🪶 On the Bureaucratic Impossibility of Flexibility: A Curious Dispatch from Westminster’s North West Team
Date: 30 May 2024
From: Mr Ernie Wallace
Institution: Westminster Children’s Services
To: Miss Polly
✉️ Received Dispatch:
Hi Polly,
My working hours are between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., Monday to Friday.
On occasion, I have graciously offered a later visit to accommodate particular circumstances; however, I am not able to accommodate 5:30 p.m. as a consistent arrangement.
We currently have the set plan of visiting every other Tuesday, which I am happy to maintain.
However, owing to this week’s visit not going ahead, while the children remain subject to a child protection plan, I will be obliged to reorganise the missed visit in adherence to statutory guidelines.
If this week is inconvenient, might you propose an alternative time next week for my attendance?
Kind Regards,
Ernie Wallace
Senior Practitioner
North West Social Work Team
4 Frampton Street, NW8 8LF
🎩 SWANK Commentary: A Gloss on Bureaucratic Rigidity
Observe, if you will, the gentle tyranny of schedule presented as magnanimity. We are informed, with solemn predictability, that:
Flexibility is not a right, but a rare indulgence.
The immutable hours of 9 to 5 are to be revered as gospel.
Missed appointments, however caused, are not lamented, but wielded as statutory obligations to reassert access.
At no point is the practicality for the family’s health, safety, or educational routines considered. No acknowledgment of medical accommodations is even hinted at. Only the machinery of procedure is honoured.
🖋️ Closing Reflection: When Compassion Becomes Clerical
What we see here is not malice—it is worse.
It is the cultural sanctification of routine over humanity.
A world where calendars are sacred, but well-being is optional.