Strictly Confidential
The only thing I really miss about working in the civil service, apart from the annual leave entitlement, the extra bank holidays, the index-linked pension, and flexi-time... the only thing I really miss is the accident book.
Management having decided I was a complete slacker, I was posted, for a couple of years onto the Common Services section, which meant I got to order and steal as much stationery as I wanted, hide in the stock room for hours on end, play table tennis when I was supposed to be working, and read everybody's sick forms. Ah, I see, Miss V, you were sick again on the first Monday after pay day after your monthly weekend in London... have you got a Doctor's note?
The accident book was hilarious, because, being civil servants and trade union members, people felt obliged to record every paper cut, minor tea-urn burn, and hour spent in the stuck lift. One of my favourite entries was posted by one of the most incompetent and contrary members of staff in the office. He was the living example of the old Civil Service adage, "You'd have to burn the building down to get fired from here..."
He wrote in the book, in great detail I might add, how he'd picked up a telephone and dialled a number, only to be deafened by a high-pitched squealing noise from the phone, which left him "partially deaf" in one ear. The whole thrust of his entry was that the Service had installed a faulty telephone which had caused him an injury. Actually, what he'd done was dial a fax number instead of a phone number.
This same individual was barely able to cope with the IT revolution that arrived in the mid-1980s. Doubtless the particular branch I was in have moved onto their 10th barely functional computer system by now, but the first system was a dumb terminal arrangement, whereby you were logged into a very centralised server that existed somewhere in the wilds of East Anglia. This meant, of course, that one VDU terminal in the office was very much the same as another: proper hot-desking. Still, this guy used to stay late into the evening (*sigh* flexi-time), and on one memorable occasion was having trouble inputting something. He'd done it wrong, so the system kept bouncing back an error message at him, after a suitable pause to think on it.
So, he got the idea of "surprising" the system. While it was thinking about the first incorrect query, he'd dash across to the next desk and input the same query again, hoping to get it by the camp guards while they were distracted elsewhere. By this method, he went from one end of the office to the other, trying again and again to send his incorrect input. Garbage in, garbage out, so it goes, especially with a garbage operator. Early retirement would have been cruel, I thought; he should have been put down by a vet.
I've depressed myself now. If I was still there, I'd have 22 years pension stacked up, I'd be on 30 days annual leave, and I might even be able to afford my own cup and spoon.
Management having decided I was a complete slacker, I was posted, for a couple of years onto the Common Services section, which meant I got to order and steal as much stationery as I wanted, hide in the stock room for hours on end, play table tennis when I was supposed to be working, and read everybody's sick forms. Ah, I see, Miss V, you were sick again on the first Monday after pay day after your monthly weekend in London... have you got a Doctor's note?
The accident book was hilarious, because, being civil servants and trade union members, people felt obliged to record every paper cut, minor tea-urn burn, and hour spent in the stuck lift. One of my favourite entries was posted by one of the most incompetent and contrary members of staff in the office. He was the living example of the old Civil Service adage, "You'd have to burn the building down to get fired from here..."
He wrote in the book, in great detail I might add, how he'd picked up a telephone and dialled a number, only to be deafened by a high-pitched squealing noise from the phone, which left him "partially deaf" in one ear. The whole thrust of his entry was that the Service had installed a faulty telephone which had caused him an injury. Actually, what he'd done was dial a fax number instead of a phone number.
This same individual was barely able to cope with the IT revolution that arrived in the mid-1980s. Doubtless the particular branch I was in have moved onto their 10th barely functional computer system by now, but the first system was a dumb terminal arrangement, whereby you were logged into a very centralised server that existed somewhere in the wilds of East Anglia. This meant, of course, that one VDU terminal in the office was very much the same as another: proper hot-desking. Still, this guy used to stay late into the evening (*sigh* flexi-time), and on one memorable occasion was having trouble inputting something. He'd done it wrong, so the system kept bouncing back an error message at him, after a suitable pause to think on it.
So, he got the idea of "surprising" the system. While it was thinking about the first incorrect query, he'd dash across to the next desk and input the same query again, hoping to get it by the camp guards while they were distracted elsewhere. By this method, he went from one end of the office to the other, trying again and again to send his incorrect input. Garbage in, garbage out, so it goes, especially with a garbage operator. Early retirement would have been cruel, I thought; he should have been put down by a vet.
I've depressed myself now. If I was still there, I'd have 22 years pension stacked up, I'd be on 30 days annual leave, and I might even be able to afford my own cup and spoon.
posted by Anonymous at
Thursday, January 13, 2005
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