Vol. 79: Up against the bureaucracy

Where’s Franz Kafka when I really need him?

         You may recall the opening scene in Brazil, Terry Gilliam’s 1985 comedy about a future technocratic totalitarian society where nothing can go wrong…. go wrong…. go wrong:

         A hapless government bureaucrat named Sam, tasked with entering reports into his computer from morning ’til night, finds distraction in chasing a fly around his windowless basement office. In the process, Sam (or the fly) inadvertently hits a key on his computer, which misprints an arrest warrant Sam had received. As a result, instead of seizing a suspected terrorist named Archibald Tuttle, the police detain a mild-mannered cobbler named Archibald Buttle, who is duly interrogated and tortured to death. Sam discovers his mistake when he finds that the wrong bank account had been debited for the arrest. But by then, the unfortunate Buttle has expired.

         Something similar— albeit without the torture and execution— happened to me this month. The good news is: I survived to tell this tale. The bad news is: Franz Kafka isn’t here to relate what surely qualifies as a Kafkaesque story. So you’ll have to settle for my exasperated version.

‘Insufficient funds’

         The story begins last March 3 when I wrote a check in payment for our 2024 Philadelphia Real Estate tax bill ($11,537.15), just as Barbara and I have done every year since we built our Center City rowhouse 42 years ago. We pay this bill annually without complaint because Philadelphia has been good to us, so we figure it’s the least we can do in return, especially since the value of our home has increased seven times since we moved in. The city deposited our check on March 11, and the amount was duly deducted from our checking account at TD Bank. End of story, right?

         Not quite. Last month the Philadelphian Department of Revenue informed us that we hadn’t paid our real estate tax bill. Its notice threatened us with lien charges, interest, penalties, attorney fees, and “other costs or expenses,” not to mention foreclosure.

         When I phoned the Department and explained the situation, a clerk named Miss Preston advised me to provide proof of our payment— specifically, the front and back of the cancelled check. A few minutes later, she phoned me back to say she had summoned an image of my check on her computer screen. “I’m looking at it right now,” she said. “The notation says it was ‘returned for insufficient funds’.”

         This was news to me. The check had never been returned to me by TD Bank, and the full amount of the check had been deducted from my TD Bank account. Still, Miss Preston had gone out of her way to provide the sort of assistance you would ideally expect from a public servant. Out of curiosity, I asked how long she’s been working for the Department of Revenue. “Three months,” she replied

Most people are good?

         So I walked over to my TD Bank branch, where a banker tapping her computer accessed what I presumed was the same check image that Miss Preston had just retrieved. “Our records indicate that check was not returned,” TD’s Robin Croft assured me. “It was paid.” She provided me a printout of the cancelled check, front and back. “Show this to the city,” she said. “That should suffice. But get a copy of what the city has.”

         Since I was eager to put this matter behind me, and since patience and computer technology have never been my strong suits, I figured my best bet was to present my evidence immediately, in person, to some city clerk. I’m aware of the popular stereotypes of faceless government bureaucrats, but I’ve always prided myself on my ability to connect on a personal level with other humans, no matter how distant they may seem on the surface. As my late friend Renee Zuritsky used to put it, “Most people are good; there are very few who aren’t.” Stop that snickering!

         By now it was 3 p.m. on a Friday afternoon in July. I walked five blocks to the Municipal Services Building. After emptying my tote bag and pockets to pass through the metal detector, I waited nearly an hour before my number was called. Three or four clerks were seated behind a plastic shield that presumably protected them from Covid and gunfire but also rendered verbal communication very difficult.

‘This interview is over’

         When I submitted my relevant paperwork through the tiny opening at the bottom of the plastic shield, my designated clerk— who identified herself only as “Miss Schwartz”— waved my forms away. “Just state your issue,” she said. But I could barely make myself heard through the plastic shield, especially since two other taxpayers were shouting through the same plastic shield to make themselves heard by their respective clerks. Did I mention that Miss Schwartz refused to make eye contact with me?

         “Our system says the check was reversed,” Miss Schwartz insisted, despite my protests to the contrary, not to mention the photo of the cancelled check I presented to her. At my request, Miss Schwartz fetched her supervisor, one Katrina Whittaker, who merely repeated what Miss Schwartz had told me. She betrayed no curiosity about the discrepancy between my cancelled check and her department’s own record.

         After she vanished, Miss Schwartz announced: “This interview is over.” When I asked for her full name, she replied, “I gave you my last name.” When I asked to speak to someone higher than Ms. Whittaker, Miss Schwartz replied, “I don’t know who’s over her.”

A clerk takes pity

         At this point, the clerk at the next window, apparently taking pity on me, engaged me in conversation and gave me a printout of the city’s report stating that my check had been returned for insufficient funds. It had been signed by one “Charles Troy from our department.”

         But who was Charles Troy? What evidence had caused him to conclude that TD Bank had rejected my check for insufficient funds? And where, exactly, was the $11,000-plus that had been withdrawn from my bank account but that the city said it hadn’t received? Was this an honest mistake? A case of embezzlement? The plastic shield and the people behind it provided little hope of discovering an answer.

         When I returned to TD Bank, the folks there expressed sympathy for my plight but seemed helpless to rectify it. “I would demand to talk to someone higher” in the city, one assistant vice president advised. Of course, this was exactly what I had done, to no avail. Besides, the bank was so much more convenient, and so much more welcoming.

At last, a hero

         After I paid a few more visits there, a champion finally emerged to solve my quandary. His name was Joshua Baldwin, the vice president and manager of my TD Bank branch. While comparing my cancelled check to the cancelled check that the city said had been rejected, Josh noticed a discrepancy: The city had deposited my check in its account at Wells Fargo Bank. There, some teller, entering my TD account number, had punched one erroneous key, much like the hapless bureaucrat Sam in Brazil. Consequently, my check had been charged to some other ill-fated TD Bank customer who (unlike me) lacked sufficient funds to cover my check. So, TD Bank had returned the check I wrote to the city on the ground of “insufficient funds.” But that notification hadn’t appeared on my check or in my account.

         “It appears there was a processing issue with the return of the check,” Josh Baldwin emailed me just last week, “and the funds were not returned to you, as they should have been. Wells Fargo made multiple errors here that resulted in this discrepancy.”

         So, the city wasn’t at fault, and neither was TD Bank. Last week, TD Bank voided my original check, restored the 11,000-plus bucks to our account, and I wrote a new check to the city that saved Barbara and me from being thrown out on the sidewalk. I even got a column out of the experience. So, no harm done, right? All’s well that ends well?

Friends in high places

         But here’s the thing. Although TD Bank wasn’t at fault, the bank took it upon itself to get to the root of my problem. At the Department of Revenue, by contrast, nobody acknowledged that an error might have occurred. Instead, I was treated as a pest who could best serve his beloved city by not bothering its employees.

         And here’s the other thing: As private citizens go, I’m relatively well educated. I enjoy access to mass media outlets like this column. I have friends in high places. I know how to form a declarative sentence. If someone like me gets jerked around by the bureaucracy, what hope is there for the poor stiffs who lack my talents and connections? And you wonder why people go belly-up for a snake oil salesman like Trump?

         In 1984, George Orwell (writing in 1948) imagined a world in which a dictatorship could spy on everyone by placing a telescreen in every home. Terry Gilliam’s Brazil replied, in effect: Who would watch all those screens, and who could force the watchers to care about what they saw?

Questions and (non) answers

         In the fully automated future dictatorship portrayed in Brazil, the government’s power stems entirely from the illusion of its infallibility (just as, say, a junior high school principal maintains order by conveying the impression that he knows and cares where every kid is at every moment). So, any suggestion that something has gone wrong constitutes a threat to the government. Consequently, complaints are frowned upon, and government employees devote most of their energies not to performing their jobs but to covering up their mistakes.

         We’re not there yet. But based on my own recent experience, I can’t help wondering: Who occupies the basic levels of these municipal offices? Who hires these clerks, and how are they trained? What satisfactions do they derive from public service? Would such officious behavior be tolerated at, say, a bank?

         My efforts to discuss these issues with higher officials in the Revenue Department have elicited no response, at least so far. Maybe they responded to Archibald Tuttle?

Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s new memoir, The Education of a Journalist: My Seventy Years on the Frontiers of Free Speech. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com