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In This Issue

• Facebook News Feed Charts Relationship's Ups, Downs, Wrongs
• Dr. Doom Next CU GOP Speaker
• Old Dogs, New SAT Rubrics
• Columbia U. Celebrates Halloween
• Cooch Drinks Hootch, Scootches
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Meanness
• Interviewing Marauder
• Escalators: Now at Your Local CIA Black Site
• Celebrity Trading Cards
• Real Parties for Which You're Not Voting
• Sound Advice for Celebrity-Starved Democrats
• A New PAC a Day Keeps the Devil Away
• Tables Turn on Foley's Accuser
• Five Senate Races to Watch
• Santorum v. Santorum
• Ten Things Not to Call an Opponent’s Campaign Staffer
• Forbidden Love
• Socialism Creeping
• CU Football Confesses Famous Losing Streak “Never Actually Ended”
• AVG
• The Fed Caption Contest
• Superman!
• Would You Know My Name If I Saw You in Prison?
• THEY Watch

Rachel Katz

“Your transcript? I have no idea where—er, what whirring sound?”

I don't need to be here. I'm not addicted or anything. Sometimes I deny event space requests because blue ink was used instead of black, but in the end I always find them a nice basement to use. I mean, real addicts spend their whole paychecks on "request denied" stamps imported from Italy. They get fired from their jobs because they fail a trust fund brat for not filling in a bubble darkly enough for the Scantron to read. Their children stop calling because they're sick of "pressing nine" when they "want to know how [they] have been."

So I'm fine, except I saw this ad in the subway as I was going home from work. I'm sure you've seen it: "Do you lose sleep at night combing through long-out-of-print rulebooks, looking for esoteric regulations to enforce? Do you write your grocery list in triplicate? Do you find yourself saying ‘I'm sorry. I'm doing everything I can, but I can't help you'-when you know that's not true-on a regular basis? If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, you may have a problem with administrative bureaucracy."

Of course, initially I dismissed the poster. But as I took out my book (Rules and Procedures for Appealing Financial Aid Packages), I realized that I had spent the last few nights reading it instead of sleeping.

I wasn't looking specifically for "esoteric regulations," as the poster called them, just a solid background in the basics of monetary obstruction, maybe some stagnation. Still, how can I help but enforce the "no one will be reimbursed for any money spent the third Wednesday of every other month without getting pre-approval" rule once I know about it? Plus, who were they to judge how I do my shopping lists? Why not write grocery lists in triplicate? That way I can leave one copy on the fridge, take a copy with me, and still have a copy to keep in my files. I guess it wasn't just the poster. I blacked out at work the other day. Don't give me that cheeky look. Everyone blacks out every once in awhile; it happens to the best of us.

Anyway, I was entering some data into the computer, and the next thing I know, this girl's sobbing Alice in Wonderland tears right in front of me. Eventually, I managed to gather from her that she needed a transcript for law school. In the preceding few hours, I had sent her to fifteen or so different offices, including those of a dean who was on maternity leave, a professor who was in the Antarctic for the semester, a department that had been renamed five years ago, and an Ann Rosenthal who had never worked for the school and had  in fact been my high school prom date. I considered pulling the standard, "I'm sorry, miss, I can't help you. If you had filled out an official transcript request approval form and gotten your advisor to sign it a week ago, I could help you, but there is really nothing I can do."

But I opted first to go look again for the transcript. It wasn't in her file, but I could see it just poking out of the file next to hers. It had been misfiled.  You can't imagine how amazing it  felt to hold the transcript, to hold someone's future in your hand.

Here are these kids, these future senators, CEOs, best-selling authors, scientific researchers, and partners of major law firms; I, and I alone, am entrusted to control their files. I get to decide whether to hand them their transcripts or not. I get their future. I get to see the look in their eyes as they realize that I-no matter how much power they may someday have-determine their path.

Maybe I handed the girl the transcript. Maybe I didn't. Maybe I sent her to small extension office in Brooklyn that I knew to be closed that day in honor of Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. Maybe I'd give this girl her transcript but not do the same for the next kid who would come into my office. Maybe the girl went on to get into Harvard Law School, or maybe she missed the deadline and never went to law school but got knocked up and married instead.

Every day I sit in my office (except Mondays and Fridays after four and before twelve-of course, those are my lunch and second-breakfast breaks, respectively) and assume my disguise as a mild-mannered paper pusher. Every day I change from that mild-mannered Clark Kent into Superman, except I don't use my powers for good and am considerably less spandex-clad. Some may say that my sort of power is trite and petty. But they're just jealous.

They may say I have a problem. But I don't have a problem, dammit. I have it under control, I have everything under control. So stop looking at me like that. Stop or you'll spend all of next year living in a closet below ground and you'll never see the sun and if you want to live somewhere else, well, "I'm sorry I can't help you. You should have...." I'm addicted; I can't stop. The power just feels too good. Hi, I'm Max, and I'm a bureaucrat.