Busy people in "The West Wing"

[mtbc]

In The West Wing (1999) the senior White House staffers chronically work very long hours. How does this make sense? Is it good for their cognition to be ongoingly compromised? Can there not be enough staff to take on the workload? Perhaps the problem is that they would not be able to leave notes for each other or that they do not have enough room to put all the people or something. It does seem as if there has to be a more effective way for them to work. Maybe we are supposed to believe that they are so superlatively good at their jobs that even half-asleep they outperform some next-best people who might instead be on duty to catch some acute situation.

Comments

[emperor]

I think senior civil servants (especially those working closely with ministers) also often end up working very long hours. This has always struck me as daft.

[mtbc]

Especially those centrally at Number 10 instead of under the cabinet departments are probably busy indeed, I'd guess, given that the Prime Minister doesn't have anything remotely comparable even to the West Wing's staff at hand.