Bureaucracy: the Government and others who suffer from this disease.

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Bureaucracy is a terrible disease. I think it originated with government, but there are other organizations who suffer from it as well. For example, when my husband called to insure a car and they told him they couldn't insure it because it wasn't insured... WHAT???!!Then there is our medical insurance. Every time I make a prescription claim...which can be as often as WEEKLY... I have to submit my receipts with a form which I have to fill out EVERY TIME I use the system. They always want to know my husband is retired, where he worked, I'm disabled and don't work, and my stepson is a lazy oaf who sits home and consumes food without making any contributions, but he is 18 now so no longer eligible for his father's insurance. Same form, same base info EVERY TIME. Necessary? Surely not. Why hasn't someone developed a way for me to apply online instead of printing out a form, filling out by hand and spending postage for it? Right now, Canada and the United States are making a huge toodoo about passports. We go crossborder shopping often where we live and it's going to be a real pain and expense to get a passport just for that. The only redeeming factor on that is that my family lives in the US and I will need the passport to visit them, not just for shopping. There are people, however, who will be seeking to apply for passports just for the convenience of crossborder shopping. I don't know if it's really worth the application fees or not. Anyway today I got the following interesting humor in my email. As my kids favorite expression of late goes: It's funny because it's true!Here's the letter I got in my email: Dear Mr. Minister, I'm in the process of renewing my Passport, and still cannot believe this. How is it that Radio Shack has my Address and Telephone number and knows that I bought a T.V. cable from them back in 1997, and yet the Federal Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date. For crying out loud, do you guys do this by hand? My birth date you have on my Social Insurance card, is on all the Income Tax forms I've filed for the past 40 years, my Health insurance card, my Driver's license, on the last eight bloody Passports I've had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I've had to fill out before being allowed off the Planes over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable Census forms that are done at Election times. Would somebody please take note, once and for all, that my mother's name is Patricia, my father's name is John and I'd be absolutely astounded if that ever changed between now and when I die! I apologize, Mr. Minister. I'm really upset this morning. Between you an' me, I've had enough! You send the application to my house, then you ask me for my address. What is going on? You have a gang of Neanderthals workin' there?!Look at my damn Picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I don't want to dig up Yasser Araft, for crying out loud. I just want to go and park my Butt on a Sandy Beach. And would someone please tell me, why would you give a hoot whether I plan on visiting a farm in the next 15 days?! If I ever got the urge to do something weird to a Chicken or a Goat, believe you me, I'd sure do not want to tell anyone! Well, I have to go now, 'cause I have to go to the other end of the City and get another Copy of my Birth Certificate, to the tune of $60! Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day?? No, that'd be too easy and maybe make sense. You'd rather have us running all over the place like Chickens with our heads cut off, then find some dummy to confirm that it's really me on the stupid picture - you know, the one where we're not allowed to smile?! Hey, you know why we can't smile? We're ticked off! Signed - An Irate Canadian Citizen Now, I wonder if someone was really brave enough to send it to them that way? If not, I hope someone reads this who works in the Canadian Government Passport applications offices. It's FUNNY because it's so TRUE! Thanks for the laugh, all those of you who work for this wonderfully entertaining organization promoting the maximizing of bureaucracy. Convince me it's not true! ...Wait, sorry, you can't do the impossible if you can't even do what should BE possible!