in Guardianship
As long-time readers know, we adopted two children with special needs in 2012. Those children are now eighteen, and thanks to overreaching government intermeddlers, we’re required as their legal guardians to wrestle with every tentacle of the pubic assistance octopus.
My wife and I — independent Alaskans so adverse to government anything that we make the census people flee in raging despair every ten years — suddenly find ourselves weekly caught within the slow grinding gears of government ineptitude.
So we play the game, fill out the forms, and keep the weapons ready should the law suddenly dissipate entirely; justice everywhere is already against the ropes.
These are just a few of the thoughts ruminating inside my brain box whilst I navigate automated phone systems only to end up rewarded with hours of muzak on loop that sounds like it was ripped from the ice cream truck’s playlist.
[Hey Government: Ever heard of classical music? You know, Bach, Debussy? It’s in the public domain, for freaking out loud.]So after the latest round of public assistance ping pong against a monotone-voiced millennial (think Roz from Monsters Inc, but with a Georgia accent), I decided I’d have a little fun with the madness.
I present to you a guardianship update in video game format.
Or as the great American blue collar strummer Mellencamp, might have said: A little ditty about Vince and Shan, two American parents doin’ the best they can.
Circumlocution Office 2024
Level 1 Mission: Apply For Everything.
Tactics: Online forms, paper applications, and over-the-phone applications with sometimes helpful people who still enjoy their jobs. Pray for favor, treat yourself to late night ice cream, and wait for the mail.
Level 2 Mission: Correct the Circumlocution Office’s errors.
Tactics: Scour the internet, various websites, and Facebook pages before reluctantly admitting that the Circumlocution Office (CirO) only offers a single phone listing for everyone to funnel through.
CirO AI: “Greeting and thank you for calling the Circumlocution Office: where good intentions go to die. For English, press 1, for Tagalog, press 2.”
*Presses 1, wonders what Tagalog is*
CirO AI: “Congratulations you are caller number 243, your estimated wait time is two hours and fifty-three minutes.”
Three hours and forty minutes later.
“Hello,” the CirO lady says, “what is the nature of your call?”
“Yes, there is incorrect information on the paperwork you just sent me and I need to get it corrected.”
“Unfortunately, our computers are down. You’ll need to call back tomorrow.”
“You couldn’t have said that on the recording and saved me three hours on hold?”
“I don’t know sir. You’ll need to call back tomorrow.”
Seven days and seven phone calls later
Good News! You’re assisted by a friendly CirO official. “Yes. I see the problem.”
Cue Halleluiah chorus.
“It appears the information on the children’s cases somehow got crossed. I’ll have a supervisor correct it right away.”
You’ve completed level 2. High five your spouse and treat yourselves to some sushi.
Level 3 Mission: Applications Rejected. Fix it.
Tactics: Convince CirO that you in fact did apply for all the things.
CO official: “We need you to verify you applied for Social Security before you can receive public assistance.”
“I did. I applied over the phone. Don’t you have a record of that?”
“No, we’re Public Assistance, not Social Security.”
“You use her social security number to access your records, right?”
“Yes. We have it all here.”
“But you don’t have any connection with the actual Social Security information.”
“No, but you can log onto the SS website and set up an account and access it yourself.”
“Okay. What do I need?”
“Just their Social Security number.”
*eye starts to twitch*
CirO AI: “Welcome to Social Security, you are caller number 6347 in line….”
Three hours and two 3-shot Americanos later…
“Hello. What can I do for you?”
“I’m a court-appointed guardian and I’m unable to set up the beneficiary’s online account. I entered all the info on the online form.”
“They will mail you an activation code.”
“I was able to do one of them online. They emailed me the activation code.”
“They can only do that for one email address.”
“I used separate email addresses.”
*long pause while CirO official consults flow chart*
“You’ll just have to wait till you receive the mailed activation code.”
“Fine, what is the address you mailed it to, because we’ve never gotten anything from you yet in the mail.”
*longer pause*
*CirO confirms an incorrect address*
“Yeah, that will never get to us because that’s not our mailing address. Can we update it?”
“I’ll need to speak with the beneficiary to do that.”
“You can’t. She’s not cognitively able to understand this, hence why we are her court appointed guardians.”
“I need to get her authorization to change her address.”
“We are court-appointed guardians.”
“I don’t see that in our records. You’ll need to go to the Social Security office and present your paperwork to them in person. Then you can change the address.”
This would have been a good time to explain a little geography to the CirO representative. What I thought about saying was this:
“Let me get this straight. So you’re saying that in order for court appointed guardians to change the address of our special needs daughter, that the person we applied with over the phone entered incorrectly, so that we can get an access code in the mail to allow us to set up her online account — which wasn’t necessary to set up her brother’s account — we will need to journey to one of the three Social Security offices in Alaska, a state with 665,384 square miles of land mass, most of which is inaccessible by road. So if we live in Togiak, we would need to get on a plane and fly 389 miles to Anchorage in order to change her address. Is that correct?”
That’s what I should have said.
But my experience traversing the boggy maze of the CirO swamp has taught me that such common sense rationale is pointless.
As the late, great El Rushbo (Rush Limbaugh) himself prophetically pined: “Governments are incapable of logic, common or otherwise.”
Instead I sighed, said weakly, “That’s not how Alaska works,” and cut my losses as three hours of my day. I hung up with a cordial, “Good day, Madam CirO (I omitted this last part).”
Level 4: Get All Of The CirO Departments To Communicate With Each Other
Caution: Projectile weapons not allowed.
Tactics: Don’t ask me. I’m a writer, not a wizard.
Somebody please pass the ibuprofen, or the ice cream, or the sledgehammer, or all three.
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