Paperwork: n. The mindless, endless and useless pages upon pages of dead trees we have to fill out for every stage in life you can imagine, in order to satisfy some evil, secret paper troll's hungry paper obsession.
Have you ever gone to the doctor, and you think you got there just in the nick of time, you know like one minute early, and you go to sit down and they say "Mrs. Smith?" in that sweet doctor's office receptionist voice? You walk up to the little counter with the bubble glass window that they shut when they want to talk about you behind your back, and they sweetly hand you a clipboard with a pen attached to a dangly metal chain, which is a subliminal sign of your impending doom, and ask you to go sit down and fill out the paperwork attached. It doesn't look so bad until you realize each page is front and back, and the size of the font is so small you need your magnifying glass your grandfather gave you when you were five to kill bugs with, but you forgot that at home. Now what? You start to fill in the blanks, squinting to see the questions. "Name:" What if your name is longer than Joe Smith? Mine is. The line isn't long enough. Now what do you do? The space between each line is impossible to squeeze the extra letters in. You're forced to do the wrap around the side of the page maneuver that you used to do in kindergarten when you wrote in giant size font diagonally across the page. Well this is real professional. You move on. "Address:" Again, unless you live on 231 Main, in Boston, MA, it's probably not gonna fit. I feel bad for the people that live in Philadelphia or Chattahoochee. Why are the lines so small?! Then you have to go through your whole life: Date of birth, age, sex, SSN, hair, eyes, weight, height, smoker/drinker/drug use, allergies, medical history, insurance info, etc. That's just on page 1, side 1. So you fill it all in, your hand cramps up from trying to neatly print all the information, you flip the page over, and wouldn't you know the same damn questions are staring you in the face! After six pages of filling out virtually all of the same exact information, on all the tiny little lines, you notice you're now 20 minutes past your scheduled appointment time. You walk up to the counter to turn in your clipboard, secretly wishing you would have just hung yourself with the stupid little metal chain, because it would have been less painful. The bubble glass window is closed and remains so for about a minute, as you stand there, until the no longer sweet receptionist opens it, snatches the clipboard and directs you to "sidown". It's the paperwork they're after. Another 20 more minutes go by before you're called back, you spend five minutes with the doctor once he arrives in your room, and then they send you on your way. You wasted most of your time there filling out that paperwork! Don't get relieved that it's over though, because when you go back next year, you'll have to do it all over again so they can "update their records".
Have you ever tried to apply for any type of...well anything really? It used to be a lot easier, but now if you want to apply for anything you have to basically provide your entire life's story. This includes birth certificate, marriage license, divorce decree, social security card, passport, high school diploma, college diploma, business licenses, driver license, voter's license, kidney, first born child, etc. If you don't have all of those things in order, good luck trying to get them. Talk about paperwork. And you can't get them all from the same place, so you have to research where to get each item individually, then fill out the necessary paperwork to go with each item, submit it with copies of the supporting documents you need, plus payment of course, and then wait about a month. For example, if you get married and need to change your last name, you need to change your social security card and your driver license. Well, you can't change your license without your social security card and you can't apply for a social security card without a license. So...yeah. If you want to buy a car, you need insurance before you can drive it, but insurance companies won't insure the car if you don't own it. Who would buy a car they can't drive or insure a car they don't own? It's all about the paperwork and the exact order in which it gets filed. Good luck.
Just this past week, I decided to start a business. I filed the paperwork to create an LLC. You can do that online now. In 10 minutes, you can create a company out of thin air. You can also acquire an EIN from the IRS online in the same amount of time. Poof! So, this is exactly what I did! I started my business. I built a website, created a brand, etc. all in one evening That same night (I work fast, I'm a mom) I was creating my Facebook page and noticed there was a company in NY with the same name I had chosen for my business and they had trademarked the name. I had looked into this prior to choosing my name, but the world of small businesses is cloudy and convoluted at best so I never came across this company before forming mine. I was at a crossroad and had two choices: I either contact this company and let them know about the situation and ask them if they will allow me to operate under this name, since I am just a one woman, small local business, or I can just pretend I didn't see it, continue to do my thing, and hope their company never found out (which they probably never would have). I chose the first. I contacted the owner directly, told her the situation and heard back from her the same evening. I could not use the name, and would have to come up with a new one. Well, I'm glad I chose to operate my business morally and honestly, but it meant more paperwork. Apparently, even though you can start a business online, you can't do anything else to one online. I had to write a letter, fill out several forms with the tiny lines, submit another application, and make a phone call to the IRS just to try to change the name of my business. Damn paperwork, you win again!
Now, remember how I talked before about divorce? Downer!! Well, this is the king of paperwork! I call it the king because no woman in her right mind would have invented something that would cause someone to waste as much time as this one. I was divorced in 2006. What year is it? Oh yeah, 2011. Guess what I got in the mail? You guessed it. Paperwork to fill out for my upcoming court date (remember how I told you that divorce involving children would haunt you for all of eternity?). This paperwork is something I can assure you I've filled out about 47 times since 2005 when this all started. I am NOT exaggerating. I've been told the reason you have to fill out these types of redundant documents (as well as the tiny-lined beauties at the doctor's office) is because so many different entities need different copies of their own versions of the same information. You'd think they'd all figure out a way to condense what they need into one form and just make 16 copies instead, but that would just be too easy. Anyway. I've been procrastinating on filling out this monstrosity because, well to be honest, I'd rather eat it than have to fill out one more godforsaken page. Even if I try I don't think my poor hand will cooperate. I believe it may be on strike at this particular moment. I'm staring at it right now. Maybe I'll just start making things up that actually fit on those tiny lines. Name: Joe Smith, Address: 231 Main, Boston, MA.
In the age of iPhones that can live your life for you in some sort of app and tiny computers that live inside your dog in case he gets lost, why are we still filling out all this paperwork? Isn't there some way we can make it go away? Or at the very least, make the flipping lines longer and space them out a little more for us people with long names and cities with more than five letters? Maybe, if we thought really hard about this, some genius, clearly not me, could come up with a way to scan all those useless documents into some mega computer, and take the billions of useless pieces of paper that are sitting in all the government offices, doctor's offices, etc. and figure out a way to make fuel out of it so we don't have to pay $17 a gallon for gas, or spend an hour at a doctor's appointment that should only take 12 minutes.
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