Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

I was watching Wheel of Fortune recently. It has been years since I saw that program. The contestants had their ten seconds to describe their lives including what they did for a living. One contestant was an

Associate Director of Policy

That is all they said – no more information. I surmised that this contestant worked for a government organization at some level. Who else would have such a job title except for a government organization?

What would an Associate Director of Policy do? Well, there is a policy department that issues policies for everyone else in the government to follow. That department has a director who is the Director of Policy. The director has several people in the policy department that are one level down in the government hierarchy. These people one level below the director are the associate directors. Hence, their job titles are Associate Director of Policy.

See? It is all quite simple and quite logical.

The associate directors of policy probably supervise people who draft policies for the government body. The associate director will host a meeting to charge the employees with a must-needed policy. Somehow the world changed and the government is no longer able to cope with the world. A new policy will set the world aright again. One employee will draft the newly needed policy. The draft will be passed about through the other employees. Each will make a change to the draft (if they don’t make a mark on the piece of paper, they can’t justify their continued employment). A few weeks later, the draft will return to the originator with a bunch of meaningless marks. In a few more weeks, the draft, with a few changes per the meaningless marks, will be presented to the Associate Director of Policy. The Associate director will make a few marks on the paper to justify his or her job. The paper will go back to the originator, and the entire process (there must be a process in the government) will repeat a few more times.

See? It is all quite simple and quite logical.

Some may read this as a funny story. As a veteran of more than 25 years of government, let me assure you that this is not a piece of humorous fiction. It is a, sadly, non-fiction.

Now why in the world was I watching Wheel of Fortune?