The castle: surgery shadowing HR

I've been trying to process some paperwork to shadow the surgery resident I've been doing research with. I see her fairly often, and we usually meet in the surgery housestaff lounge. It seemed the easiest thing for me to just shadow her on a few OR days or clinic days.

As soon as we tried to set up a date, we ran into some administrative roadblocks. Someone from the surgery office called me, directing me to call another office, which somehow had to do with hospital outreach. Then they asked me to get signatures from a host of people, so that I could forward the forms onto a third person. When I sent the forms to the third person, he asked me what the heck they were for. And so we started again....

Bureaucracy is an aspect of daily life, especially in medical school, but this was certainly the most Kafka-esque experience I've had in a while. I forwarded the whole 2 month long email chain to my friend James, who somehow came across the "lost pages of Kafka's last novel":


A young stranger arrived just the other morning to serve at the hospital. After initially being viewed rather circumspect she allayed the fears of the clinicians by telling them that she had been summoned by the attending to do some surveying.
"Surveyor!" they called. "What shall we call you?"
"My name is L" replied the visitor. "I have scheduled work with the attending and I would like to get started as quickly as possible. I have a tight class schedule and I'm leaving for Africa in a couple weeks. So, like, let's get this shit started."
L was told, rather abruptly, that no one actually meets with the attending and certainly not without the proper paperwork.
"But Dr. Kirby has already signed my paperwork" L said.
"But that is of no matter surveyor. It is not the signature of Dr. Kirby that we need. It is that of the attending, Dr. Warner. Please go talk to James Lee. He handles all of these mundane details" relayed one of a handful of administrators.
"But how can Dr. Warner, the lead attending, sign off on my paperwork if no one can speak with him?" Pondered L.
"That is none of my concern!" shouted an administrator. "Here, take these two orderlies which will serve as comic relief and in all likelihood try to have sex with your significant other" offered another administrator.
"Well, that's kind of strange. I think I'll be alright." muttered L.
"Fine, then good luck driving this already confusing plot when it's just you marching around trying to get signatures." interjected yet another administrator.
"Fine, whatever. Let's go, assistants."
And off they set, towards the towering Attending Office seen off in the distance. After the assistants proved to be completely incompetent (for example trying to nap in a bed reserved for a critical patient) L set off on her own. Finally, after weeks of trying she managed to get

Amazingly he did this all on his iphone...