Bedtime Stories for Public Servants: The Binder on the Shelf

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By S. Mohsen Fatemi
June 19, 2026

The retirement reception was held in the Planning Department conference room, a space usually reserved for subdivision plats, zoning appeals and the occasional heated debate over parking minimums.

Someone had brought a sheet cake from the grocery store. Someone else had printed old photographs and taped them to a foam board. There were pictures of ribbon cuttings, downtown revitalization projects and long-forgotten staff picnics from decades earlier.

Margaret stood near the coffee urn, accepting hugs and handshakes with the practiced discomfort of someone who preferred solving problems to being celebrated for solving them.

Thirty-one years.

That was how long she had worked for the city.

Three city managers.

Nine council compositions.

More planning directors than anyone could remember.

Thousands of permits.

Hundreds of public hearings.

Countless phone calls that began with the words, “I know this isn’t your fault, but…”

As the gathering wound down, Daniel, the department’s newly hired senior planner, approached her.

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

Margaret smiled.

“You just did.”

Daniel laughed.

“What am I supposed to do when you’re gone?”

Margaret pointed toward a tall bookshelf in the corner of her office.

On the second shelf from the top sat a thick three-ring binder. The spine was faded from years of sunlight.

“Everything you need is in there,” she said.

Daniel followed her finger.

“The binder?”

“The binder.”

“Everything?”

Margaret shrugged.

“Well, not everything. But enough.”

The next morning, her office was empty.

A few family photos remained on the walls as pale rectangles where the paint had aged differently beneath the frames.

The coffee mug was gone.

The desk plant was gone.

The small brass nameplate was gone.

Only the binder remained.

Daniel retrieved it from the shelf.

On the cover, written in fading marker, were three words:

Planning Office Procedures

He felt relieved.

There was something comforting about the existence of a binder.

A binder suggested order.

A binder implied preparation.

A binder promised continuity.

For the next several weeks, he referred to it constantly.

The sections were impressively thorough.

Permit review timelines.

Application checklists.

Subdivision procedures.

Historic district approvals.

Board schedules.

Internal workflows.

It seemed Margaret had thought of everything.

Until the first call.

A developer requested an interpretation of a provision in the city’s downtown overlay district.

Daniel reviewed the ordinance.

The language was ambiguous.

Two interpretations seemed equally plausible.

He searched the binder.

Nothing.

He called the city attorney.

The attorney wasn’t sure.

He asked another planner.

No one knew.

Eventually, Daniel made a decision.

The project moved forward.

Life continued.

A month later, another question emerged.

Then another.

And another.

Each one involved small details.

Not major legal issues.

Not headline-generating controversies.

Just peculiar situations that seemed to fall between the lines of the written code.

The kind of situations that apparently had never made it into the binder.

Over time, Daniel noticed something unsettling.

People kept saying the same thing.

“Margaret used to know.”

Not because the answer was written somewhere.

Because she remembered.

She remembered why a condition had been added to a site plan 15 years earlier.

She remembered the compromise that resolved a dispute between neighboring property owners.

She remembered which interpretation a hearing officer had favored in 2012.

She remembered which developer had challenged a similar requirement decades before.

She remembered.

The city did not.

The city had simply stored its memory inside a person.

Months passed.

Then came the lawsuit.

It began with a permit denial.

The applicant appealed.

The appeal escalated.

Soon the city attorney was preparing a defense.

During discovery, opposing counsel presented records from previous cases.

Several decisions appeared inconsistent with the city’s recent interpretation.

The attorney frowned.

“Why were these handled differently?”

No one knew.

The explanation had retired.

The city eventually prevailed, but only after months of legal work, staff time and expense.

The cost was substantial.

The frustration was greater.

And the most uncomfortable realization lingered long after the case concluded.

No one had made a mistake.

Daniel had acted reasonably.

The attorney had acted reasonably.

The department had followed the ordinance as written.

Yet the city had still stumbled.

Not because it lacked information.

Because it had lost memory.

One evening, nearly a year after Margaret’s retirement, Daniel remained alone in the office reviewing permit files.

The building was quiet.

He glanced toward the bookshelf.

The binder still sat on the second shelf.

Exactly where it had always been.

He pulled it down.

For the first time, he noticed what was missing.

The binder contained procedures.

But it did not contain judgment.

It documented steps.

But not stories.

It explained what to do.

But not why things had been done.

The most valuable knowledge Margaret possessed had never existed inside the binder.

It had existed in conversations.

In relationships.

In accumulated experience.

In memories that seemed too ordinary to record.

Until they disappeared.

Daniel returned the binder to the shelf.

Then he opened a blank document.

At the top, he typed:

Things We Know But Have Never Written Down

It was a small beginning.

Perhaps an impossible task.

But every institution eventually faces the same choice.

To preserve memory intentionally.

Or to discover, too late, that memory has already walked out the door.

A Pause with the Civic Sage

That evening, Daniel found Margaret and the Civic Sage seated on a park bench overlooking City Hall.

Neither seemed surprised to see him.

Daniel sat beside them.

“I started a document today.”

Margaret smiled.

“The list.”

“And how is it going?”

Daniel laughed.

“Poorly.”

“Why?”

“Because every time I write something down, I discover three more things I hadn’t thought about.”

Margaret nodded.

“That’s how it starts.”

Daniel looked toward City Hall.

“Do you know what bothers me?”

“What?”

“I thought losing an employee meant losing labor.”

Neither Margaret nor the Sage spoke.

“But that’s not what happened.”

“No,” said Margaret.

“What happened?”

Daniel searched for the words.

“It feels like the city lost part of itself.”

The Civic Sage smiled.

“Now you’re asking a more interesting question.”

Daniel waited.

The Sage continued.

“Why do you think organizations struggle when experienced people leave?”

“Because they take knowledge with them.”

“Do they?”

Daniel frowned.

“Of course.”

Margaret shook her head.

“Not entirely.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I retired, I didn’t take the knowledge with me.”

Daniel looked confused.

“Then where did it go?”

Margaret pointed toward City Hall.

“It was already disappearing long before I left.”

The Sage nodded.

“Knowledge that depends on a single person is knowledge already in decline.”

The words landed heavily.

Daniel thought about all the times people had said, ‘Margaret knows.’

They had never said, ‘The department knows.’

Or ‘The city knows.’

Only Margaret.

“Then the problem wasn’t retirement.”

“No,” said the Sage.

“Retirement merely revealed the problem.”

A long silence followed.

Finally, Daniel asked the question that had been bothering him all year.

“Can institutions ever preserve everything they know?”

Margaret laughed.

“Not a chance.”

The Sage smiled.

“Nor should they try.”

“No?”

“Organizations survive not because they remember everything,” the Sage replied. “They survive because they remember what matters.”

Daniel considered this.

“And how do they do that?”

Margaret answered.

“They teach.”

The Sage nodded.

“They tell stories.”

“They explain why.”

“They invite people into decisions before they inherit them.”

The sun was beginning to set behind City Hall.

Daniel thought about the document waiting on his desk.

Things We Know But Have Never Written Down.

It suddenly felt less like a file.

And more like an obligation.

“The list won’t be enough, will it?”

Margaret smiled.

“No.”

The Sage smiled too.

“But it’s a beginning.”

Loose Ends

Every institution exists in two forms. There is the institution that can be found in records, policies and official documents. And there is the institution that exists in memory, experience and shared understanding. Most days, the distinction hardly matters. Then someone leaves, and the gap between the two suddenly becomes visible. What remains is a question that every generation of public servants must answer for itself: what knowledge is important enough to outlive the people who first acquired it?

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Author: S. Mohsen Fatemi is a PhD candidate in the School of Public Affairs & Administration at the University of Kansas, where his research examines energy governance, policy and justice. He is the creator of Bedtime Stories for Public Servants. This narrative series blends storytelling, reflective dialogue and research-based insights to explore the ethical and emotional dilemmas faced in public service. He can be reached at [email protected]. His website is www.mohsenfatemi.com and his X/Twitter handle is @MohsenFatemiii.

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