This is a depressing and true article about the state of customer service. (Archive version)
But it contains a brilliant response: who wants to do Admin Night?
"I didn’t have a solution. But I had an idea for addressing it. I fired off an email to some friends, and on a Tuesday night, a tradition began.
“Admin Night” isn’t a party. It isn’t laborious taking-care-of-business. It’s both! At the appointed hour, friends come over with beer and a folder of disputed charges, expiring miles, summer-camp paperwork. Five minutes of chitchat, half an hour of quiet admin, rinse, repeat. At the end of each gathering, everyone names a minor bureaucratic victory and the group lets out a supportive cheer.
Admin Night rules. In an era of fraying social ties, it claws back a sliver of hang time. Part of the appeal is simply being able to socialize while plowing through the to-do list—a 21st-century efficiency fetish if ever there was one. But just as satisfying is having this species of modern enervation brought into the light. Learning of sludge’s existence, Thum, the bureaucracy researcher, told me, is the first step in fighting it, and in pushing back against the despair it provokes."