Comments on: Meet the bureaucrats.

Meet the bureaucrats.

js003 — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 06:48:18 -0800

Meet the bureaucrats. The unnerving similarity of bureaucrats' offices.

By: grobstein

grobstein — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 07:03:26 -0800

The bureaucrats are poorly compensated (a theme of the photo-essay), sure, but at least in some of the regions depicted they're doing very well in relative terms. I would've liked to know which of them were effectively taking a pay cut to work in civil service.

By: Thorzdad

Thorzdad — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 07:05:37 -0800

I don't get the "unnerving" bit. Replace everything with furniture from Office Max or Staples and you have pics of the offices of every mid-management drone in the USofA. Your work surrounds you.

By: crunchland

crunchland — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 07:06:07 -0800

OMG THEY ALL HAVE TABLES AND CHAIRS!!!

By: Gator

Gator — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 07:11:44 -0800

David Ruiz Coro, who heads the public works department's urban and environment projects, often works 12- or 13-hour days. At $340 a month, he is a well-paid official by Bolivian standards. That would explain all the naked women on his walls.

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 07:12:05 -0800

Ditto the lack of unnervingness. They have desks, and chairs in which they sit at the desks. They've got various calendars, posters and other crap on their walls. So if the photographer poses them all in the same position, and frames the shot in the same way, of course all the offices and bureaucrats are going to look similar. (Incidentally, one of them has a NSFW poster on his wall.)

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 07:12:37 -0800

...and Gator beats me to it.

By: homodigitalis

homodigitalis — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 07:18:34 -0800

Never travel to countries with poor bureaucrats - they gonna make you pay!

By: GhostintheMachine

GhostintheMachine — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 07:18:56 -0800

"Locals built his mud office with their own funds, but they had nothing left for doors or windows." So how does anyone get in or out? (or maybe that's the point?) Neat pictures, though I don't quite get how these places are supposed to look different. I mean, honestly, some things look a certain way because of utility. If you're working with paper (records, forms, etc.), you're going to need a flat surface. And if you do it a lot in a single location, you're going to need something to sit on. Hence, desk and chair. I'm more surprised at the amount of variance in these pictures in spite of the commonality and the photographer's choice of perspective.

By: parmanparman

parmanparman — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 07:24:02 -0800

I think it's cool the locals in Liberia got their guy a house to call his own. This is very rare in national development, but shows the tremendous respect that transparent civil service can do. I imagine that if that Liberian buro ever got on the wrong side, they'd simply tear down the hut.

By: 1adam12

1adam12 — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 07:50:23 -0800

or get it wet.

By: parmanparman

parmanparman — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 09:06:55 -0800

1adam12: not necessarily. Mud huts are incredibly resilient. Look at mud huts in South America (made of adobe mud, which is like concrete when it hardens.) Western Volta soil - personal experience - is the norm for places around Liberia. It's hard as rock when it dries out. You would need a lot of water to bring that house down. Fire would do better.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 09:09:16 -0800

I love these photos. The similar positioning, the dead stares, all great. Who knew that bright aqua was a popular wall color for bureaucrats?

By: Western Infidels

Western Infidels — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 09:09:22 -0800

I'm not sure I find the similarities so unnerving, but it is interesting that this aspect of modern government (pushing papers in a dingy office) so thoroughly transcends geography and culture. These are terrific photos, and I'm glad they were posted.

By: bonehead

bonehead — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 09:21:13 -0800

I have TWO tables and TWO chairs in my (Canadian Fedreral) office (and a FILING cabinet---only the Russian had one of those). My walls are partition beige.

By: tippiedog

tippiedog — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 10:37:52 -0800

Thorzdad: Replace everything with furniture from Office Max or Staples and you have pics of the offices of every mid-management drone in the USofA. Your work surrounds you. Looking around at my all drab office in the USofA, I'd really like to have some of those wall colors.

By: Slarty Bartfast

Slarty Bartfast — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 10:38:59 -0800

Unnerving, for sure. Looking at these pics, I got a flashback of the day I spent in an Indian police station. It took me an entire day to get something done that would have taken 15 minutes in the US. No one who worked there had any interest in smoothing things over for me -- I was naive and broke and didn't realize that a little cash would have made things go much faster. The entire day I was there, there was a guy sitting underneath the desk, handcuffed to the radiator. When one of the cops saw me staring at him, he explained, "This is a very bad man." I think anyone who's found themselves having to stare into one of those faces would find these pictures unnerving if not downright scary.

By: Triplanetary

Triplanetary — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 11:02:53 -0800

Note to self: never complain about my office again.

By: rolypolyman

rolypolyman — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 11:25:16 -0800

Cool... Anna in the Tomsk archival office works alongside the B-52's own Cindy Wilson.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 13:20:55 -0800

The unnerving similarity of bureaucrats' offices. Um, they all have desks? What were you expecting, bean bag chairs?

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 13:22:25 -0800

the first thing I noticed was the laptop. The second thing I noticed was the naked women in the poster behind him. I don't think you'd see that in the US.

By: Megafly

Megafly — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 18:43:28 -0800

I must admit, I noticed the boobies first.

By: cortex

cortex — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 21:38:40 -0800

The second thing I noticed was the naked women in the poster behind him. I don't think you'd see that in the US. Depends on the office, though certainly it'd be less common in visible positions of government work.

By: kcds

kcds — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 04:40:49 -0800

He does his patrols on foot, covering an area of more than 6 miles So an area of 6 miles ... which would be equivalent to a hypercube measuring roughly, what, 12 acres by 18 gallons, right?