You should not need a personal friendship with a clerk to receive a document you are entitled to. Bureaucracy makes responsibilities belong to offices: a person occupies a role, follows a procedure, and leaves records another person can use.
Specialized roles and impersonal rules let an organization handle more work than any one leader could personally oversee. They can preserve continuity when staff change and give people grounds to challenge inconsistent treatment.
The unusual case meets the standard procedure
The same arrangement can become inflexible. A rule designed for ordinary cases may fail someone whose circumstances do not fit its categories. Staff may fear making a reasonable exception because the organization can easily punish a procedural deviation but cannot easily recognize good judgment.
Removing the rule is not an automatic improvement. Discretion can make room for care, favoritism, or arbitrary refusal. The difficult design work concerns who may depart from the usual process, how they explain the decision, and whether others can appeal.
Records also have to remain useful. A form that nobody reads still consumes time; a clear record of a decision can save the next employee from reconstructing it. Bureaucracy works through that continuing relationship between procedures and the purposes they are meant to serve.