Scheduling systems that routinize agency convenience shift service costs onto the least organized clients.

Evidence

Crowding appointments may be done for the convenience of bureaucrats whose time is considered more valuable than that of clients, and who thus are guaranteed a flow of clients even if one misses an appointment. The costs of such a queue will also be borne by clients who seek service but cannot afford to wait for it, • who are not disciplined enough to make and keep appointments, or who are not sure enough of the likely benefits of service to invest in seeking it. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 697

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: the appointment book as a sorting device — how ordinary scheduling discretion quietly filters out the clients least equipped to navigate bureaucracy, faster than any stated policy changes.
• XREF: Connects to administrative-burden literature (Herd & Moynihan) on how small procedural frictions ration public benefits. — connects to: Waiting time is a cost of service extracted almost entirely from clients — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 657; Waiting-line rationing advantages people whose time is cheap and obligations few. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 695; Procedural requirements ration services by exploiting the poor’s lower opportunity costs — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 663 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Expediency procedures double as hidden rationing of poor clients’ access #corroborates (0.90) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 663
• Procedural requirements ration services by exploiting the poor’s lower opportunity costs #corroborates (0.85) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 663
• First-come, first-served queues ration service toward those whose time is cheap. #corroborates (0.85)