Boredom: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Wonkette reports that the Treasury Department was underutilized (to say that it was out-of-the-loop would be to falsely imply that there was a loop) during the first Bush administration:

Wonkette - The People's Excruciatingly Tedious Business: Flush from reporting the breaking news that tourists are often confused, the Washington Post breathlessly delivers the scoop that government workers are often bored. Once we were able to get the blood rushing back to our head, we heeded Amy Joyce's tale of Bruce Bartlett's many lost afternoons as deputy assistant secretary for economic policy in the Treasury Department:

boredom occasionally drove him from his cushy Washington office to seek relief at the movie theater. One afternoon, he ran into a friend who was a senior official in another department.

"It was kind of awkward," he said.

Since I took Bruce's seat at the Treasury when the Bush administration turned into the Clinton administration, let me recount one 10:30 PM conversation I had at the Treasury in the spring of 1993 with one of the career economists. "Yeah. It was kind of boring around here for the past couple of years. We used to wish that we would be asked by the White House to do more." Pause. "I suppose the lesson is: 'Be careful what you wish for'."

Comments

[nate]

some of the arts give interesting insights.

consider the moving "natural born killers" back in the 1990s. it talks about how media attention may affect people. even if you did not like the movie and do not believe the net contribution was positive, it was provocative.

or more recently consider the book Specimen Days. This book looks at the phenom of "suicide bombers" and gets one thinking about why people would be suicide bombers. the book was written prior to recent London bombings.

so spending time watching movies or reading "fiction" books may give policy people insights they would not otherwise have (Prof DeLong did not appear to instantly suspect suicide bombers when he posted the day of the London bombers - if he read Specimen Days and discussed it, he may instinctively at least considered suicide bombers).

[Auros]

Brad, what do you mean there was no loop? Just because there was only one node, and one self-referential edge, that doesn't mean there's no loop...

(And, come to think of it, there may've been TWO nodes -- Rove's office, and Cheney's office.)

[hark]

I was recently told by a Commerce career employee that this administration has no need for policy analysis to guide it (since it already has a policy direction in mind). His director in a policy unit had just taken an early out and a RIF is expected. And the office in question is working on issues that are of utmost importance to the U.S.

[Dave]

I'm trying to figure out who it was you spoke to: RG? JU? EM? JA? KH?

[A. Zarkov]

When I worked for a government contractor laboratory in the late 1970s we had a division leader who would regularly sleep during the day at his desk. When he wasn’t reading the newspaper. Or when he wasn’t screwing his secretary. His boss (a Department Head) was a very demanding person, but for some reason he didn’t seem to mind. We theorized that he didn't want our division to get too strong. On the other hand, the underlings worked pretty hard and generally did a good job. Essentially the deputy division leader ran the place, at least when he wasn’t screwing his girlfriend (from another division). Management didn’t really matter. We went out got and the contracts, did the work, and wrote the reports. It was a good system because management didn’t bother us so we could get things done. I suppose they could have gone to the movies, but that’s not as much fun as having an adulterous affair.

[save_the_rustbelt]

I grew up in the highway construction business and I remember the ratios for a cut-and-patch asphalt repair job (an oversized pothole repair).

Us: private sector contractor

4 men, two trucks, 1 backhoe, 1 roller

Them: Ohio Department of Transportation

10 men, six trucks, 2 backhoes, 1 roller

The guys from ODOT would drink coffee, run gambling pools, read the sports page and plan fishing trips, while obstructing traffic.

I can picture a room full of government economists doing about the same thing, except without the snazzy organge vests.

[Zathras]

There will be some interesting analyses done in years to come about the similarities and differences between the first and second Bush administrations.

The number of similarities will surprise some people distant enough from Washington not to have noticed how, in policy terms, the elder Bush tended toward passivity and reaction most of the time; how his son does too; and how quite a lot of time was spent by both men just showing up, attending to their public image, and otherwise not doing very much.

[dilbert dogbert]

Ah, Philco Fraud in the 60's when our div chief was screwing the secretary. She was a good Mormon too.
At my gov job the center director was called billyballs for good reason.
Hope no one learns how to turn off the human side of life at work. Talk about boring!!!!

[AllenM]

Yeah, the gossip aobut who is screwing whomever is why we show up;-}
Unfortunately they seem to require real output here- no real time for extra curricular activities.

[James Wimberley]

The Bush administration's approach to policy is only learning to take off.

[Auros]

Oddly, I've only ever encountered four "office romances" in places I've worked: three of them were between extremely vanilla people who started out single, and ended up married to each other; and the other one was between reasonably lively people (one of whom I had flirted with myself when she showed up at one of the clubs I helped run, on my nights and weekends), but still, neither of them were married, and one of them ended up leaving the company; last I heard the two of them were living together in (as Paul Krugman once put it) rather sedate, bourgeouis sin.