buying time

a small company is hired by a sleepy bureaucracy to handle work the bureaucracy can't do, without the golden benefits of government, the sick days, the personal days, the vacation days, the compressed work weeks, the pension, the cash-for-life, the small company hustles and sweats to complete deliverables as deadlines shift and jerk to arbitrary and ever illusive departmental management policy,
the highly-insulated, slow-moving government machine sits high above the safety net of the public purse and remains impervious to accountability no matter the level of error or depth of incompetence...

oversights,
misplacement,
mis-communication,
misunderstanding,
their strange and habitual occurrence of "lost invoices" puts a small company in rough waters and without money owed for over 4 months,
oblivious and distracted bureaucrats soil the credibility and effort of smart, hard-working ones, as they shift blame from person to person, department to department, process to process, yet as they flounder and rationalize very simple failure to live up to a contract, the small company struggles to pay the electrical, the rent and the salaries, so as the tired company delays the pay, the workers go home to their families empty-handed.

It's unethical.

The bureaucrat doesn't hear, as he lies comfortably in the pool deck sun in his beach shorts, listening to his Ipod, eyes closed, his round oily belly jiggles and his arms dance quickly as he pretends he is the conductor of a large orchestra.