Thursday, November 30, 2017

now for some bureaucracy

It's about time, I decide, to apply for an age pension.

The CentreLink online system is good, it very quickly tells me that I first need to visit a CentreLink office. Our nearest is shown, online, as "relocating".

I visit a MyGov office. That CL office will be there for a few more weeks, we are told. Wrong, it looks as though it has been closed for weeks. Not to worry, the new address is close by.

Close by for people in a car, that is.

It's a nice office. Though the first office I've seen that has a security guard at the locked door to the toilets...

We don't wait long. I show a passport, a drivers licence, a bank card. I prove who I am and am given a "linking code". All very easy, all very friendly.

Back home, the linking code does not work. More correctly, it tries to link then tells me, Details do not match. Here's my best guess: N, Nick, Nicolas, Nicholas... pick one. I'm betting that the wrong one was typed into the CL system. So it does not match the MyGov name.

Oh well.

Today it's back to the CL office. To try again.

Not to worry. I can see the clear need for a nitpicking bureaucratic approach to dealing with CL. And every employee is polite and helpful and patient. So I tend to reply in kind.





==== Dr Nick Lethbridge / Consulting Dexitroboper & Flaneur
        Agamedes Consulting / Problems ? Solved
===

"Give a man an inch and he'll think he's a ruler" … Agent 86

====


Now much more than a clever name for a holiday journal:





No comments:

Post a Comment