Brantley Foster: [reading mail while sorting] Some of this stuff doesn’t make any sense. They send requisitions through two departments to get procurements for a third. What kind of thinking is that? — The Secret of My Success

Two of the things that make me absolutely crazy is bureaucracy and ‘process-oriented’ people.  I’m not a cowboy by any measure, but even stodgy old me needs to know that slogging through a process gets me closer to a goal.  Paperwork for the sake of paperwork, or meetings for the sake of meetings make me itch.  Sadly, things like this are almost predictable once an organization grows to a certain size or reaches a certain age.  Things get so ossified that no-one can explain how they got that way or why they are how they are.  The mind numbs and you start earning your keep by habit and reflex, and the good parts of your job start to fade.

The challenge is to find a way to enjoy your job despite the bureaucratic cruft that gets layered over it.  There’s no silver bullet for this, but it’s crucial to do so.  If you can’t, you’ll either stop caring or become bitter, and that attitude is corrosive to things far beyond the office.