Saturday, March 22, 2008
Passport-gate Thoughts
Again, boys and girls, this is what you get with "outsourcing."0 comments
Gotham thinks one very important point is being missed in coverage of the State Dept./passport/Outside Contractor debacle.Instead of everyone looking from the top down, or the outside in (i.e., the Republican ties of Stanley Inc. CEO Philip O. Nolan), it's important to look from the site-specific inside out. It seems more of a small-fish-leads-to-larger-fish investigation.
In this case, a couple of things don't pass the smell test.
These Stanley Inc. "contract employees" handled a reasonably low-level, geeky clerical job, from all accounts we can find.
As with most office environments on this level, self-interest rules everything on every level. Everyone is marginal. If a stream of outside hires come passing through your office, and could inadvertently threaten your employment and livelihood by careless, dopey or criminal acts, any supervisor in that position would take extra pains to make clear to anyone walking through the door, "don't touch the red button!" or its equivalent. Some would do so "to do the right thing," but most would be looking to save their own hides.
These back-office jobs tend to have excessively high turnover rates. The prospect of having people pass through with either marginal intelligence or marginal scruples is extremely high. This also makes it easy for someone so inclined to "plant" someone for nefarious purposes. The supervisor there would be ever-vigilant for such a person, since the personal threat is so high.
In context, the January breach in the Office of Consular Affairs and subsequent cover-up is understandable. But we can assume that the supervisor on duty that day has made it their mission to assure that no one else EVER threatened their livelihood again! I've personally witnessed much lesser offenses become personal mania.
What does not pass ANY test of logic, or understanding of clerical office survival skills is that it would ever be allowed to happen a second time—within a month! Any supervisor at that point would be frantic. Their overall staff would find them absolutely unbearable to deal with. A THIRD time? From a different contracting company? Incomprehensible. Bordering on impossible.
Every bit of clerical office understanding points to this being either specifically tolerated behavior or planned action.
As people who have passed through such environments might attest, there just seems no chance here of casual happenstance.
posted by Gotham 12:58 PM
0 Comments:
