Worst ... Aid ... Ever!

Now that the beta-blockers that the doctor prescribed for me to control the crazy physiological manifestations of my utter OUTRAGE (even the HEO ducked for cover, and the building was almost evacuated) at the sight of my first 2011 payslip last week have kicked in, I am now able to put my no longer trembling fingers to keyboard to compose my first post of the year.

I’m not going to write about the changes to my take-home pay and the attendant austerity measures I must adopt in my lifestyle. I may die in the pro...........

..... hmm. That light was very bright. It gave me a migraine.

Anyway.

Earlier this week, a friend who is currently in college asked me if I would like to participate on a first-aid course currently being undertaken by herself and other members of her class. Given the cost to non-students, I politely declined, saying also that a similar course is periodically offered at work free of charge.

I’ve never done a first-aid course at work. It’s a useful skill that can, for once, be used in the real world outside the Civil Service.

The problem is, if I did do the course in work, I would be listed as a first aid practitioner (and possibly defibrillator operator) among others on the Department’s Intranet.
What if I actually had to do something? There are a lot of fairly unhealthy looking types in the Department. You can hear them wheezing, puffing and panting on the stairs. Their red faces serve as emergency lighting. Most of them have bad teeth, skin problems and are challenged in the niceties of personal hygiene. The others are arseholes. The very thought of having to give mouth-to-mouth or defibrillate the bare chests of any of them makes me want to puke.

Although...

... I might just have the power to decide whether they live or die! To play God! BWAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!

Imagine! A prostrate, purple-faced psoriatic EO with week-old sweat stains under his arms, or a cyanotic CO whose smugness suddenly seems to have left her...with only me... ME! as the one to grasp them and firmly reinstate them on this mortal coil. Or a talkative CO with an annoying voice struggling to breathe, necessitating an emergency tracheotomy with an old biro to keep the airway open – sure why not rip the vocal chords out while I’m at it?

Endless possibilities for evil, violence and fun, while helping to keep employment levels down. Helping the public sector employment statistics for the Croke Park agreement.

Although, knowing my rotten luck, it’ll end up being me prostrate on the floor, especially if there are any more cuts or tax increases. Well, at least I have nice skin, good oral hygiene and shower and change my clothes daily. I’d have some chance of surviving, I suppose.

Anyway, happy new year and all that, motherfeckers.

National Abbatoir to open, thousands of jobs created

Hmmm. So no deal has been reached on our unpaid leave as yet. And time is marching relentlessly on until Budget day.

Today's planned strike was averted because of the "breakthrough agreement" on 12 or so unpaid leave days for the public sector.

But now, following dissention from backbench TDs, everything's up for grabs again. Backbench TDs, some of whom I might add, have alleged that "sure don't a couple of pints help a nervous driver to relax a bit?"

Even our revered Tanaiste, Mary Cockup... ahem, Coughlan, has agreed that nothing has been confirmed yet. This is the same person on whose behalf taxpayers, public and private, forked out €9,000 to keep a limo waiting for her at the WTO talks in Geneva last year so she wouldn't have to walk, or God forbid, use a taxi whose previous client was a cuckoo-clock maker. Not to mention John O'Donoghue's profligacy.

We all have to make sacrifices. The country is on its knees. For me and many of my colleagues, it's not the pay cut/ unpaid leave that galls us. It is the failure of our public "representatives" to set an example.

It's no wonder people are dying of swine flu. The country is being run (into the ground) by a shower of porcine individuals, all with their filthy heads in the trough.

George Orwell summed it up nicely in Animal Farm (and again, the pigs were running the show) with the quotation:

"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

It's put me off sausages for life.

Budget blues

Ok, that was the final straw. I'm sick of having my pay packet raped by the incompetents in Leinster House.

I think now, with the income levy going up to 2% and the increased "Health levy" which I never knew I was paying in the first place, I think my income might now be so low as to qualify me for a full medical card.

And the great thing about full medical cards? You're exempt from the poxy income levy. Worth it for that alone, even if you never see the doctor.

Tell your friends.

The Hate Issue...

As is my wont on this suppurating-pustule-on-a-greeting-card-company-marketing-executive's-arse of a day, I dedicate this post to the things I truly hate. Allow me to vent my spleen in the most bilious manner.

In no particular order, I bring you...

1. Hallmark holidays. I have been, for the greater part of my life, a singleton, and proud of it. I refuse to engage in any activity in pubs or restaurants on this date. I could have conformed and accepted the invitation to go out from an ex-boyfriend who has been getting back in touch, but instead I slagged him for being corny and made arrangements for next week instead. And to bring flowers if he wanted. Flowers that aren't marked up by 100% for the day that's in it. There's a recession on don't ya know. Oh, and Halloween is shite as well. They'll be exchanging cards for that next.

2. Our Government. They're completely shit. I don't blame Brian Cowen. I blame Bertie for dumping him in the shite. 1% income levy, stupid pension levy, soon I'll be paying the Department for the privilege of working there. And this is just the beginning. The Government have plans to cut spending right up to 2013.

As hundreds of people are made redundant every week, I am grateful for merely having a job, and acknowledge that we should make sacrifices (like the 3.5% pay increase on September 1st under the National Pay Agreement which has now been axed). What's pissing off many of us lower and middle-income public servants, however, is how we are being villified by the media, (did you know that as a post-1995 recruit, I was paying my own pension all along?) and also the fucking disgusting incompetence of senior bank executives, who have gotten away with murder!

No-one's going to have much sympathy for us paper-pushers if we go on strike, but why take it lying down? Steeeee-RIKE!

3. The bloke with a chocolate addiction who sits at the opposite end of the section to me. His man-boobs have increased from a B-cup to a C-cup since last summer, and worst of all, I can hear every bite. Even at that distance. Bleurgh. You disgusting noisy-eating bastard.

4. The wet patch in my back garden. It makes noise when I walk on it.

5. The voice of a worker in a neighbouring section that can be heard over a considerable distance. I'm sure she is a very nice person, but her voice could cut sheet metal!

6. The fact that the neighbour who backs onto me STILL hasn't taken down his outdoor Christmas decorations. I can see Santa on his roof as I type. Lazy twat.

Ummm.... that's about it. Must be losing my touch.

C*nty Council

When will the fucking county council stop tearing up our roads?

As regular readers will, no doubt, be aware, I live in Ballyfuck, which is down a bog road with grass growing up the middle in the arse-end of nowhere. It has a church, a school, a shop, and several pubs. All within walking distance.

My commute to work is lengthy and not without interest. It takes me over mountains and hump-backed bridges, past farmyards plastered in inches of cow scutter and pubs in the middle of forests that I must visit for a few pints before the drink-driving laws cause them to close. Occasionally my travel time is increased by a herd of cows being brought for milking, suicidal pigeons and fucking crows literally throwing themselves at my front bumper, stoned pheasants JUST STANDING THERE in the middle of the road and, on one occasion, a deer with its white arse turned towards me in a gesture of defiance, the fucker. It’s wonderful and the rising petrol costs only detract from it slightly.

Lately, however, the county council have been fucking it up. Recently they decided to tear up the main street of another village which I pass through on my way to work. This resulted in my having to take a small detour. This went on for so long that I had almost forgotten the place existed.

This week, they are working on a stretch of road near that village, which I now can no longer get into from Ballyfuck direction. To get there, I must now take a long detour.

I’ve started to explore the network of “roads that aren’t even roads if you look at them on a map” in order to reach my destination. Some of these work out extremely well, but they rely on a sharp sense of direction, as there are, inevitably, no signposts. These, I believe, are adorning the walls of some old-fashioned pubs.

The trouble with these roads, though, is I run a real risk of being stuck behind a big tractor pulling a trailer load of silage or an evil-smelling shit spreader. Or sometimes I take a wrong turn at a - typically unsignposted - junction and drive down a narrow public road which bizarrely tapers off into someone’s private driveway and I have to do a hasty turn as the occupants of the house gaze in bewilderment from the front windows. Only yesterday was I chased half a mile (thank god for being encased in a metal thing on wheels) by an irate, unmuzzled Rottweiler, and a Jack Russell with a nasty habit of nipping at my wheels.

I suppose it still makes for an interesting journey. And I got home in one piece.

Only to find that the council are tearing up Ballyfuck’s main street for the third time in as many months and there is now a crater six feet deep which is full of men in hi-vis vests drinking tea.

And my fucking water is cut off. Again.

If the wider civil service could transfer to county councils (we can’t) I would gladly do so and attempt to fuck things up for them (just ahead of transferring back to the Department), like putting dead pigeons (see above) in their water tanks, digging a big hole in the county engineer’s parking spot and putting “DIVERSION” signs and traffic cones in the corridors of power.

That would fix ‘em, the bastards.

Rotten

Today I completed, for the last time, a role profile form with the section nutjob. I thought, ten minutes for the meeting, in and out, get the stupid fucking form out of the way once and for all. Then I can hand them over to their new manager, and they may now fuck off. No such luck.

Having completed the form, I then went through the feedback bit at the bottom. "Does the job holder wish to give feedback?" it said. My hopes of ticking "No" and getting the fuck out of there evaporated as the smell of the nutjob's BO and the tension in the room escalated.

All of a sudden I was subjected to a litany of grievances about how the place was managed. Most of them, admittedly, directed at more senior management rather than at me.

Most prominent in the criticism was: "I hate the HEO." When asked why, no answer was forthcoming.

Well, I'm sorry, there is absolutely fuck all I can do about that. What am I supposed to do, use Rorschach tests and word association and various other psychometric tests to determine exactly what the problem is?

I could have said: "Well, look at it this way, I REALLY hate you, and I can give you several reasons right NOW."

But instead, I signed the form. Let someone else worry about it. I don't get paid enough for that kind of shit.

For the record - the reasons I hate this person are:
- They smell
- Desk like a fucking tip head
- Irritating voice
- Irritating mannerisms
- Chews loudly
- Has to be asked seventeen times to perform a simple task
- Resistant to any kind of management driven initiatives to improve workloads and working conditions.

There are many more, but I'm going to the pub now, so fuck it!

Bertie

Aren’t we lucky that Ireland doesn’t have nuclear weapons (At least, not that we know of – I think myself that Mary Harney is a suspect device.). Bertie’s lapses of memory recently in the Mahon Tribunal call to mind Ronald Reagan’s term of office as US President; a man with Alzheimer’s Disease whose finger was poised above that little red button that could make the whole world go BOOM BANG A BANG. Imagine if Bertie had the same capacity… “eeh, whaddya mean I started World War Three, I have no recollection of that fact, in factah, yeee’re tryin’ to stitch me up…”

The day Bertie turns up for work with no trousers on and proceeds to piss himself in front of everyone in Leinster House is the one I’m looking forward to. It’d certainly liven up Oireachtas Report.

Christmas...

It's the countdown to Christmas! 8 days to go! WooHoo!

Yeah, right.

C*ntdown more like it.

I have to get all the annual reviews for my COs done by the end of this week, god damn it fucking bastard shite.

I'm sure the reviews will turn up some funny stories, so watch this space.

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

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.