Sounds like pedestrian push-buttons on crossings - satisfies people but it doesnt actually do anything.

To be fair, this sort of thinking is not entirely wrong (although it may be in this case). Your priorities are not necessarily the same as whatever person/worker you are dealing with. And the priorities of the worker you are dealing with are not necessarily the same whatever organization/company/government they are working for.

For example, I was recently at the hospital to pick up a friend who was due to be discharged that day. I arrived in their room, spoke briefly with the attending nurse who said it would be a long while before the patient was discharged (as it always is at hospitals) and sat down to wait. After a couple of hours I checked in with the nurse, who said he was waiting on the social worker. My friend noted that he had already talked to the social worker, and despite her insistence, said that he didn't want or need any sort of nursing or in-home care after discharge. When the nurse heard this, he went back, printed up the discharge papers and we were soon on our way.

Why did this happen? Because job of the social worker is to push the hospital/network's post-discharge nursing and rehab system. Once this was turned down, she had no incentive to stay involved or update the discharge status. The busy nurse had no incentive to pro-actively scrutinize the forms and decide the patient was ready for discharge. The hospital itself (as an organization) had no incentive to speed up the discharge, as they were making tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars from his excellent insurance coverage.

If we had just sat around, and said nothing, we almost certainly would have been there for several more hours, until the next shift of nurses came in and reviewed the patient files. Sometimes you are just screaming into the void but many times it helps to speak up.