About Me

I have a plan, but you aren't going to like it.

This Won’t Hurt A Bit

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How I became a physician-certified bean-counting bureaucrat

One of my first jobs as a civil servant was at an agency that guarantees student loans. Specificially, my job was to review applications for loan cancellation due to total and permanent disability. Each application had to include a short description of the disability and be co-signed by the borrower’s doctor.

One time, a prognosis I reviewed was too ambiguously worded to qualify the borrower for loan discharge. I sent the doctor a follow-up form with more specific questions. Not only did that good man write back with the questions answered appropriately, but he had also taken the extra effort to offer his clinical opinion of me personally. He wrote, “You bean-counting bureaucrats should stop taking up people’s time with useless paperwork.” And he signed the affidavit. And that’s how I became a physician-certified, bean-counting bureaucrat.