Clearing Bureaucracy

Thursday 25 July 2008
2130

I am currently clearing the installation. This is a process you have to go through before you leave an Army post for a new assignment. There is a checklist of places you have to go and get them to sign and stamp it. This is how they ensure that you have returned any property you signed for, have properly collected (or disposed of) your records, cleared out your email accounts, paid for any damages, etc. You can’t get on the plane without your clearing papers.

Whenever you get some kind of property assigned to you in the Army, you sign some sort of document for it. Typically this is a “hand receipt”, DA Form 2062. It’s basically just a list of what you got, how many, and the unit of issue (usually “each”). You sign it and get a copy, and whoever is signing over the property keeps the original. When you give the property back, the hand receipt is destroyed. Pretty simple.

I am signed for my room on a DA 2062: Key, 1 each, Desk, 1 each. Chair, 1 each. Bed, 1 each. Mattress, 1 each. Wall locker, 1 each. Refrigerator, 1 each. Television, 1 each. When I go to clear Housing they will look at everything, make sure it’s clean and serviceable, and that’s it. Still pretty simple.

Well, I’ve been here for two years and had a couple of things replaced. My chair broke (no jokes please) so I got a new one. My TV stopped working, so they replaced that (twice). Each time, instead of updating my original hand receipt, they gave me two new ones. One is a turn-in receipt where they signed for the bad item from me, and the other is a hand receipt for the new one.

So I have seven pieces of paper to account for the property in this room. They all cancel each other out, so all is well. Once I clear, they will all get tossed out.

Here comes the bureaucracy part:

Today I got a call from the Housing.Office. Apparently they just noticed that they have seven pieces of paper instead of one, and that the serial number of the TV actually in my room does not match the serial number on the original hand receipt. They want me to come in and sign a new, updated hand receipt.

Now, keep in mind that I am less than two weeks from clearing. So I told them this, thinking that it would obviously be OK to wait until then, since all the paper will be disposed of at that time anyway. But noooo….. that is actually what triggered the call. They noticed I was about to clear, and so they need to update my hand receipt before I go in to clear it. For some reason it’s OK for them (and me) to keep track of seven pieces of paper for the better part of two years, but just days before I am about to leave we have to jump through hoops to update the record *right now*, just so there’s only one piece of paper when I go to clear Housing in about ten days.

Hmm...if it's gone this long, why can't we just update the record on the day I go in to clear? Apparently there is a HUGE difference between doing it this week and doing it in ten days - waiting until then would be some kind of bureaucratic disaster.

They want me to make a special trip to the Housing Office to do this, right when I’m in the middle of trying to get my stuff squared away and shipped, clear the rest of the installation, and get my responsibilities transitioned over to my NCOIC.

Yeah, sure. I’ll get on that right away. NOT!

There was a time when I would have been indignant about this kind of stupidity, and would have proceeded to argue with them and try to get them to change it. But I’ve gotten older and wiser, or maybe just mellowed a bit (or given up? You pick which). Whatever it is, I no longer tilt at these kinds of windmills quite as often as I used to do.

So I just smiled and said “Sure, I’ll be happy to come over and do that. Oh – can it wait a day or two? I have to dig out that hand receipt file first – it’s in my footlocker someplace….”.

This is the kind of thing that just makes you shake your head and wonder how on earth we ever get anything done.


Mood: Amused
Music: ZZ Top, Arrested for Driving While Blind (from Chrome, Smoke, & BBQ)