This article presents the opening of "Resultanze in merito alla vita e al carattere di Gino Bianchi con allegato", published in Florence in 1915, by Piero Jahier (1884-1966), a poet and writer from a Protestant family, employed by the railway network. The book is an autobiographical tale of the office life of a minor state employee. On first reading, it seems like a biting satire on bureaucracy. The author, an intransigent moralist, criticises bureaucracy, wanting things to be different; he launches an attack on bourgeois society, while dreaming of an aware and caring society. The book, a literary masterpiece, provides valuable first-hand accounts that can be profitably used by historians of bureaucratic systems and public administrative structures in the nineteenth century.