Monday, November 26, 2007

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?

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