Rember those orders? Well, I called SATO (the government travel agent) about my plane tickets and was told they weren't purchased because the line of accounting was wrong on my orders.

Hmmm. . .just when were they planning to tell someone about this.

On digit out of a string of about 50 was transposed. Had the travel clerk call them, do a pen and ink change and we were back in business.

What really burns me about this is that this is the kind of behavior I have come to expect from civil servants:

If anything is out of the ordinary they default to the do nothing position

If anything is problematic they default to the do nothing position

In fact I never met a more dynamic group of people. Thermodynamic, objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force.

This is an over generalization of course. Their are many fine public servant/civil servants out there. People who take pride in their work and really want to help. I know several; A few bad apples can spoil th whole bunch!