Management. A wonderful career, the aspiration of those lured by the extra few quid, the power, the sex (Ok, maybe not, bleargh!) and best of all, getting paid for telling other people to do your work for you. What could be better?
Maybe in the private sector, it's like that, but in the civil service the place is full of fucking managers. They can't all be having that much fun, it's statistically improbable. Take me for instance. I belong to the lowest stratum of management in the civil service. I make fuck all money compared to HEOs and APs (assistant principals).
The EO is the second-hardest working grade of civil servant (which isn't saying much), second only to the clerical officer. Notice a trend here, anybody? Yes, the higher up you go, the less you have to do.
The most interesting grade is HEO, those people trapped in a middle management limbo. The ones who flap and squirt verbal diarrhoea on EOs. The ones who suck up to senior management with an obsequiousness second only to that of medieval courtiers and those about to commit hari-kari for the Japanese Emperor.
My HEO really pissed me off today. Last week I (briefly) put aside one deadline (let's call it D1 for shortness sake) in order to attend to Deadline 2 (D2). D2 was approaching sooner than D1 and the HEO reminded me not once, but twice in the same day (!) that D2 had to be met. So D1, due a week later, suffered a minor set back - but it is still on target.
Today, HEO informs me that the AP was "disappointed" that D1 wasn't progressing as well as expected. (You see, APs rarely communicate directly with EOs or COs. Information must pass through all layers of management until, ultimately, it reaches the clerical officers, by which time the meaning has been lost and no-one knows what the fuck they are supposed to be doing.)
I told my HEO that I had to give a lot of time to D2 and couldn't progress D1 at the same time. HEO then tells me that D2 "could have waited till this week!"
Well fuck me gently with a chainsaw. I sweated my arse off meeting D2 last week, and now, just because the AP is pissed off, the HEO does a complete U-turn and makes me look like shit.
Thanks very much, boss. You fucking asshole.
Maybe in the private sector, it's like that, but in the civil service the place is full of fucking managers. They can't all be having that much fun, it's statistically improbable. Take me for instance. I belong to the lowest stratum of management in the civil service. I make fuck all money compared to HEOs and APs (assistant principals).
The EO is the second-hardest working grade of civil servant (which isn't saying much), second only to the clerical officer. Notice a trend here, anybody? Yes, the higher up you go, the less you have to do.
The most interesting grade is HEO, those people trapped in a middle management limbo. The ones who flap and squirt verbal diarrhoea on EOs. The ones who suck up to senior management with an obsequiousness second only to that of medieval courtiers and those about to commit hari-kari for the Japanese Emperor.
My HEO really pissed me off today. Last week I (briefly) put aside one deadline (let's call it D1 for shortness sake) in order to attend to Deadline 2 (D2). D2 was approaching sooner than D1 and the HEO reminded me not once, but twice in the same day (!) that D2 had to be met. So D1, due a week later, suffered a minor set back - but it is still on target.
Today, HEO informs me that the AP was "disappointed" that D1 wasn't progressing as well as expected. (You see, APs rarely communicate directly with EOs or COs. Information must pass through all layers of management until, ultimately, it reaches the clerical officers, by which time the meaning has been lost and no-one knows what the fuck they are supposed to be doing.)
I told my HEO that I had to give a lot of time to D2 and couldn't progress D1 at the same time. HEO then tells me that D2 "could have waited till this week!"
Well fuck me gently with a chainsaw. I sweated my arse off meeting D2 last week, and now, just because the AP is pissed off, the HEO does a complete U-turn and makes me look like shit.
Thanks very much, boss. You fucking asshole.
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