Who Makes Up These Rules?

As I do virtually every day, I checked today each of the several counties in Current State to which I've sent applications to see if (a) there are additional jobs posted to which I might apply and (b) anything has changed with respect to my application status. I finally noticed today that my "certification status" was a little strange in one of the counties to which I've applied. It's hard to describe exactly what was strange -- it would take several paragraphs just to describe the various possible status messages, and a couple of dozen more to explain precisely what my certification status really is, but trust me, the status message was strange. Not strange enough that I was really worried about it, which is why I hadn't noticed it before. But now I'm paranoid. So I called the county DOE and asked about it. They replied that they had no verification that I'd passed the Basic Skills portion of the State ACE. That was annoying, since it meant my application had been languishing in the county DOE (and not sent to principals who could decide whether to interview me) for at least 3 months, but okay...

"This is no problem," I said -- "I exempted from the Basic Skills portion by virtue of my ACT scores, which are reported on my first undergraduate school's transcript, which you have." I even told them where to find the ACT scores on the transcript. "Great," she replied, and we hung up. To her everlasting credit, she called back. But the news was bad. "They didn't report your individual English and Math scores on the ACT," she tells me, and I need a combined 42 to be exempt.

"Um, yeah, but you'll notice it lists the percentile I acheived. It's 93rd in English, and 99th in Math, overall 98th. Surely 98th percentile will get me through?"

"No, that's not good enough."

"98th percentile isn't good enough? What does it take?"

"We need your combined score to be higher than 42."

"OK, well, you'll notice the 'comprehensive' score is 30. That's the average of the two scores. Which means I had no worse than a 59 combined. So that gets me in, right?"

"No, that's not good enough. You have to have two scores that add to more than 42."

"I do. I have two scores that add up to something that, when divided by 2, equals 30. Which makes those two scores, added together, more than 42."

"That's not good enough." (Honest... she told me this 3 times. I probably would have let it go if she had said "Yes, but that's not what we need," or "We need the actual scores," or even "Yes, it's absurd, but it's a requirement.")

Sigh. Now I have the thrill of getting my ACTs or SATs from the college testing board, expedited. More red tape, more red numbers in my bank account. I never, ever want to hear anyone complain about the bureaucracy within the company at which they work. Unless they work for the government, or they want to hear 3 hours of "I can top that" stories.