Kafka Revisited: Appleton's Social Security Office

If you've read The Castle by Franz Kafka, you might already know something about the Social Security office in Appleton, Wisconsin. Talk about a total lack of concern about it's "customers"! People who go there can expect to be ignored. Our most recent bad experience involved my daughter-in-law trying to get her name changed on Social Security records. She went in with my son, was asked to take a number, and then waited for perhaps 45 minutes with no indication that the office even had a way of knowing what numbers were pending. No numbers were ever called. Another woman who had already been waiting a while when my daughter-in-law arrived said that no numbers had been called during her earlier tenure in the office, either. They both finally went up to the window by the receptionist to ask what was going on. The reception did a masterful job of completely ignoring them, with a little complimentary glaring thrown in, just to let them know where they stood in the eyes of Social Security. Unwilling to continue the Kafkaesque experience, my daughter-in-law and my son gave up and went elsewhere. They'll take care of the paperwork somewhere else.

I say we outsource Social Security to some foreign country where we can get the same fine service for a lot less. Perhaps that fine offshoring service for executives and other officials, Off the Top, Inc., could help.

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