Allow me to fully explain the irony.

Six months ago I filed a complaint online with the FCC about mistreatment suffered by my family at the hands of a run-amok Verizon robo-call system. I recently received a response from the agency via snail-mail ... which given that a half-year had elapsed since my complaint, could conceivably have been delivered by an actual snail.

Yet tardiness isn't the crux of this "your tax dollars at work" tale.

While we had previously encountered difficulties with this one was particularly egregious both because it was particularly egregious, and because it occurred while my wife was home and I was nestled in a quiet hotel room a full continent away. As any business traveler knows, nothing conducts heat like a telephone line, so upon my return I decided to do something that I cannot recall ever having done before: file a formal, written complaint.

I never expected anything to come of my complaint, of course. Like most people, I just figured that it would be added to the pile -- presuming there was a pile.