For me, nothing deconstructs the whole idea of “official authority” more than when a patient asks me for a work excuse letter.
Because it seems like this should be a defined process. Like there’s an official work excuse format and specific criteria for who deserves it, and maybe you get entered into some kind of Central Work Excuse Database, I don’t know. That’s how I thought the world worked when I was younger.
But actually what happens is I open up Word and type something like: “Dear Employer, Employee was for real sick and not lying. They were at our clinic which is a real clinic with a waiting room and everything. I’m a nurse and I said so. I’m wearing scrubs right now. Ok bye.”
I suspect even more of the world is like this than I realize. In most ways, I think that’s a good thing.
In my experience it’s certainly true that a lot of ‘official’ processes like this are, or can be, much simpler and less...