Just for laughs: Bureaucrats love to wallow in the irrelevant 

Too many cooks spoil the broth, they say, just as too many hands mess up what one’s got. But how does one ever imagine what’s up with the bureaucratic lot. There are many that have scalded at the top of the bureaucratic pot. 

For, the first axiom of bureaucracy is: wallow in the irrelevant. 

Here’s one Canadian writer, going by the name of Laurence J. Peter, in fact, who made quite a career of exacting jibes at the desk dons. Let’s take a look at what he has to say. 

The Peter principle: In a hierarchy, each employee tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence. 

Peter’s bureaucratic principle: Bureaucracy defends the status quo, long past the time when the quo has lost its status. 

Peter’s bureaucratic perspective: An incompetent man in a high office is like a man on a mountaintop. Everything looks small to him, and he looks small to everyone else. 

Peter’s principle of bureaucratic leadership: The mark of a bureaucratic leadership is to assign jobs to those least able to do them. 

But here’s a little rhyme that indicates that strength and ability don’t necessarily depend on numbers:  

Committees of twenty, deliberate a plenty/ Committees of ten, act now and then/ But most jobs are done by committees of one.