It’s Your Business
- Author: Terry Greenhut, Business Editor
- Subject Matter: Management
- Issue: Protecting your interests
Bureaucracy (noun) – Definition: Any organization in which action is obstructed by insistence on unnecessary procedures and red tape
“Don’t trust that others have done their jobs properly.”
The purpose of this article is to show you that in business and in life, even when you are 100% right you can still be wrong. So you’ll just have to bite the bullet sometimes and try to make it up somewhere else.
“Catch-22” is a satirical novel by American author Joseph Heller. It is set during World War II from 1942 to 1944.
The book and subsequent movie follow Capt. John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Corps B-25 bombardier. Most of the events in the book occur while the fictional 256th Squadron is based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea, west of Italy. The novel looks into the experiences of Yossarian and the other airmen in the camp. It focuses on their attempts to keep their sanity in order to fulfill their service requirements so that they may return home, but every time they are about to reach their mission quota there’s a catch that arises to keep them flying more combat missions.
So the phrase “Catch-22” describes “a problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem or by a rule.” It’s “a no-win situation” or “a double bind” of any type. Within the book, “Catch-22” is a nickname for a military rule, the self-contradictory circular logic that, for example, prevents anyone from avoiding combat missions. It’s explained as follows:
“Catch-22” specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of danger that was real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. So a pilot or crew member who had gone off the deep end from the stress of combat could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; but as soon as he did, he would no longer be considered crazy because asking not to go into combat anymore was the act of a rational person, so he would then have to fly more missions. He would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.
Getting dizzy yet? You should be. The whole idea is that often in life or in business we are faced with ridiculous rules and procedures made up by people who either don’t have a clue how the real world operates or who are making these rules to either purposely squeeze as much money as they can out of us by putting us in situations with no other way out, or they just want to give us as hard a time as possible.
I know of a real-life situation taking place right now that illustrates just how ridiculous and out of hand bureaucracies can be:
A close friend of mine has decided to put his house up for sale and move to a warmer climate. The house is built into the side of a hill and is on three levels. The main floor has a kitchen, living room, dining room and a half-bath. Above that on the top level are two bedrooms, each with its own full bath. The lowest level has two finished rooms (let’s call them an office and a den) with sliding doors that lead directly to a street-level patio along with another full bath, laundry room and utility room.
The house was built in 1987 as part of a 94-home development. Unfortunately, the builder went bankrupt in 1988 after completing only 14 of the homes. Because the builder never finished the first phase of what was supposed to be a three-phase development, the city would not issue certificates of occupancy (C/Os) for the existing 14 homes until another developer came in and finished the project. That did not take place until 1998. Project finished, the city mailed out the final C/Os to the 94 homeowners.
My friend got his and put it in the file where he kept the rest of his home-ownership papers – deed, title etc. He admits that he didn’t scrutinize the document well when he received it. He just assumed it was OK.
The real-estate agent, a woman who had resold several of the homes in the community, came by to take the listing, bringing with her copies of the deed, title, assessor’s card and certificate of occupancy. She was the first to point out that the C/O was wrong. It showed that the house had only 21/2 baths instead of 31/2 and that the lowest level was unfinished storage when indeed it was finished space.
The agent explained that C/Os are often wrong and that one of two things could happen at the closing if an amended C/O were not obtained: 1) The buyer’s attorney wouldn’t notice the discrepancy and the deal would go through, or 2) the lawyer would notice, make an issue of it and hold up the closing until it was resolved or else kill the deal completely.
The odds not looking great, my friend decided to petition the building department for an amended C/O that would show the lower level as being finished. He applied and paid the $50 application fee. That was the beginning of the “Catch-22.”
The building inspector called to tell my friend that he would need to come out and have a look because he could not find any plans or permits that were ever pulled for the lower level of the house. In fact, he couldn’t find the folder for that particular house at all. That meant there were no plans or permits on file for the entire house. The building inspector’s explanation was that the city had moved the building department twice since 1987 and some files had come up missing. It was before the era of everything being kept on computers.
So out came the building inspector. My friend showed him that the lower level had to have been done as part of the original house because all the fixtures and construction techniques were exactly the same. The inspector agreed that they looked the same and that it might have been done as part of the original construction but the C/O said differently and that’s what he had to go by because he couldn’t find any documentation.
Either the original builder, who is no longer around, didn’t file for the upgraded lower level when it was done or the city lost all evidence of it, but either way my friend was informed as to how this process would have to go if he wanted the amended C/O, which he now had to get because he blew the whistle on himself by going to the building department in the first place. He would have to hire an architect and an engineer to submit a new drawing of the entire lower level to be approved by the building department. Once that was done he would need to hire a licensed plumber and an electrician to apply for permits for which a fee based on the cost of construction would be paid. They would then have to inspect the work and report back to the building department that everything was up to code or fix what wasn’t.
When my friend complained that it would cost him thousands of dollars to do these things, the building inspector said: “What are you complaining about? You’ve been getting away with not paying any tax on that lower level all these years because it was shown as unfinished.”
“No, it wasn’t,” my friend said. “It’s right here on the assessor’s card. I’ve been paying tax on it since I bought the house in 1987. Doesn’t that prove it was existing?”
The inspector, taking his foot out of his mouth just long enough to change feet, recovered quickly and blurted out: “It doesn’t matter. Just because the assessor saw the finished rooms, that doesn’t mean he knows when they were built or how, so you’re still going to have to go through the process.”
It must be nice to be wrong and right at the same time.
“What about the fact that all the plans and permits for the house are missing?” my friend asked. “Doesn’t that mean the plans for the downstairs could be missing with the rest of it?”
“Could be,” the inspector said, “and you’re lucky that the C/O shows all the rest of the house or you would have to have plans drawn up for the whole thing, so be happy that I’m giving you a break.”
“Catch-22” is alive and well. This is just another case of bureaucracy gone wild. The city in question has given tax abatements to major developers who’ve put up 60-story tax-free eyesores in a city whose tallest building previously was only six stories. It has allowed foreign for-pay schools to buy property and pay zero taxes even though they are for-profit ventures. It has allowed more than 30 bar/restaurant businesses to open in a three-block area.
The city’s main source of revenue – other than homeowners who pay ever-increasing taxes and permit fees – has become the speeding and parking tickets generated by speed traps and over-zealous parking-enforcement officers who don’t always bother to wait until the meter is actually expired, along with the DWI cases generated by the extra police hired to catch the drunks coming out of the bars on the weekends. It went from being a friendly little city to a money-grubbing little empire. Sad, isn’t it?
So my friend will pay and go through the process because he wants to get away from that “den of iniquity” as quickly as possible and hopes that the town he’s moving to has a lot more respect for its citizens.
What’s the lesson to be learned here? Don’t trust that others have done their jobs properly. That’s not to say that you have to do their jobs for them, but you do need to check all the important stuff and make sure your interests are protected; otherwise, you can become a victim of a “Catch-22.”
Terry Greenhut, Business Editor. Please call 914-882-3003 or visit www.TerryGreenhut.com to order any of Terry’s training materials.
