Metamorphosis

Is there anything worse than having to do business with someone who is openly dishonest? Is it a suprise that the most egregious case I have come across would be someone involved with Homeland Security? My experience dealing with local government has been instructive. My key contact is a nice enough guy, he's sometimes genuinely funny, but it turns out he's absolutely unreliable. I think some of this is attributable to working with someone embedded in a big, bureaucratic structure. Usually, I work in a realm, where it's assumed that a man's word is his bond; not so in this environment. Here words and actions don't match up. There are appearances, there is a shadow play of power, there's an attitude of 'if you want to work with us, you do things our way.' I find this all very difficult, off-putting, contrary to how I like to work with people. This is just another game, but the rules to this game are different, they change day to day, words are meaningless. Franz Kafka's novel 'The Trial,' comes to mind. Hope this doesn't lead to dreams of large, evil-looking bugs.