Daily Inspiration Quote by John Patrick

Eight to twelve weeks is a punchline masquerading as a shipping estimate: an absurdly long wait that exposes how much of modern life is still run by yesterday's paperwork. John Patrick, writing as a playwright, understands that bureaucracy is theater. The line stages a familiar scene - the customer ordering, the ominous delay - then reveals the offstage culprit: "faxes and forms". Not weather, not scarcity, not some grand economic inevitability, but the stubborn afterlife of administrative habits.

The specific intent is diagnostic and mildly accusatory. Patrick isn't really talking about logistics; he's talking about institutional inertia. "Still" does a lot of work, implying we've had the tools to move faster for a long time, yet choose not to. The subtext is that inefficiency isn't an accident but a culture: offices that prefer paper trails to outcomes, systems designed to protect process rather than serve people. Fax machines here aren't quaint relics; they're symbols of organizations that keep old workflows because changing them would mean redistributing power, retraining staff, admitting the old way was wasteful.

Context matters, even if the quote feels strangely contemporary. A playwright of Patrick's era watched postwar managerial society harden: forms multiplying, responsibility diffusing, decisions slowing as they climb ladders. By blaming the delay on "faxes and forms", he compresses a whole critique of modern institutions into a prop list. It's comedic in its specificity, but the laugh catches because we recognize the real villain: not technology's limits, but our refusal to retire the rituals that make delay feel legitimate.