To an extent, I agree. At the same time, Karen may be in a similarly desperate situation. While the morally correct position would be to stand up to what is obviously wrong, Karen may need the paycheck to feed her kids. Karen herself is a row in a spreadsheet that the powers that be could replace in a heartbeat.

I'm not suggesting that this is any reason to support evil policies but I try to be sympathetic to struggles I may not be aware of.

This is not a US thing, this is a bureaucracy thing. You can enjoy that worldwide (at least in every "civilized" country).

We have no idea what "Karens" life is actually like. I can think of about 5,000,000 scenarios that make her the more empathetic person in this interaction. People need jobs, government jobs are low paying but secure. This woman isn't making $100,000 a year just to say no to blind people, she very likely could be just scraping by as well, working in a call center, in a soul destroying government office, getting what little she can without a college degree she has neither the money, nor the time to complete. Maybe she worked hard and paid harder and got the degree and then it meant nothing. Very likely her boss and her both know she is eminently replacable. If she stands up she will be the single blade of grass getting chopped by the implacable mower.

What I'm trying to say is yeah, she could've taken the risk and stood up and said something. He could've beared the pain and sent the correct documentation. He knows the process by now, he had to have known exactly what he needed to send! And yet he chose to needlessly inflict harm on someone who's choice it wasn't theirs to make. The reality of jobs these days is not a give and take, let's all make the world better by democratizing our decisions type world. It's much much worse.

Maybe, you'd be absolutely rolled by fraudsters in the opposite case.

Karen is forced to respect the law. The law around benefits is absolutely full of this exact bullshit in the US, because of 50 years of people screeching about "Welfare queens" which was an invented thing.

It doesn't matter what Karen thinks or wants. It doesn't matter if Karen believes the disabled person or not. It doesn't matter if Karen is physically capable of complex thought or not. If Karen breaks the rules for you, you will end up losing your benefits anyway, possibly forced to pay them back, and Karen loses her job.

Public sector employment pays terribly. People don't really do it because they enjoy it.

There is literal law all over that says "This information can't be in an email for privacy reasons". It's not policy, it's law.

Stop harassing low level bureaucrats and learn some damn civics.

Similarly, when I was a cashier in a grocery store, I had zero ability to refund you, to fix a problem, to bend any rule for example to help you with your WIC process, which was utterly miserable. Oh sorry the pamphlet this week says X bread is the only approved one, it doesn't matter that it causes your child GI distress, nobody is allowed to change it.

Vote for people who aren't trying to hurt disabled people and you will have fewer disabled people being hurt. Stop screeching about "Fraud" that doesn't exist if you want it to be easy for people to get the welfare they need.

All attempts to battle fraud will inherently add friction to the process. Find an optimization point that isn't so hostile to human beings.