Constant client contact leaves street-level workers aware that needs go unmet

Evidence

Third, street-level bureaucrats by definition interact constantly with clients. This provides the salutory condition that workers must continually attend to the people they are supposed to serve and their problems. However elaborate the defense mechanisms developed to shield themselves from the enormity of clients’ needs, street-level bureaucrats at some level retain a sense that the people with whom they come in contact are not sufficiently served by the agencies designated to do so. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 1376

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the psychology literature on cognitive dissonance and residual awareness under routinization the reader wants to link across domains.