Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Fuck them! A REAL rant!!

Govstooge is one angry bitch today. Between people pissing me off and having a nasty respiratory tract infection that keeps me awake at night with a racking cough, there are many things getting right on my tits at the moment.

Property ownership is a great thing, and I am happily ensconced in my half-furnished brand new house. I still need work done, though and have enlisted the help of various tradesmen in recent weeks. Took the day off work today (leave, not sickie - that can wait till tomorrow) to admit the latest one, who was to come at 10. Maybe there was a Swiss person in my ancestry, but if I say I'm going to be there at 10, I'll fucking be there at 10. This twat turned up at 2.00, four fucking hours late. At which time I was out, having other things to do, and having already waited 2 and a half hours for the bastard to show up. And when he phoned me when I was fifteen miles away, I explained how I had taken a day off work especially, phoned at 11 and got no reply, the bastard didn't even have the grace to apologise, or even offer some pathetic excuse as to why he didn't turn up at the stated time. I'm glad I didn't hand over any cash, as I was able to tell him to shove it up his shitty arsehole, and that I hoped he and his family would drown in a torrent of cats' piss (well, maybe not the second bit). So back to square one looking for some other bloke to do the same job. Hopefully I haven't been black listed for being an utter bitch.

Back to work tomorrow (or maybe not - considering the state of my trachea right now), back to doing the shit the HEO and AP don't want to do, including the thankless task of organising the staff Christmas "do". The HEO and AP are full of suggestions, all of which make more work and hassle for me. This I can do without, and it makes me think "Why the fuck don't you organise it instead?" I hope they get the squits. In fact, I might be able to engineer that with my contact at the venue (adds syrup of figs to shopping list, and makes mental note to ask chef how it can be incorporated into turkey and ham).

I might call in sick tomorrow. I have an important deadline next week, but it's nothing my bosses aren't able to take over, so letting them do some work for a change while I stay in bed with a decent book and a warm alcoholic drink might be a good thing.

Fuck, yeah!

----------------
Now playing: Tom Waits - Come on up to the house
via FoxyTunes

Monday, November 26, 2007

Hopeless

Lottery syndicates.

I’m not a fan. Every Monday and Thursday morning I listen to a colleague who runs one discussing the numbers with syndicate members and collecting payments from them.

I don't disapprove of them, it's just that... you know there are some "lucky" people out there who seem to win everything in sight? Well, I'm not one of them, so I'd rather have an extra pint at the weekend than stay in on Saturday night glued to the fecking lottery numbers.

Some people are just naturally "lucky" whereas the rest of us are doomed to wander the earth with a trail of spent lottery tickets and entry forms behind them.

I don't know why they bother in the Department. We ALL work here, isn’t that bad luck enough? I don’t see the point of joining something I know I’m never going to be a winner in. The combined lucklessness of two hundred civil servants makes the improbability of becoming rich overnight an impossibility.

I have never won anything apart from an EO competition, and I’m not entirely sure yet if that was lucky or not. Today I'm leaning in favour of the latter.

Asshole Register

The Civil service has some strange practices. I have worked in two Government departments and never fail to be amused by the asset register. It basically means everything has a barcoded sticker so it can be scanned for whatever sick accounting practice is done in the finance section. And it creates sticker printing jobs for people who would otherwise be standing in other government offices filling out unemployment forms.

Computers, doors, windows, chairs all bearing a sticker. Next thing we know they will do it to employees as well we will have a bar code tattooed on our forearm so that we can be scanned and sorted into our relevant cost centres. (Changes in cost centre when people move department or section can be amended by skin grafting.) This would also eliminate the need for printing expensive ID/ swipe cards with magnetic strips.

I envision a future in which civil servants of all departments, still in their stripy pajamas, troop to work under a banner which says "Schlafend Macht Frei" (Sleep makes you free), present their forearm for scanning at the door, then are herded to their sections by HEOs with vicious, starved pit bull terriers, slobbering at the mouth for a bite of juicy round civil servant arse.

Auschwitz, anybody?

Thursday, November 15, 2007

The Uncivil Servant’s Rant is pleased to announce:

THE CIVIL SERVICE OLYMPICS!!!!!

Civil servants from all over the world are invited to take part in a wide range of exciting activities, including:

Synchronised Skiving

The Paper Throw (similar to discus throwing, but using large wodges of crumpled up policy documents instead).

Form processing (joke event)

Weight lifting (how long can you prop up a wall while talking to your buddies)

Information Relay (how fast it takes a piece of gossip /information to travel through 100 people, one at a time, without being distorted - Current record is five seconds.)

Fag relay (how many people can light their fags off each other, and how long cigarettes lit from the same match can keep going)

Deciphering the Personnel Code (who understands it first- no-one has ever succeeded, it COULD BE YOU THIS YEAR!

In addition, participating bureaucrats will be eligible to compete for inclusion in

THE CIVIL SERVICE BOOK OF RECORDS!!

In categories such as:

World’s largest fag break

World’s longest paid sickie

Longest time spent clocked in while doing the least work

World’s fastest swipe card action

Biggest Arse (male and female)

Most tea drank in one sitting

Longest scarf knitted during work hours

Most books read during work hours

Best Pac-man score achieved during work hours (Current record: 10,341,586)


And special guest, the guy who managed to watch every season of “Friends” on his PC when he was supposed to be working. Well done. We thought you had gone mad and were laughing at the forms.

Fill in the application form below to join the fun! Yes, you'll be able to claim extra time for filling it in!


Hello.

My name is ________

I like: (a) biscuits (b) cake with my tea


Location: To be announced once someone gets round to filling in the application form for the venue.

Date: Err, you’ll have to ask my supervisor, who isn’t here. They’re on tea at the moment and may be some time.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Being an EO sucks.

It fucking does you know.

And here are some reasons.

You do all the shit the HEO doesn't want to do. Then they can be left in peace to do their fucking online shopping and enter loads of competitions on the internet. HEOs, as section managers, have a lot of responsibility, which they are more than willing to delegate downwards so they can do all that non work related stuff, as well as arse kissing the Assistant Principal.

You have to listen to all the Clerical Officers' petty gripes. And act on them. And then listen to the HEO shoot them down. And then, go back to the COs and tell them the bad news. It's EO tennis! No love there... (sorry). COs are devious buggers, especially when they get together. They get something to moan about, and they'll harp on about it for ages until they wear you down and then you have to go higher to get something done about it. I had to approach my HEO today on behalf of a CO, regarding certain IT privileges, which I myself have. The bottom line is, "The Assistant Principal won't authorise access for everyone. If the CO needs to use that particular application, they need to ask you, or any of the other EOs, to use your computers." Fucking nice. I can see the fucking COs milking this one so that I don't get a moment to myself. Going forward (ha!), I need to remember to shut down my email, delete my internet history and password protect my personal files before I let one of the COs even near my computer. God only knows what they'd get on me if they clicked the wrong thing.

Managers like to mark their territory too. Like dogs, they can piss all over you without a moment's notice. My HEO has developed a nasty little trick of scheduling impromptu meetings immediately prior to my tea breaks. It's basically to put me in my place, showing me who the real boss is and all that. I have my priorities right though. I usually make some food or caffeine related excuse which works almost all of the time: "Err... sorry, I can't deal with this now. I have a severe caffeine addiction, also if I don't get a croissant intravenously STAT, I'm afraid I might fart on you..." It's true though, I am not lying. I like my coffee. A lot. And I usually leave the house without breakfast, so the noises my stomach is capable of making by the time these "meetings" arise are pretty convincing.

It really, really fucking sucks at the moment. Having a huge debt is great for motivating myself to go in every morning. That, and the echoing of my sentiments by other EOs in the very same situations.

And, most importantly of all, what the fuck would I write about in this rant if I didn't have all that shitty stuff to deal with?

There, I've cheered myself up now. Cathartic, that was.

Civil Cervantes

I sometimes compare myself to Don Quixote.

I spend a lot of my time at work engaged in futile acts. For instance, I am daily engaged in completely pointless interactions with a wide range of inanimate objects. These can include: printers, doors, windows, toilets, certain staff members and, of course, HEOs.

I'm thinking of cashing in on this.

My epic novel could start thus:

En un lugar de Irlanda, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un funcionaria pública qui fue aburrida todos los dias en su lugar de trabajo, y qui queria matar su jefe.

In a place in Ireland, whose name I do not want to remember, not very long ago, there lived a civil servant who was bored every day in her workplace, and who wanted to kill her boss.

Nice.

(Apologies to Cervantes, and proper Spanish scholars in general).

Although, with the Official Languages Act, I'd probably have to write the damn thing in Irish. Or get it translated. Which would cost the State thousands. And only one person would read it.

Mierda.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Gotcha!

Today, purely by accident, I discovered the identity of one of the Department’s most notorious offenders (in my opinion). Yes, I’m talking about the Workplace Shitter.

I needed to use the toilet this morning (for number ones, obviously), and when I entered the bathrooms I found myself swathed in the most noxious freshly expelled intestinal gases I have ever come across. For a moment I thought I was in a time machine and had been transported right back to the Somme in the middle of a mustard gas attack. Just as I began to grope for the door handle – my eyes were watering so much that I couldn’t see where I was going – the toilet in the sole occupied cubicle flushed. Despite my heaving stomach and my limited eyesight, my curiosity overrode all of my physiological protests and I lurched to the window and flung it open. With conditions now marginally improved, I grabbed a paper towel and pretended to be calmly drying my hands while taking care to remain as close to the window as humanly possible without actually falling out and cracking my head open on the crappy Government issue concrete 40 or so feet below.

The door opened. The thought of seeing the offending arse and its owner filled me with so much trepidation that I turned my back as I could not face seeing them emerge surrounded by their own vile stench. I held my breath. And prayed that it would be over soon.

“Hello, Govstooge”, a voice behind me called sweetly.

“Fuck!” I thought.

I turned.

When my eyes had adjusted to the thick fetid atmosphere of the toilet area, I saw that it was none other than one of my section’s own Clerical Officers, who started chatting away as if nothing was wrong. I made my excuses and left. I didn’t even wait to see if they washed their hands.

Now, as I type, I can see the arse in question, and I know exactly what rank aromas came out of it earlier.

My curiosity salved, I now feel dirty.

I am not this person’s boss. But even if I was, does my remit extend to controlling the bodily functions of others? Do I have the authority to place a large butt plug firmly in this person’s anus to prevent further exudations during work hours? Can I claim expenses for the purchase of said butt plug? Is there Health and Safety legislation relating to colon gases that I can cite?

Or can I just give them a good bollocking?

Answers on some used bog roll to the above address.

I am putting barbed wire around my desk in the meantime so that this person can't come near to contaminate my work space. It has the added benefit of deterring unwanted HEOs.

Monday, November 5, 2007

Welcome to the Working Week

Monday.

It sure as hell doesn’t thrill me, and I’m not entirely sure if it won’t kill me (with all respect due to Elvis Costello).

Today I have had to cope with a homicidal printer, a severe croissant shortage, and serious systems downtime, meaning bugger all to do but draft my next blog post.

I disappeared from the section for almost half an hour this morning while struggling with the most malevolent piece of office equipment it has been my misfortune to come across. It has a room all to itself (apart from an equally evil photocopier) thanks to the awful screeches it emits, like those of a dying pterodactyl - I believe the printer is from the same era as the aforementioned bird thing. I was printing a 100-page report (unfortunately, consideration for the Environment is low on the Department’s list of priorities) and the notorious temper of this printer meant I would have to stand over it, baseball bat in hand, coercing it into doing its fucking job. Every ten pages or so it jammed up and I opened the cover and side doors to see where the hell the errant pages had gotten to. Six paper jams later, my patience started to wear thin and I slammed the cover and the door as hard as possible while muttering “you fucking piece of shit!”. At one stage I ripped the jammed paper out so furiously, that a piece of it remained behind some kind of lever, so I had to try and get this out as well, getting burnt by the hellishly hot cartridge in the process and ending up with ink all over both hands and three door handles between the printer room and the bathroom.

I hope that when I retire (I just know that fucking printer will still be there in 30 or 40 years time, pissing off hundreds of civil servants) I can take it as a souvenir and kick the shit out of it in the car park, in homage to that rather excellent film, Office Space.

And then, just when it couldn’t get any worse, they were all out of croissants in the canteen. Arse. So I had to eat a scone, which, would be more correctly described as “a stone”. I nearly lost a tooth in it. I reckon our canteen would do well in Limerick, making replicas of the Treaty Stone. It was shaped like that, and didn’t taste nearly as nice.

Level of pity elicited from readers? Incommensurable. Civil servants get what they deserve.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Swearbox!

Thank FUCK the Department isn't thinking of introducing a swearbox system to discourage employees by hitting us where it hurts most (no, not in the bollocks, for I am a lady, and I do not have these... testicles...).

No, I am thinking of suggesting the introduction of a "Management Speak" box. This will discourage managers more senior than myself from using stupid, hackneyed phrases, such as "going forward", "touching base", "implementation", "strategic outlook" and suchlike. There could be a graduated scheme of penalties depending on the stupidity of the phrase or word used. For instance, anybody saying "Key Performance Indicators" would have to cough up 2 Euro, "critical success factors" would warrant a 5 Euro fine (or a swift kick up the hole) and an instance of "touching base" would result in the perpetrator having their head chopped off.

If this suggestion is "taken on board", my section ALONE could generate enough cash to solve the national debt of Leitrim. And, going forward, maybe another few bob for Bertie.

It's a win-win situation, folks!