FORM PHOBIA
Some people are afraid of heights, some of frogs and others of getting peanut butter stuck on the roof of their mouths. Aside from a long standing arachnophobia — fear of spiders — I have now realized that I suffer from formophobia. That is the fear of forms, especially government forms, and most particularly income tax forms.
Among the many phobias on the phobialist.com a fear of forms is not listed — how strange, I can’t be the only person in the world with this phobia. I would have thought there would be millions of us poor sufferers out there. Eventually I tracked down a name and description on the urbandictionary site:
Formophobia/ Form Anxiety: n. Paralyzing fear, distress, and nervousness caused by the act of entering personal information into a pre-made template. Making simple tasks such as applying for jobs, school, etc. almost impossible for the affected. http://www.urbandictionary.com/
Now that describes exactly how I feel about government forms. My fear ratcheted up several notches at one job, after filling in 27 page Basic Environmental Scoping Application forms, four times for four different roads. This form must have been developed by someone suffering from severe formophilia — i.e. joy, elation, and sometimes sexual arousal caused by the act of entering personal information into a pre-made template. People affected often find themselves drawn to filling out papers for others. http://www.urbandictionary.com/
People who create forms must be formophiliacs — sounds fairly gross doesn’t it? The scads of new legislation in South Africa has been a windfall for the bureaucratic formophiliacs that infest government offices around the country. If you can’t do anything else to prove that you’re working, create a new form.
Guidelines to creating a new form:
1. It needs to be as confusing and difficult as possible, starting with the instructions at the top of the form.
2. It must require numerous repetitions of the same facts and figures, especially name, address, etc.
3. It must be printed in a 7.5 point serif font to ensure maximum illegibility, especially once it has been Photostatted numerous times and then faxed to the poor bastard who has to complete it.
4. The spaces where the information must be written in must always be too small for the information required and the blocks should vary in width. Mouse scratches in the teeniest writing is necessary.
4. It must have dozens and dozens of places where signatures are required.
5.To really count as a form par excellence it must include an incomprehensible, unexplained formula to identify whether or not the applicant qualifies as a Currently Advantaged, Formerly Advantaged, Formerly Disadvantaged, Currently Disadvantaged, Gender disadvantaged, Disabled.
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6. This requires you to self identify as White, Coloured, Indian, Chinese, African or Other. Racial profiling is alive and kicking today.
7. Of course we now have to also work through the maze of gender assignment. Are you Male, Female, Lesbian, Bisexual, Homosexual, Transgender, Binary or Non-Binary and what pronouns do you prefer — He/she/They/Us/It.
8. Find other unique requirements that can be thought up by someone who is not going to have to fill in the blasted thing.
(All of the above guidelines are my own based on decades of experience filling in such forms.)
Is it any wonder my hands begin to shake, I hyperventilate, my heart races and a full blown panic attack ensues when faced with the latest production of some asinine grey suited formophiliac. I’m not kidding about this. It’s my reality when I revisited applying for an Old Age Pension recently.
Identity documents, Passport, Pension (Old Age Grant), Driver’s License and Renewal applications; Tax forms, Applying for a house loan, a bank account, a business loan, just about everything we do in modern life requires a form.
The form must be produced in triplicate, each one hand written, no mistakes or crossing out, — no copies accepted, witnessed by two or more people who are not family members, certified by the police or Commissioner of Oaths. Each form must be accompanied by certified copies of Identity Document, Proof of Residence, Driver’s License, Educational Certificates, etcetera, etcetera — sung a la Yul Brunner in the King and I.
By the time I’ve managed to complete sufficient copies that are perfect, my dustbin is overflowing with crumpled forms full of mistakes — minor and large. My nerves and temper are completely frayed and there has usually been at least one meltdown accompanied by weeping. The worst is when I make a mistake on the very last entry on the form so have to start once again.
The Department of (Higher) Education is particularly adept at creating new forms for over-worked and stressed educators to complete. Each subject you teach requires a dense file filled with forms, records, copies of draft and final approved assessments, Moderation forms and many others.
The forms cover everything from Year Planning to Class plans There are at least five forms to be completed before a new test, assignment, exam can be approved. Registers for daily attendance by students must be signed and handed in, mark sheets must be completed and signed in. At the end of the semester, before external exams these forms must be consolidated and you, as the educator have to work out the percentages that will contribute to the final mark. I’m sure this applies to many other careers too.
So why do they do it? Proof of actions for evaluations of your performance is one thing. Record keeping is essential to provide a paper trail enabling evidence based decision making. It makes bureaucratic administrators hearts leap with joy when the forms arrive on their desk in perfect order. They don’t care about the sweaty labour, shredded nerves or panic that completing those forms entailed.
I have a Masters degree, am a first language speaker and writer of English, with a lot of experience in form filling at my back and I still hate, loathe and detest filling in forms. How much worse is it for the many millions who have to do this as illiterates, with minimal English and who only know their mother tongue?
It doesn’t bear thinking about. I consider it a form of torture that deliberately excludes many people in my own country, or makes it into an onerous trial of persistence, waiting in queues for hours, if not days, often in the sun and rain. But that’s a subject for another day.
