Beleaguered Bureaucrat: Difference between revisions
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The Beleaguered Bureaucrat would love to help you with your problems... if they weren't dealing with a dozen other equally important (in the bureaucrat's eyes) matters at the same time, usually while being shouted at for not being able to do five things at once. Basically, this is a character who is swamped with too much work whose performance (and stress level) is clearly suffering for it. If it's a main character, expect their stress at this to become a [[Running Gag]]. Can become a problem for heroes if they need something done by this character quickly.
The tropes:
Signs that you are dealing with this character are:
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== Literature ==
* Frank Herbert's Jorj X. McKie stories (such as ''[[wikipedia:The Tactful Saboteur|The Tactful Saboteur]]''). McKie is a member of the Bureau of Sabotage (BuSab), whose job it is to make every efficient government worker a
* Ponder Stibbons, of [[Discworld]]'s Unseen University, is the only wizard who cares much about anything besides his next meal, leaving him saddled with dozens of jobs. This leads him to a mini-[[Crowning Moment of Awesome|CMOA]] (at least mini by Disc standards) when he interrupts the feuding Archchancellors of two magical universities by saying that his various posts give him enough votes on the University Council to control it.
* The Lamplighter-Marshal in D.M. Cornish's [[Monster Blood Tattoo]] series is this; it is telling that his first on-screen appearance has him running all about his domain having been sent to the wrong place by a (probably malicious) clerk. Otherwise, however, he's a perfectly [[Reasonable Authority Figure]] {{spoiler|until he's called away as part of a power-play by his [[Evil Chancellor]], who just happens to be a genuine [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]] in charge of a legion of [[Obstructive Bureaucrat
* [[Darkness Visible|Sir John Busby]] tries his best, but once the proverbial hits the fan, he can't really keep up with the volume of Wardens' reports, and his usual efficiency takes a nose dive.
* In ''[[Transformers Trans Tech]]'', the red-tape-happy [[City of Adventure|Axiom Nexus]] is full of bureaucrats, including this sort. In "Withered Hope" in particular, the inability of an overworked and underpaid bureaucrat to help the [[Challenge of the Go Bots|GoBots]] (yes, you read that right) find among the thousands of others waiting to be processed through Customs the rogue scientist that escaped from their group, is what sets all their problems in motion.
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