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The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner
- kayodelycaon 7mo agoHow many fax lines still go to a physical machine that prints on paper? It’s a lot less paper to have a pdf of the fax emailed.
- apical_dendrite 7mo agoYou'd be surprised how many doctors still rely on a physical fax machine.
- kayodelycaon 7mo agoI was thinking of doctors offices and pharmacies when I asked. My doctor has a physical fax machine in the back of the office. I was hoping things might be a little bit more advanced elsewhere. It hurts my soul to see people print a document to fax it before throwing it away. I was going to say it would be nice if you would just choose a fax machine from the print dialogue. You can… if it’s set up. Sigh.
- efreak 7mo agoYou can do the reverse, too. Hook up a dial-up modem to your PC and you can send and receive faxes on it. The software is built-in, though you'll probably want to configure it not to receive faxes automatically on your landline unless it's dedicated for that purpose. This has been built into Windows since at least Windows xp, probably been possible since 3.x. There's also Linux and probably Mac software available too. In Windows 11, I think the fax program isn't installed by default anymore, you might have to add it via optionalfeatures.exe.
- TyrunDemeg101 7mo agoChefs Kiss, thank you for that bit of schadenfreude to go with my morning coffee.
- wittyusername 7mo agoI don't believe this is actually real, but it was great to read nonetheless.
- r_lee 7mo agoit's fictional, it says that in the bottom (nvm, tagged nonfictional)
- nanoxide 7mo agoIt's also tagged "nonfiction" though
- solfox 7mo agoIt actually doesn't say that.
- actionfromafar 7mo agoYes, clearly. Something like this could never happen in the real healthcare system, that would be absurd.
- john_strinlai 7mo agothe bottom actually says: "He writes fiction where Disabled heroes get their happy endings _and_ nonfiction where life can, sometimes, be educational." the sentence continues after the "and". it is also tagged "non-fiction" at the top, as other people have noted.
- ai-inquisitor 7mo agoThis entire post is clearly AI generated. My internal AI detector didn't kick in until the sixth paragraph. More slop for the feed.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- tomq 7mo agoYeah GPTZero says 100% AI generated
- hyperhello 7mo agoI’m impressed the author was able to learn and handle all the UI while blind. The corner of “just works” computing they live in could be beyond what I’ve ever experienced.
- r_lee 7mo agoit's fiction (seemingly everything is on the site?). maybe the title should reflect that
- mzajc 7mo agoIt's tagged "nonfiction" just below the title.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- moss_dog 7mo agoIt's tagged nonfiction.
- hyperhello 7mo agoApparently we have a case of discerning truth by whether we’re downvoting someone saying it’s fiction.
- cl0ckt0wer 7mo agoThe fax machine we had in the office would convert the incoming faxes to email for us. Maybe that's a security violation for them but I find it difficult to believe they don't have some sort of all digital receipt system
- neoCrimeLabs 7mo agoYeah, there are also business that provide this as a service.
- harvey9 7mo agoFunny to think of the author sending documents to a computer-to-fax service and the recipient doing the reverse.
- miek 7mo agoWhile I refuse to work for the govt (my soul would rot), I have family and close friends that do, and the this story (w possibly exaggerated dialogue) is entirely believable.
- jerf 7mo agoThe story may be posted today but there's no reason it has to be a recent story. Even the most backward government post in 2026 should have a fax-to-document service that integrates with their document tracker. But there was definitely a 15 to 20 year window from in the 1990s to somewhere in the 2010s where you could send faxes directly from a document one way or another but the recipient was almost certain to be dumping them straight to paper. The story mentions using an internet service which I am not sure would have existed in the 90s (maybe at the very end), but I extend the essence of the story back to the 90s because I remember having a modem that had a printer driver that allowed you to hit "print" and fax someone directly, which you could also easily use to do something like this without any sort of step where you're feeding paper into a physical machine. Faxes have been "obsolete" a really long time.
- dentemple 7mo agoThis is proof that you don't need vision to create a thing of beauty.
- sidewndr46 7mo agoFor a second I thought this was one of my friends. He had his eyes removed due to a medical reason (already blind). He recently had to go to a vision doctor and take a vision test. To confirm to his insurance that he was indeed, blind.
- actionfromafar 7mo agoRegulatory capture.
- theseanz 7mo agoI have no eyes and I must take a vision test to prove I'm blind.
- mlmonkey 7mo ago"Cover your left eye .... look straight at that chart and tell me what the third line from the bottom says ..."
- ThinkingGuy 7mo agoI would hope that "any physician taking one look at you in the waiting room" would be a sufficient test.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- wkandek 7mo agoFictional, but how far away from the truth? I enjoyed this interview with the CIO of the IRS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4odAXoqRT8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4odAXoqRT8 who describes his troubles with replacing the fax based system. Security is mentioned. The specific section is around minute 15.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- whynotmaybe 7mo agoAnyone talking about "fax security" is another monk of security through obscurity. Phone line can be listened, fax can be hacked[1] and, most of the time, the fax is the copier and everyone in the building has access to it. 20 years ago I worked for a client that had a fax to exchange connector, any mailbox could send a fax from outlook[2] and they had linked fax numbers to group mailbox so that each department had their own fax numbers. 1 : https://blog.checkpoint.com/security/faxploit-hp-printer-fax-exploit/ https://blog.checkpoint.com/security/faxploit-hp-printer-fax... 2 : It was always fun to analyze fax sending errors because someone wanted to send a funny video to a fax number.
- tyingq 7mo agoSounds like it's not real but... It reads like an indictment of the government employee personally, rather than the rules and constraints that employee is forced to use. Probably fair to comment on the interaction, whether the person was rude, and so on. But blaming them for not accepting email is kind of silly. They are not empowered to do that kind of thing.
- hrimfaxi 7mo agoThe person is an agent of the system. That they bear the brunt of the reaction is the system working as intended.
- tyingq 7mo agoI guess. Faxing it to someone involved in why the rules are that way would be more satisfying to me.
- madaxe_again 7mo agoYou can fax your congressman.
- miki123211 7mo agoI, as a user with 10k+ karma on HN, can testify that the author has all the hallmarks of a real blind person (active in blind communities and so on). I don't have any evidence suggesting that the author ever engaged in deceptive behavior. In other words, my P(real) > 0.99.
- tyingq 7mo agoSure. He's real. ̶̶̶ ̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶u̶g̶h̶:̶ "Robert Kingett is a Blind, and gay, obscure writer. He writes fiction where Disabled heroes get their happy ending..." Edit: Yep, appears I have it wrong. Thanks for the pointers. The non-fiction tag missed my eye.
- 7mo ago
- pluc 7mo agoWhenever I read stories like this about how hard it is for US people to keep getting the little they've been getting I think of people on the other side. It takes an evil compliance to be the Karen in this article. Zero empathy, zero compassion, you're a row in a spreadsheet. If they'd start caring a little and standing up to what is very obviously wrong, the US would be a much different place. Apply that same logic to "the deep state", military men, etc. It's pretty crazy how much of their situation is their own making, yet they'll happily blame the other side.
- fainpul 7mo agoThis is not a US thing, this is a bureaucracy thing. You can enjoy that worldwide (at least in every "civilized" country).
- folbec 7mo agoI can confirm this from France.
- abright 7mo agoTo an extent, I agree. At the same time, Karen may be in a similarly desperate situation. While the morally correct position would be to stand up to what is obviously wrong, Karen may need the paycheck to feed her kids. Karen herself is a row in a spreadsheet that the powers that be could replace in a heartbeat. I'm not suggesting that this is any reason to support evil policies but I try to be sympathetic to struggles I may not be aware of.
- wholinator2 7mo agoWe have no idea what "Karens" life is actually like. I can think of about 5,000,000 scenarios that make her the more empathetic person in this interaction. People need jobs, government jobs are low paying but secure. This woman isn't making $100,000 a year just to say no to blind people, she very likely could be just scraping by as well, working in a call center, in a soul destroying government office, getting what little she can without a college degree she has neither the money, nor the time to complete. Maybe she worked hard and paid harder and got the degree and then it meant nothing. Very likely her boss and her both know she is eminently replacable. If she stands up she will be the single blade of grass getting chopped by the implacable mower. What I'm trying to say is yeah, she could've taken the risk and stood up and said something. He could've beared the pain and sent the correct documentation. He knows the process by now, he had to have known exactly what he needed to send! And yet he chose to needlessly inflict harm on someone who's choice it wasn't theirs to make. The reality of jobs these days is not a give and take, let's all make the world better by democratizing our decisions type world. It's much much worse.
- solfox 7mo agoGreat read. While I admire the spite, I question the wisdom of pissing off a government employee with the power to deny your benefits.
- rgblambda 7mo agoAnd a government employee, who was only explaining in a polite, matter of fact way, what their department policy and government legislation allowed them to do. If the story is true (I know it's labelled 'nonfiction' but c'mon) then likely the only reason the fax spamming worked is because the department policy prevented them from blocking numbers outside of very narrow circumstances.
- renewiltord 7mo agoBloody hell. Cerebral palsy, legal blindness then leading to total blindness, and gay. I hope this person lives in a place where at least the last is acceptable because otherwise this is one of the most unlucky rolls you can imagine. They seem to have built a life regardless however. Good for them.
- recursivedoubts 7mo agoKaren woke up this morning in her run down, rented flat. She briefly looks at the collections letter that showed up yesterday due to an unaffordable repair she had to pay for on her credit card. Another letter from her ex-partner's lawyer. As she rushes out the door (she spilled coffee on her one nice sweater, her favorite) her mom flashes through her mind... "What about mum?". She arrives at the office. It is an oppressive, sterile government office. She tries to ignore the overwhelming sense of helplessness and sits down to begin working. Her first call is a person screaming at her about their benefits. She has no power, absolutely no power, to help them due to the rules imposed on her by her superiors, but has to take the abuse regardless and explain the process she has no control over to them. The next call is a case she actually is familiar with: a person claiming to be disabled to collect dole. They aren't, but she has been told that this is a special case and she must work with them. She complies. She sits back in her chair and the phone rings again. An upset person on the other end... "I have the documents in PDF format"
- fainpul 7mo agoEverybody is formed by their experiences and genes and they act accordingly. There is no free will. If you realize that, you realize that you can never blame anyone for anything, because they had no choice to act differently. As a customer it's still hard to take, when someone who is clearly formed by years of professional deformation, treats you like shit.
- recursivedoubts 7mo agoi don't believe that to be the case at all but, of course, i don't have any choice in the matter, so what's the point of talking about it? but, of course, we don't have any choice in that matter either, do we?
- speedgoose 7mo agoI don’t like the AI writing style anymore. It’s very readable and it has great words, but it’s lacking imperfections. Like a raytraced 3D render of mathematically perfect shapes.
- hyperhello 7mo agoIt’s a neural network. You can see the macro pretending to be real aspects because our brain is neural too. Interesting, but not thinking.
- firesteelrain 7mo agoGiving them a pass since he or she is blind. The text is also very large intentionally
- harvey9 7mo agoI'm grateful for that. I never liked the hn default size even when my eyes were younger.
- rogerrogerr 7mo agoIt's ironically kinda less accessible in total, though. Because my browser lets me zoom in on a page almost infinitely, but I can only zoom out enough to make this text go from insanely-big to uncomfortably-large.
- WindyMiller 7mo ago[How confident are you that this writer uses AI?](https://sightlessscribbles.com/posts/the-colonization-of-confidence/ https://sightlessscribbles.com/posts/the-colonization-of-con...)
- shimman 7mo agoPeople forget that AI is trained on mediocre writing too, not everything a person writes is fire. Most of it is a mediocre, too long, and hard to understand; just like the outputs you get from LLMs.
- NGRhodes 7mo agoThis exact dynamic exists in the UK too. Lifelong and degenerative conditions. They have full access to bank accounts, revoked driving license, direct line to my consultants. Every form filled, every document provided. They still call to ask if my genes have fixed themselves. Not sure what verbal confirmation they're expecting - "no, I made it all up"? Edit: exact words were "Do you continue to have <REDACTED>" where <REDACTED> is a genetic disease. Edit edit: I feel sorry for those having to follow these scripts.
- mystraline 7mo agoThere's a LOT of similar content like this as fast-reading AI generated voice, over on YouTube shorts. The few I listened to were these kinds of GOTCHA HAHA moral superiority games. And then near the end of like the 3rd one was text that wasn't cut from the TTS engine... "Claude can make mistakes"
- nine_zeros 7mo ago[dead]
- looperhacks 7mo agoI know it's fiction - but in reality, Karen is likely just as annoyed by this as the author. The spam should go to the person in charge, not the person who is forced to deal with this every day
- simgt 7mo agoYou can usually tell these people apart though, they sound empathetic. The one in the story doesn't. Most of these bureaucrats have more power than what they want to let us think, but that means taking the risk of being told off for having been kind.
- tryauuum 7mo agofascinating. And who is that mythical person in charge I tried to delete my account on GitHub. I could not. The gdpr compliance email address they provide happily accepts emails but my account is still there, after more than 3 months. Why am I writing this here? To show you an example of being powerless to the system. The only things I can do is things you can call "petty", like wearing a "Microsoft employees deserve Gulag" t-shirt. Since I tried many other options and failed multiple times
- scottlamb 7mo ago> I know it's fiction Or semi-fiction? The author is actually blind and tagged it nonfiction, but I suspect some embellishment. > but in reality, Karen is likely just as annoyed by this as the author. When I'm frustrated talking with an agent of a big organization, I try to remember they probably didn't set the policy. But I also expect them to express some empathy for how I'm negatively affected by that policy. The author/protagonist, accurately or not, felt the opposite from "Karen from compliance". In their shoes, I wouldn't feel much empathy for Karen in return. > The spam should go to the person in charge I also expect the agent to have a closer relationship with "the person in charge" than I do (none whatsoever). If I mention the policy is absurd, they could at least make some effort to pass that along to their manager. Also, sending the information to the agent is necessary compliance, even if the volume is malicious. > not the person who is forced to deal with this every day Maybe they feeling a bit of the pain themselves might make them more likely to speak up. If this becomes a miserable job that no one will stay in, that might provoke a change.
- spicymaki 7mo agoAside from the AI writing the blog itself seems to have a false timeline. It says there are posts from April 2017, but the domain has only been up for a year. There is all of this promotion about books, podcasts, volunteering to support the author. What is this about?
- calcifer 7mo ago> It says there are posts from April 2017, but the domain has only been up for a year. I don't know the author, but presumably the blog predates the domain.
- phyzome 7mo agoPeople migrate their blogs.
- dqv 7mo agoThe author has existed online since at least 2011, so it wouldn't surprise me that he has just accumulated posts over time and migrated them, maybe haphazardly, to new installations. He's reader-funded which would explain what looks like some lost domain registrations over the years.
- Papazsazsa 7mo agoThis site is so nice.
- mock-possum 7mo agoWhew, is it? The text size is gigantic, on mobile I’m seeing about 3 words per line, really not a fan of this typography.
- newer_vienna 7mo agoI cannot get over the malice seeping through this author's writing. Happiness does not come from making others miserable.
- phyzome 7mo agoYou're getting a window into just how much it sucks to be disabled and then have extra burdens put on you. I don't know this author, but I know someone else in a similar position and I absolutely understand where this anger comes from.
- newer_vienna 7mo agoRegardless of the condition of your life, harboring anger and malice never leads to fulfilment.
- kevinh 7mo agoSure, and if depressed people weren't sad, they'd be happier. 'Just don't get frustrated' isn't actionable advice.
- newer_vienna 7mo agoThat's not what I said. To feel an emotion is morally neutral, while to use your emotions to cause harm is wrong.
- johnnyanmac 7mo agoAnd where's the reaction of Karen using her apathy to harm someone who just wants to get their benefits and not go homeless? Apathy is an emotjon as well.
- crazygringo 7mo ago"Karen" is following procedure. She didn't create it. She's not choosing to harm anyone. The "no email" policy is not hers personally. She's entirely innocent here.
- happyopossum 7mo agoIn 1998 I worked IT at a government facility and one of my responsibilities was e-fax. Nearly 30 years ago we didn’t print paper copies of everything that was faxed to us or that was sent as a fax…
- dwedge 7mo agoI enjoyed this read, but: > For the recipient, a fax is a physical reality. It requires paper. It requires ink. It requires time. I wouldn't be surprised if it was also digital. > I imagined Karen’s fax machine. It was probably an old, beige beast sitting in the corner of a gray office. It was likely low on paper. It was almost certainly low on patience. I think the rest of the article was also their imagination. > "Sir, please. You have to stop the fax. It’s… it’s been printing for an hour. It’s jamming the machine. We’re out of toner." People only speak like this in fan-fiction.
- lelanthran 7mo agoAgreed. This is fiction. A mere 500 pages isn't going to exhaust the toner of a printer installed specifically to recieve faxes all day, every day. And there being an actual printer is even less likely. Even back in 2008, it was almost impossible to find an actual fax machine, even though businesses had fax numbers, they stopped needing machines.
- thr0w__4w4y 7mo agoYes, absolutely this is fiction. It's a combination of his fantasy of how he'd like to "get back at the system" and also it's written to be clickbait ("poor helpless disabled guy gets back at the evil system trying to keep him down") I'm sure he deals with a lot of crap every day and I'm sure there's a grain of truth in this, but it's pure make believe. But it probably made him feel better writing it and he probably gets some clicks and some followers, so in the end it was probably a reasonable tradeoff. But anyone who thinks in 2026 that an office (government, private corp, etc.) has a stupid 9600 baud paper-eating fax machine spitting out pages is not living in the real world.
- rdtsc 7mo ago> Robert Kingett is a Blind, and gay, obscure writer. He writes fiction where Disabled heroes get their happy endings and nonfiction where life can, sometimes, be educational. Now I wonder if this is fiction, even if the person is real and they are blind.
- john_strinlai 7mo agofor some reason, you forgot to copy/paste the rest of the sentence, which continues with: "and nonfiction where life can, sometimes, be educational."
- rdtsc 7mo ago> for some reason, you forgot to copy/paste the rest of the sentence, which continues with: That's fair criticism, I didn't forget, I just copy pasted the shortest part that seemed relevant. I added it back in. Thanks for noticing.
- mock-possum 7mo agoA protagonist in a pathetic revenge fantasy so insufferably smug that they actually reward themselves with a cookie at the end. Gag me.
- java-man 7mo agowhat's wrong with you?
- icegreentea2 7mo agoAs another post mentions, this definitely fits into the wider genre of morality/revenge/malicious compliance porn. Regardless of if this is real or fiction, AI generated or not, it's still porn. Porn isn't bad, but thinking that porn adequately reflects reality, or that behavior within porn is blanket appropriate for real life is.. not good.
- cwmma 7mo agoI have had to repeatedly attest to my insurance that treatments and meds for my 6 year old son with a genetic condition is not work related. My 6 year old who I will point out is unemployed. Usually it's just a popup screen but occasionally it's a scary letter that threatens to not pay for surgery if not properly filled out.
- jeffrallen 7mo agoI hope this didn't really happen, but I loved reading it.
- cowthulhu 7mo agoThe author really lucked out that the government employee was not actually malicious. I can think of a good few ways she could have made life much more difficult for the author, even if he was likely to ultimately succeed.
- rgblambda 7mo agoWas thinking this too. She could have blocked that number on the (valid) basis that it was intentionally spamming them, and then stopped their benefits.
- johnnyanmac 7mo agoSomeone maliciously compliant enough to do this probably isn't someone you want to escalate with. Not with a reprimand, firing, or even lawsuit.
- gos9 7mo ago[flagged]
- smallpipe 7mo agoHaving a bad day eh, let’s be mean to the disabled o the internet
- tokai 7mo agoI don't know if the US is different, but in my experience dumping your whole medical history like that would just not count as providing "updated medical evidence". They would just tell you to comply and throw the 500 pages in the trash.
- rvba 7mo agoSo basically the blogger is wasting resources to spite some givernment drone.bad foe other taxpayers (who need to pay for this fax paper) and bad for environment. Probably bad for other disabled too - their faxes wont reach in time. There is some disability fraud, they have to check. Maybe stop voting for right wing, so someone changes the system though.
- b3lvedere 7mo agoWay back in the previous century my dad once told me that corporate had purchased a thermal fax machine for his department. He hated it and wished it would stop working. So i asked for its number and sent it lots of completely black pictures. The thermal fax did not like that.
- maerF0x0 7mo agoI cant wait for useless jobs like Karen's from Compliance to be replaced with a highly capable AI that is tuned to think on it's feet (so to speak). Yes, I realize there will be cynics who say "The difficulty is by design to deny benefits", but I also think a lot of well meaning policies are hamstrung by the implementation (especially of software). Claude + Code for America can fix this.
- richiebful1 7mo agoAI or not, the government would benefit from investing more money in improving digital services. Merely slapping an AI onto the existing system will only make things worse. Try using one of the AI hotel receptionists right now to get an idea of what that future looks like.
- draw_down 7mo ago[dead]
- raincole 7mo ago> It is a letter that arrives every few years from the government, asking a question that is medically absurd and philosophically insulting: "Are you still disabled?" It... doesn't sound like an absurd practice at all. There are curable disabilities. And what's curable changes along with the advance of technology. It sounds about right to review the situation every a few years.
- BoppreH 7mo agoAnd there's also fraud. If there's no periodic check, a single diagnosis from a corrupt doctor can give someone disability benefits for life. This might not be the right frequency, though, and only accepting post/fax is bullshit. Doubly so for short deadlines.
- RobotToaster 7mo ago> There are curable disabilities. True, but it should be obvious in 99% of cases if a condition is lifelong. >And what's curable changes along with the advance of technology. Very rarely tbh. I can't think of a single lifelong condition that was cured in the last decade. Even then it should be trivial to only review cases when a cure is available, by searching the database for people with that condition.
- jaggederest 7mo agoHepatitis C has effectively been cured. Obesity, sickle cell, and cystic fibrosis have all heard their death knell though not a complete cure. Hep C regimens are getting closer and closer to "take a pill for a couple months" - no more interferon injections or multiple rounds of multiple drugs. Trikafta is a functional cure for 90% of CF patients, I believe - not easy or cheap but normalizes what you care about bar the administration of the treatment itself. Sickle cell has CRISPR treatments that are incredibly invasive and awful but do functionally cure the disease more or less permanently for a cool "couple million" And everyone knows about GLP-1 drugs for obesity. The latest batch are as good or better than bariatric surgery without, you know, the surgery part.
- 7mo ago
- apexalpha 7mo agoThe problem in the UK, and many other countries, is that they refuse to split Disabilities in "objectively measurable disabilities" and "not objectively measurable disabilities." Obviously, you can just objectively measure if someone is fully blind. Sure you can pretend, but that's very hard. On the other hand there's disabilities like anxiety, where the only option is to ask the patient questions that the patient may or may not have already looked up online. By not splitting the groups you are left with only two very bad options: A) Everyone gets a regime with a lot checks and rechecks to keep the system affordable and scoped to people who need it. B) You give everyone a lax, trusty regime that people will immediately start abusing by claiming they have anxiety or so.
- tokai 7mo ago>you can just objectively measure if someone is fully blind No not really. Blindness is a spectrum. https://www.cnib.ca/en/sight-loss-info/blindness/what-blindness https://www.cnib.ca/en/sight-loss-info/blindness/what-blindn... https://www.perkins.org/what-blindness-really-looks-like/ https://www.perkins.org/what-blindness-really-looks-like/
- 0x3f 7mo agoThat's presumably what the word 'fully' is being employed for.
- tokai 7mo agoSure, but its meaningless as you don't need to be fully blind to be legally blind. Its easy to delimitate things if can just change the units to fit your scheme and do away with the ambiguities.
- squigz 7mo agoI'm legally blind. This seems needlessly pedantic. What GP was highlighting was a valid distinction between disabilities that are likely or not to change, and how the lack of that distinction leads to the situations like TFA.
- glitchc 7mo agoThe problem with government services is the rampant fraud. In such cases, fraud is often guilt-free since the government is perceived to have infinite resources. This tempts otherwise honest people to "try their luck" free of conscience, and in most cases, consequence. These silly rules and barriers are meant to increase friction for fraudsters. Unfortunately it comes at the expense of legitimate claimants. I feel your pain and I also feel hers.
- Angostura 7mo agoI read this: >For the recipient, a fax is a physical reality. It requires paper. It requires ink. It requires time. ... I assumed that there would simply be a messaging system attached to an OCR at the other end - no physical fax machine
- breppp 7mo agoAlthough I didn't enjoy this fiction of "angry man against system" genre, he did touch an important truth about the fax machine, which this story doesn't properly expand on. A fax is very useful to bureaucracies because it is hard to prove a fax was ever sent or received at all. It might never arrived and wasn't retried, might have been printed as empty pages, maybe someone else picked it up. This is why it is so useful when someone on the other end wants to delay (the equivalent of closing a bug as can't reproduce). This is why governments like faxes and why this story is so unlikely (no chance anyone will call back in that event)
- 0x3f 7mo agoSurely some of the online fax services are offering retention and certification of what's sent? Seems like free money to add a checkbox at checkout.
- skyyler 7mo agoYes, breppp is completely incorrect. Faxes are used specifically because they can do transmission verification and document evidence of verified successful transmission. Online fax services that are used by medical or government offices almost always generate digital logs that track when a document was sent, who sent it, and who received it, for regulatory purposes
- breppp 7mo agoI was talking about the receiving end and at least in the context of this story we are talking about a fax machine, not some fancy document server. Point being that a fax has too many failure modes, which is a feature in these places
- undeveloper 7mo agoentirely AI generated https://www.pangram.com/history/964171e9-7cc9-45c9-9da0-f6b0400fd21e https://www.pangram.com/history/964171e9-7cc9-45c9-9da0-f6b0...
- unsupp0rted 7mo agoPeople are judging OP and/or judging Karen. A lot is being lost in translation. When you get a certain drone with a certain way of speaking down to you ("this is the system obviously, you faceless person who is just as dumb as all the other faceless people"), then it's infuriating and I can see why OP went to bureaucratic war. At the same time, give the drone a break. She's doing what she's been trained to do, in the framework she's permitted to operate in, and she's got bigger problems than you. When I was younger, I went to similar bureaucratic wars to prove a point... to whom? What for? It's not helping anybody.
- squigz 7mo agoConsidering the sentiments usually expressed on HN, it's kind of shocking the ratio of people judging the people vs those judging the system.
- kerblang 7mo agoUnder HIPAA requirements emailing personal medical info is a massive no-no. Admittedly, this is for the patient's protection, and of course being blind is not much of a secret... but it's completely understandable that email would be strongly discouraged. Nobody wants to get in trouble for breaking the rules. Honestly, being able to accept a fax is great, although I would think any properly outfitted modern office that does accept fax would be able to route them straight to document storage rather than a printer. There are probably even internet services that can just act as a fax dumpster and hold PDF/image file for perusal at one's leisure. Yes even the govt can figure this sort of thing out.
- Synthetic7346 7mo agoIs this an outdated requirement? What's the attack surface of an email vs fax? Unless they ban phones at the office, someone could just take a photo of the documents the patient faxed or mailed them
- password4321 7mo ago> What's the attack surface of an email vs fax? I believe the primary concern has been while the message is in transit, unencrypted routing over the internet vs. unencrypted over the phone line.
- adzm 7mo agoAdditionally the storage of email was cited as a concern, making mass data breaches much simpler. Note that there is a HIPAA approved email service called Direct, as in Direct Messaging / Direct Exchange / Direct Connect.
- kstrauser 7mo agoIt's a current requirement. (Source: I'm adjacent to a doctor's office.) Two big advantages of faxes are that 1) they're point-to-point, and 2) there's zero caching between the sender and receiver. If everyone had a fax machine such that you'd commonly get a working fax receiver if you mis-entered the recipient's number, then #1 wouldn't be such a big deal. But in reality, if you enter a fax number, and the other end actually answers and responds with a screech, it's extremely likely that you're connected to the right party. (Also, I bet 99% of modern faxing is triggered by a nearby computer, or by pressing one of the preprogrammed speed dial buttons on the fax. There aren't that many opportunities to misdial the number in the first place.) That second is also a big deal. There are no intermediate servers which may be caching and inappropriately storing the data, except maybe the NSA, but what can ya do. The sender may have a cache, in the form of a print spooler. The receiver may have a cache where it temporarily stores inbound faxes and prints them asynchronously. But since both of those devices are owned and controlled by the parties in the communication, that's not a legal issue. I'm not advocating for faxes. They're a slow, clunky, lossy, pain in the ass. And yet, they do have specific properties that are pretty sweet. I guess the equivalent would be if I could ask you to send a PDF to my specific IPv6 address, and you could peer-to-peer shoot it directly to me. If I typoed the address at all, it's statistically "unlikely" that another person would be listening on that specific IP a that specific time. And if it were truly P2P, then you and I would be the only 2 who ever touched the file, except maybe the NSA, but what can ya do. Alas, I don't see that replacing fax machines any time soon.
- RobotToaster 7mo agoI hate to burst your bubble, but I imagine they use a fax server to receive faxes. Which just makes the refusal to accept emails even more objectionable. Likely they only accept faxes solely to make it harder for disabled people.
- refulgentis 7mo agoAI slop fantasy of a blind jerk getting "revenge" by sending a 512 page fax to a disabilities office, and the government employee calls to BEG for them to stop the "whir-chunk" from the fax machine.
- ChrisMarshallNY 7mo agoI love the story (I have close family that has to go through the same crap -it's truly nasty. They deliberately try to intimidate people into giving up their benefits). But I have also learned that pissing off bureaucrats can have severe consequences. They may be petty, but some of them (like SSI/Medicaid people) have the power to truly mess up your life.
- newsoftheday 7mo agoI enjoyed the story and yay for him then read after the end, "Robert Kingett is a Blind, and gay..."!?!?! What does what the author does in the bedroom have to do with the story I just read? Nothing. I don't give a damn what the author does in their bedroom.
- guzfip 7mo agoPeople love to talk about themselves. The internet and social media accelerated the narcissistic character of our society. I’m being partly facetious, but I have started to hear some theories from likely heterodox psychologists about new scute forms of personality disorder developing, particularly among younger generations. Not sure how much there is to the theory.
- stockresearcher 7mo agoThe ending is a little hard to believe. My sister has a job somewhat like this for a school system. Multiply the number of working hours by the number of workers, divide by the number of active cases and the number of hours each case takes to resolve. The answer is that a large number of cases will not be done by their deadlines. If someone wanted to send her a 500 page fax, she’s just going to shrug and work on something else. If she gives it even a passing thought, it would be “this ass better hope his fax finishes printing before the deadline for benefit cutoff”
- panzagl 7mo agoUnplug fax, no one gets benefits that day, simple fix and the office's day just got a little easier. What was already printed goes in the shred bin.
- gcmeplz 7mo agoNon-consumer printers are also pretty good! I used to teach 120 students, so printing out materials for all of them for a week would sometimes be 1,000+ pages. 500 pages? I can't picture that causing problems for any org that needed to print things regularly. And toner? I'd wager that the printer is going to use a print drum. That does have toner inside, but you'd talk about replacing the drum–not running out of toner. Even consumer drum printers are pretty good nowadays. I have a Brother drum printer, and I wouldn't worry about sending a 500 page job to it if I needed to. https://help.brother-usa.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/183926/~/what-are-the-approximate-yields-of-the-drum-unit-and-toner-cartridge https://help.brother-usa.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/183926/...
- mrguyorama 7mo agoIt's very likely, even in some smaller local governments, that the "Fax" doesn't do any printing at all. Digital faxing has been a staple of bureaucracy for decades. So it doesn't inconvenience the "Karen" who is supposedly so evil for (checks notes) following the laws or rules that were implemented by people who were voted into their position. Unlike in the private sector, public sector employees are often literally constrained by the law. You can personally end up in court if you try to help someone bypass a law. Plenty of government employees DO still end up bending rules. Karen has zero power. If she did, she wouldn't be talking to assholes on the phone all day every day.
- looneysquash 7mo agoWhen the government imposes these rules, this is an outcome they callously ignore. Sure, we can rightly criticize the author for their abuse towards this working class government employee. But then to some degree we're guilty of what the author is guilty of. We're fighting each other. Let's focus our outrage on the people who made these rules. And that keep making more rules like them. Not that we shouldn't have rules to prevent "welfare fraud". But that it's unacceptable for such rules to make it harder to receive benefits that you're entitled to. And for many of our representatives, making it more difficult to receive benefits isn't just a side effect of bad anti-fraud policy, it's actually the point. Let's focus our outrage on them and demand change.
- dolphinscorpion 7mo agoCould Karen retaliate by saying she never got the required proof? I think she could cause a missed payment or two. Probably it's not Karen, it's the stupid law that requires a piece of paper every x years.
- dntrshnthngjxct 7mo agoInspiring, Nietzchean even.
- justin66 7mo agoI found the bureaucrat was a more sympathetic character than the author, and that is saying something. Part of that is because of the bits of the author's story that don't add up. It's apparently "truthy" rather than true. I guess maybe that works sometimes. Mostly it's because I don't think the SSA employee was malicious at all, although viewed through a lens of bitterness perhaps they could be viewed that way. But the author was unabashedly malicious.
- haritha-j 7mo agoTake a job helping the disabled claim benefits they said. It'll be nice and you can help disabled people they said.
- zarl 7mo agoI guess "I harassed a random low level employee because I took a request to fax documents as a personal insult" wasn't as catchy of a title?
- bmurphy1976 7mo agoI worked briefly with an idvidual who had this extreme bureaucratic mentality. I just can't even imagine how you can talk to another person and have no empathy at all for their situation and only care about the process. I also know processes exist for a reason, people will abuse things, and these processes are designed to prevent abuse. I don't have an answer. I just know that my empathy is too strong. I could never be so rigid and would not thrive in a career requiring that level of disconnect.
- spandrew 7mo agoYea, the front service desk worker doesn't deserve that shit. Dick move.
- lelanthran 7mo agoShould be a law that every person spends 2 years at first line customer service before they are eligible for working anywhere else.
- CrzyLngPwd 7mo agoPlot twist: Karen's fax machine turns the incoming fax into a PDF, which is saved on the network, and an AI processes it, sending her a summary of 300 words or less. No government workers were harmed.
- ocimbote 7mo agoMinus the AI part, I agree. I'm 100% convinced many fax machines nowadays exist just for bureaucracy and are actually fax-to-pdf.
- estebank 7mo agoIf the genersted PDFs are stored encrypted in an accessible server with proper access control, then that is a measurable improvement over email containing medical informstion that a random citizen would send, which would be bouncing around unencrypted around at least one third party SMTP server. Of course, if then that person uses an online Fax service, they are sharing that information with at least one other party... And that's even without considering the security benefit of not receiving files that could be compromised, instead generating a file from an image stream. (Now I'm trying to picture what a daisy chain of exploits would be needed to craft a malicious Fax.)
- padjo 7mo agoYeah there's no way a fax actually gets printed for this. I worked in an admin role like this 25 years ago and incoming faxes went straight to PDF on a network share even back then.
- BigTTYGothGF 7mo agoAnd then everybody, including the fax machine, stood up and clapped.
- perfmode 7mo ago[dead]
- bigbuppo 7mo agoI love malicious compliance, but it's more fun when you suffer along with them.
- bambax 7mo ago> For the recipient, a fax is a physical reality. It requires paper. It requires ink. Not in my time it didn't. It was thermal paper that grew grey after a while (or a short exposition to direct sunlight); it came in rolls and each page was cut after it was "printed" and fell to the floor where it curled. 500 pages of this would have created a huge, unmanageable mess.
- perching_aix 7mo agoI found this story very surprising in a number of ways, so I gave some of the details a quick search. According to the docs linked, there are two forms at play, SSA-454 and SSA-455. The author likely had to have an SSA-455 filled, as his condition is of a "Medical Improvement Not Expected" type (this differentiation does exist). Seems that this needs to be done every 5-7 years. Both can be filled online apparently though, self-service style (not sure how accessible that is for him though): https://www.ssa.gov/disability/review https://www.ssa.gov/disability/review Faxing and physical mail to a specific office seem to be additional options. Doesn't even sound like the fax and mail rule is office specific, seems to be a Social Security Administration originating internal policy. Am I missing something?
- elephanlemon 7mo agoThe entire blog is probably generated by OpenClawd or the like. I don’t think it’s a real story.
- cdcarter 7mo agoThe blog started publishing in 2017. Why do you think this?
- plombe 7mo ago[dead]
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- palmotea 7mo agoThis reads like fiction. > I opened my preferred internet faxing service. This is a tool that allows me to send a fax purely through digital data. It would cost $20, exactly the amount someone had donated to the blog last week, but if I didn't do this, I would lose all my benifits. It costs me zero paper. It costs me zero toner. > ... > For the recipient, a fax is a physical reality. It requires paper. It requires ink. It requires time. I doubt it it would actually happen that way. My guess is there's a very high chance that the recipient is also using some kind of internet faxing service. So no actual paper was harmed by this prank. > Two hours later, my phone rang... > "Sir, please. You have to stop the fax. It’s… it’s been printing for an hour. It’s jamming the machine. We’re out of toner." Oh yeah. Total fiction. Can't you stop a real fax machine by hanging up the phone? They work with dial-up. I wouldn't be surprised if there's also a "cancel print" button.
- hannahnelson 7mo ago[dead]
- ctoth 7mo agoI'm blind. This guy is not fighting the system. He's being a jerk to a call center worker and writing fan fiction about her suffering in public. Not a good look.
- xattt 7mo agoHaving worked in a similar field, providing historic documentation when it’s not necessary usually prolongs the process for the client. This is because the reviewer now has to sort through all these files to make sure new contradictory info isn’t lost in between. Also, large firms will typically digitize directly into a document management system. It would be no more than 5-15 minutes at most for an experienced reviewer to flip through 500 PDF pages to find current supporting evidence of a medical disability.
- cobertos 7mo agoHow smooth are your experiences with the system? I've dealt with only one other government system like this and it was impenetrable, gave up after 6 months of calling, never receiving the benefit. I'm unsure how someone can experience a system that has no thought to their well-being and then _not_ find gratification in the small person winning.
- nojvek 7mo agoOh boy. I’m dealing with IRS right now to get an EIN for an LLC. They won’t give an EIN over online form. Must be faxed or physically mailed. They say 3-5 days. Been weeks. I pay $5/week to hold onto a fax number. So Trump spending hundreds of billions on blowing up kids’ schools in Iran and cutting funding from IRS. Why does it take weeks to start a business in 2026 and get a bank account. Just absurd.
- dqv 7mo agoHmm the online EIN form will give you an EIN instantly unless you don't have an ITIN or you are incorporated outside the US, in which case you would have to do it offline. https://sa.www4.irs.gov/applyein/ https://sa.www4.irs.gov/applyein/ I remember using it and worrying about losing the EIN at the last step, so I saved the document several times and printed it several times too.
- nojvek 7mo agoOnline service works for some but not others. IRS doesn’t sync with the state registries for databases. So if your LLC is close to a name of another one in their out of date DB, IRS breaks. Their fax machine doesn’t always work. No way to email. One must go through snail mail and it takes months to get an EIN.
- GlenTheMachine 7mo agoAs a government employee, enmeshed in the bureaucracy: This is the way. The problem is that it took Karen zero effort to say “we only accept fax”. She doesn’t care about how much effort it takes you you — in fact, as implied, it taking you a tremendous amount of effort actually reduces her effort. In order to make a dent, you have to figure out a way for the idiotic policy to impact the person making and/or enforcing it. That’s the only way it ever changes.
- kuramori 7mo agoDisabled, fake and gay. Oh my.
- cvhc 7mo agoWell, I'd appreciate Karen is willing to talk and explain whatever inconvenient policies they have. A faceless bureaucracy is even more desperate. My wife and I had many troubles (delays due to additional security checks, endless request for documents) in visa and all immigration-related applications in the US. We cannot even find a government official to complain. Email inquires all end up with boilerplate responses. Many agencies do not have phone services, and even if some do, you are connected to an unhelpful call center worker who can only provide generic info and have no permissions to discuss your problems. And lawyers told us we could do little because all the procedures are legitimate. We may (and we did once in the past) sue the government but only after an "unreasonable" delay, at which point much harm is already caused. This week the US consulate emailed me to ask for official documents about a minor past civil suit against me in China, including "a police certificate", for my visa application. Why the heck does the US visa have anything to do with a civil suit, and in which country does a civil suit involve police?
- layer8 7mo ago> "Sir, please. You have to stop the fax. It’s… it’s been printing for an hour. It’s jamming the machine. We’re out of toner." I’m a bit surprised they haven’t migrated to digital fax reception a long time ago.
- gowld 7mo agoThis reads like LLM slop. gptzero says 98%. It also appears to be a confession of intentional vandalism of government property, despite the author admitting that they already knew how to send a fax via website, which is as convenient as email. And, believe it or not, yes, some people do in fact receive treatment that cures a disability.
- ohsecurity 7mo agoIt's 2026 and they're still rejecting email for security while asking for 500 page faxes. Hilarious and depressing at the same time.
- reboot81 7mo agoRobert: youre website is among the most visually attractive ones Ive seen.
- felineflock 7mo agoIt was basically "** you" delivered with the power of 1024 middle fingers (512 pages times both hands).
- fattybob 7mo agoThat left me with a big satisfied smile - hard to believe these people still exist, but they do, well done I say, well done!
- amai 7mo agoThis reminds me of a story from BOFH ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_Operator_From_Hell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_Operator_From_Hell ), where he used a black piece of paper, put it into the fax machine, glued both ends together, so the fax scanned an endless roll of black paper and pressed send.
- darepublic 7mo agoReminds me of Harry Tuttle from Brazil. And then the surreal scene where he becomes a magnet for government receipts and disappears under a pile of them
- ctoth 7mo agoThe SSA is one of the largest federal employers of blind people. "Karen" could easily be a blind woman on the other end of that call, also below the poverty line on a GS-nothing salary, who now has to deal with a fax machine (hopefully virtual!) she also can't see spitting out 512 pages and jamming. This guy is ... Something.
- lowbloodsugar 7mo agoFFS there’s no fax machine on the other end. There no paper or ink. It’s all electronic.
- Animats 7mo agoWhat, a government agency doesn't have incoming fax servers that create PDF files? I had a service for that twenty years ago, for both incoming and outgoing faxes. Cost a few dollars a month, flat rate. (Now if LibreOffice could edit PDFs decently... My tax accountant sent me a PDF to fill in, but LibreOffice can't get the text and the lines to line up.)
- thelastgallon 7mo agoEvery country has different norms about these things. If it were India, you have to pay a 'tax', mostly directly to the bureaucrat or using the workflow setup by the bureaucrat -- its another person outside 'taking care' of these things or his security guard/watchman or another low level employee. It can't be done remotely, you have to go to office and figure out the workflow and the right person. Most third world countries have some version of this configuration. In US, there are lawyers who get you disability, no problem, they take care of everything for you, and take 50%. Millions of people are on fake disability thanks to these kind lawyers. Ultimately, most people in Govt (politicians/bureaucrats) are entitled to ALL the money that Govt collects (steals?), and they have different ways of collecting their money. This is just human nature. The Trump regime shows the most innovative ways of doing this, it is quite admirable.
- wannabag 7mo agoFor anyone interested in how this can be changed, here’s an example from the Nordics. In the early 2000s, the Swedish tax agency, Skatteverket, started a journey from “tax police” to service. This was a radical change that affected every aspect and function of the bureaucracy. It went from far down the list to the second most trusted agency (after the Swedish Armed Forces) in 2023 [1]. As a citizen, the differences are notable. I came to Sweden after the change, and my previous experiences in other countries were very similar to the friction-filled endeavor implied by the author. The people I dealt with were similarly unhelpful, unconcerned, if not downright undermining my efforts to comply. This is all a result of a system that breeds friction. Citizens and bureaucrats alike simply play their part. Moving to Sweden was an otherworldly experience. My first mistake, and resulting interaction with the agency, was met with compassion and understanding from a bureaucrat who then made an effort to help put things right. It’s hard to describe how radically different the situation felt. Anger, frustration, and helplessness were gone. Instead, I felt like sending flowers to Karin, the bureaucrat (I really should have). I’ve become a better citizen, more likely to comply going forward. I wish more agencies around the world would take note, especially now, in a world trending toward fewer human interactions and increasing digitalization. Bureaucracies and technology alike should continue to be built to improve collective human experiences, not break us apart. [1] https://chef.se/artiklar/skatteverkets-forandringsresa-nagra-var-sa-arga-att-de-slutade/#:~:text=Skatteverkets%20f%C3%B6r%C3%A4ndringsresa:%20%27%27N%C3%A5gra%20var%20s%C3%A5%20arga%20att%20de%20slutade%27%27 https://chef.se/artiklar/skatteverkets-forandringsresa-nagra... Apologies for the poor quality link, my morning Googling wasn't very effective.
- pugchat 7mo ago[dead]
- gumboshoes 7mo agoOutstanding. May his fax endure forever.
- rekabis 7mo agoOne of the biggest problems with this story is Karen phoning back and asking him to stop the fax. Sorry, but faxes don’t work like this. A fax takes in the entire transmission over the phone line, ends the call, and then - IF it has been set up to do so, instead of just storing the fax - it prints it out. Which means that Karen had every ability to tell her fax to stop the print job herself. A fax is not like a printer, where the sender has the ability to tell the printer to pause or cancel the job. Once the fax starts printing, that original communication - the phone call with the fax transmission - has long since ended. And if this fax machine can retrieve faxes from a fax server elsewhere on the network or on the Internet, that communications disconnect is even more severe. Which makes me very suspicious of the entire story.
- lormayna 7mo agoIn Italy, in the past people starts paying tickets that they think unfair completely in coins. The government had to introduce a maximum amount that you can pay in coins to protect the employees that otherwise will spend day on counting cents.
- jiveturkey 7mo ago> It costs me zero paper. It costs me zero toner. > For the recipient, a fax is a physical reality. It requires paper. It requires ink. It requires time. Interesting misconception in 2026. Of course if you read on, it's clear the story is embellished.