Criminal Incompetence

Why is it, I wonder, that everyone that I encounter in administrative or related jobs displays a level of incompetence, stupidity, or mindlessness that verges on the moronic? Take for example, the editorial staff at a top journal, who invited me to submit a paper there. The deadline for submission was a month ago, and so I sttruggled to prepare my thoughts, add the requisite 30% novel material, and such like, in order to meet this deadline.

Yesterday, just over one month since meeting this deadline, an editorial assistant emailed to say that the paper was over their page limits, and I would have to resubmit.

So that's one month to open the file, look at the number of pages, and compare this to the page limit. That's effciency for you.

"But wait", you are surely thinking, "don't you bear some responsibility for not observing the stated page limits. In fact, isn't this outburst just you redirecting your anger at yourself for not getting this right."

Well... no.

The page limits for the journal are "14 pages in the journal style: 10pt, 2 column". They also invite you to submit in single column, double space, with about 26 lines per page. They mention that in this format, 25 pages are acceptable.

Now, anyone who has ever had any experience with typesetting will know that 14 pages in 2 column format translates to a very large number of pages when you knock up the font size and the line spacing. So when I sent my submission, which was several pages above the 25 page double spaced limit, I knew for sure that it would be much smaller when put in the final format. But, as a reviewer, I know that I appreciate a nicely spaced out review comment on which to scribble comments.

This morning, I spent some time messing around to put the submission into 2 column format. This requires some amount of effort in getting the line breaking for formulae not to spill over, and otherwise make it look OK. This is mostly wasted effort, since when it finally gets printed in a journal, it gets transferred into some bizarre internal format [for no obvious reason]. It came to 13 pages, without cutting or squeezing anything. I sent that back, and expect to hear from them again in a month with some other idiotic quibble.

Second (yes, there's more), I called up my favourite useless, thieving, cheating lying airline: Aerolinea Argentina. Regular readers will remember that they stole lost my bags some months ago. A couple of months back, I sent off a reimbursement claim, and naturally heard nothing from them. Today I called them up to hurry them along (since nothing happens if you don't call people a dozen times). In my original claim I sent a list of missing items. The nice lady on the phone told me that I need to fax to her the same list but handwritten. Handwritten? WTF? But why is it that I have to call them to get this stupid (and not previously mentioned) instruction from them? Are they being serious, or is this just some game that they play with their customers to wind them up and wear them down? I should just sue the buggers, but that's far too difficult.