THIS WILL PROBABLY BE THE ONLY SURVIVING REMNANT OF OUR SOCIETY ONE DAY, PUZZLING FUTURE ARCHAEOLOGISTS: SINKHOLE OF BUREAUCRACY. “Here, inside the caverns of an old Pennsylvania limestone mine, there are 600 employees of the Office of Personnel Management. Their task is nothing top-secret. It is to process the retirement papers of the government’s own workers. But that system has a spectacular flaw. It still must be done entirely by hand, and almost entirely on paper.” I can only imagine the theories that will result. But here’s a constant that any future society is likely to recognize:

In the meantime, the workers who make this old-fashioned system work get a special — if unofficial — benefit.

When they retire, they don’t have to wait on it.

“OPM employees get special treatment,” said DeCaria, the recently retired mine worker. The agency said this is not its official policy. But when DeCaria retired, a colleague spotted the file and moved it to the front of the line.

The insiders take care of the insiders.