I usually post my blogs on Thursday and Fridays, but I will be enjoying the holiday. So early posts for the week.

Most of my blogs are of business and serious stuff. Please allow me to post a true story that shows how the typical bureaucracy works.

I was going through a divorce and was living in an apartment that I co-developed.

The parking area close to our apartment had a curb cut that was a short distance from the corner of the street. If a car parked next to the curb cut a driver coming from the corner would be blinded from anyone coming onto the street from the parking area. One of the kids on a bike living in the apartment came out of the park area onto the street one day  and at the same time a car approacing from the corner hit him because a parked car blined his vision. Fortuntually no one was hurt.

Latter, I decided to ask the City to paint the curb red. This was small northern California farm town and I though it would be easy. They told me that I would have to present the request to the City council and then if approved would send it a traffic committee for study.

I was the co-owner of the apartment  decided that I would handle the problem myself and instructed the property manager to paint the curb red. They painted the red zone and I thought that would be the end of the matter.

One morning I was headed to work and notice a car parked in the red zone, but I also notice a parking ticket under the wiper on the windshield. The City was enforing our painted red zone.

That is not the end of the story. One year later the City maintance crews re-painted the curb. They were not only enforcing the law they were maintaining the zone.

The message here is to don’t deal with the bureaucracy otherwise it will never get done. The other message is the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing.


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