Russian Bureaucracy Gains Sentience During 400-Page Search For One Competent Manager
Authorities have launched a nationwide initiative to find a single administrator capable of turning the entire periodic table of elements into a functioning economy.
MOSCOW, Following a viral post from a Czech parody account claiming that Qatar used oil and one Bedouin to become the world’s richest country in thirty-five years, while Russia has the whole periodic table and still cannot find a Bedouin, authorities have treated the meme as a policy proposal. The administration has launched a nationwide hunt for one competent manager and created the Ministry for the Procurement of One Administrator to run it.
The ministry began with paperwork. It spent its first eight months writing a four-hundred-page application form, because a shorter form would have suggested undue confidence. Candidates must show they can turn vast mineral reserves into a working economic apparatus. They must also prove they have never completed a project under budget, which would disrupt regional procurement protocols.
“We possess every chemical element known to modern science, from industrial diamonds to rare earth metals, yet nobody knows which filing cabinet contains them,” said Viktor Chugunov, Principal Undersecretary for Staring Blankly at Spreadsheets. “Last week an audit found a vault of gold bullion. The oversight committee recorded it as ‘miscellaneous shiny rocks’ while waiting for the sub-directorate on basic definitions to issue a ruling.”
“We lack an individual who knows which filing cabinet they are stored in.”
That paperwork has done its job. The selection process rejects anyone who appears able to perform it. Several applicants with basic administrative competence were removed for suspicious efficiency. One man alphabetised a shelf of tax records during his interview. The Department of Unnecessary Paperwork detained him for attempting to weaken the nation’s filing infrastructure.
So the commission needed more commissioners. Its members have appointed themselves to an expanding chain of advisory sub-commissions, producing a closed loop of bureaucracy that recently gained legal sentience. On Monday, the Sentient Roster of Committees sent a memo asking for better conditions for its rubber stamps. It also requested money for a second manager, whose sole duty would be supervising the search for the first.
The arrangement reached its peak last month. Officials held a public ceremony to unveil an enormous physical Periodic Table of Elements, then discovered nobody had hired an executive capable of reading it. The table went into a high-security vault. Four departments claimed the only key, which was later melted during a routine inspection of national zinc stockpiles.
“We stand ready for unparalleled prosperity,” said Yelena Rostova, First Chairwoman of the Board for Pointing at Unlabelled Graphs. “We need one person who can make an administrative decision without convening a fourteen-person advisory panel. Until then, staff will continue moving documents from the left side of their desks to the right, then returning them after lunch.”
At press time, the Ministry had postponed the search until the fourth quarter of the next fiscal year. Officials said they first needed an independent inquiry into why the previous investigative tribunal examining the search committee’s delayed findings had still not submitted its preliminary paperwork.