Bureaucratic Red Tape

Some large companies have a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of policies, and a minimal amount of common sense. I shot four photo jobs at large companies over the past few weeks:

Emails

An editorial portrait of a telecom executive was needed by a magazine. To set up a date, that executive’s company required every e-mail between us to be cc’d to the following people: photo subject’s executive assistant, executive assistant’s assistant, director of national marketing and communications, communications senior manager, public relations senior manager, legal affairs, social media manager, an outside public relations and marketing agency, building management, and building security.

You can imagine how long the email chain was as everyone had to weigh in on everything.

Forms

Another corporate client had to add me to its vendor list. The company sent four documents for me to complete. One of these documents was five pages long. The completed documents had to be cc’d to three other people at two sister companies in two countries.

Security

At an office building, I had to go through building security first, and then company security. Every security gate and most doors required an electronic pass card. Each employee’s pass card allowed them through some doors but not others. Three employees, each of whom had different pass cards, were needed to escort me to the photo location.

When I had finished the photos and was looking for someone to escort me out, a nearby employee said, “Don’t worry about security. Just use the side door over there. It’s always left unlocked so we can go out for a smoke.” The unlocked side door opened directly onto the city sidewalk.

Parking

Another location had no on-street parking and the nearest public parking lot was four blocks away. You always want to park as close as possible, especially when you have to carry four cases of photo equipment and two 9-foot rolls of background paper. Fortunately the client arranged for me to get a temporary parking pass to its employee parking lot.

The problem was that I had to go into the office building and fill out a form to get the parking pass. But before I could do that, I had to park somewhere. But before I could park, I needed a parking pass. To get a parking pass, I had to go into the building and fill out a form.