Modern Life Is War
October 1, 2007 by inspectorgadget
Dead dogs, mentally ill people, angry sheep and now - swivel chairs.
It has been a difficult few days for Inspector Gadget of F Division, Ruralshire County Constabulary.
Her swivel chair allows the Senior Admin Support Clerk to spin around when I enter, cast a suspicious eye up and down and point a carefully manicured fingernail in my direction, all in one immaculately choreographed movement.
She wrinkles her nose up at the sight of my boots in her office.
“You, Gadget” she accuses “do not have an appointment”.
“Not unless you count the one given to me by the Sovereign, her heirs and successors” I retort.
I can tell we are going to get along just fine.
Down to business. “Can I have sex with your teenage daughter?” I ask respectfully.
(well, actually I didn’t say that, I just asked for some stationery but it received the same reaction)
“Have you typed both parts of the requisition form and added the cost center code?” she asks me sulkily.
I am triumphant! “Yes” I say, feast your eyes on that, and I cast the form on to her desk.
“Sorry Gadget” she smiles, “I need your signature at the foot of the form”.
“I cant ” I reply, looking genuine. “Why on earth not” she snaps.
“Look at the form, it’s a new pen I’m after, I can’t sign it without a pen but I can’t have a pen without signing……… what shall I do?”.
Twenty minutes later down in the custody block I’m collecting my winnings in cakes. We have an ongoing reward system for the best piece of organisational terrorism of the week.
My mobile rings. It’s Debbie. The Senior Admin Support Clerk was at school with Debbie and they sometimes walk the dogs together. How was I to know?
More worryingly, she also knows about the cakes. The Sergeants are suddenly very quiet. Debbie knows all of their wives and girlfriends. In typical police fashion, my support suddenly evaporates.
Best we get back out on the streets and do something safer and less frightening……. like face knife-men and terrorists!
You made me laugh. I love playing with the silly people, it makes the day pass quicker.
Now these are the real people with power in the ‘organisation’.
Whereas some can occasionally be helpful, others have made their own empires by being generally unhelpful, obstructive, hide behind all sorts of dubious ‘policies’ and seem to get the protection of a whole series of jobsworths and managers that eludes almost everyone else, certainly of an operational background.
Are they there to make our jobs easier in offering valued support?
You foolish boy!
The pen escapade was a mere ‘chick and egg’ scenario.
Now the cakes; that was more of the ilk of the ‘lion and a lamb’.
and you can guess who was the lion and who was the lamb!
you ought to pick your fights more carefully.
hold on….you can get pens???
the only pen ive ever had from the job is the fed one…which is blue and cant be used for statements as the damn photocopier only picks up black!
Guv,
Once again you’ve hit my emotional side and made me cry…laughing. Don’t you even think about going to Canada.
We have a free internal newspaper. It’s the same as all the others, absolute rubbish, management propaganda and not read by anyone outside of HQ. Yet still it gets delivered in piles to our station every month. And what’s worse, we get the entire area’s copies as well. Thousands and thousand of them in piles on the floor. The other divisions won’t collect them as they dont want them. We have no civvy driver to deliver them, so every month they would lie in piles before someone flung them out the back window into the skip. Our senior admin fella got wise to this and forbade them being flung in the skip. Far too important they are. So we ended up with three months worth in huge mountains across the floor. So one night, the nasty night shift carried them all upstairs to where he sits in resplendant glory, and used the piles to brick up the door to his office.
Apparently it took him three hours to get to his desk.
We never got the other stations copies again. And ours now go straight into the skip on the day they are delivered. Everyone is happy !
Personally speaking my preferred bit of organisational terrorism is something i call the smash or grab.
Basically its quite simple, you wait until near Admin home time (1545hrs) and enter with a declared intent to obtain stationary. You firstly declare you cant wait until tomorrow for what ever you need and place them in position of having to work over to satisfy the bureaucracy or just letting you take what you need which is normally merely a Biro. Its 90% successful but you have to be prepared for the random die hards / jobs worth who will stubbornly refuse said reasonable request. In that case you merely inform them that you will buy a pen and submit your report for reimbursement the following day quoting the said jobs worth who quoted you the rules. If they call your bluff then follow it through and this will reinforce your future smash or grab attempts and i speak from experience.
Its called Smash OR Grab as your either forcing said Admin person to Smash their golden rule of going home on time or alternatively just letting you Grab what you need. I have only met one of them prepared to work over for Biro and i have to say it took me quite a while to fill out the form.
It frequently occurs to me that if i wasn’t forced to spend time planning operations like this i could actually plan operations to catch criminals. Of course some of you would suggest that i am being churlish to want more than one nearly empty Biro between two Officers but if you did i would ignore you until 1545hrs when i need a new pen.
On the subject of the ubiquitous national obsession with internal Police Newspapers i would like to state the following:
1) As a tax payer i object them, they must cost a bloody fortune! Have they not heard of the Internet or internal Intranet’s or something which would at least save a few acres of rain forest and piles of cash to boot in printing costs alone (although getting rid of the entire department altogether would save more)!
2) As Police Officer i object to them, they must cost a bloody fortune and are not nearly absorbent enough
3) As human being i object to their Orwellian double think and new speak Modus Operandi, that they inspired that infamous “Sharp End” Home Office propaganda piece utilised by apparatchiks nationwide and that they assault the terminally ill art of Journalism to such an extent that our local MOP rag could win a Pulitzer prize in comparison.
Simply put they are just full of crap and never get read and cost a fortune and whoever continues to justify their cost in the annual budget should be locked up, flogged daily and on their eventual release shot! Alternatively they could just answer a few emergency calls instead but that’s just crazy talk.
My gosh, ye still enjoying Dickens mode of office goodies; Of course when I was writing memos to Mr goat, who always was borrowing my stub and chewing the lead , so me olde ram gave me some advice on keeping in with the old goat, cut up said one farm issued pencil into short pieces get them chewed out , then go to Nanny and beg her to replace one said chewed stub for a nice new shiny one [once every few days]. soon I had a useful collection.
As for the government issued reading material , we needed it for the bog roll that we recycled used as the water closet was not issued. Twas why I flew the coop to go where I had to ride me own ass instead of wreckin a driver with a 2 x 4 from the pen, buy me own bics , a dozen in nice colors for Dollar, finally I no longer have to worry, I now have a fine feather gold plated hanging on me wall with a nice comment, as go round and round in the old duck pond watching the turkeys.
PS I miss th good old days of waiting for the the cupboard master to crow for 10 minutes after we would stand in line for a lost rubber.
Although I replenish my pens regularly, within about a week they all disappear into the wormhole in the space-time continuum next to my desk drawer. Occasionally they pop back into existance, in the most ridiculous places, such as in the fridge, in the boot of my car, or in my pocket. Could I find a pen five minutes ago? No. Can I find one now, when I don’t need one? Of course - a choice of black, blue, ball point, cheapo or posh.
This is a many dimensioned universe. One of them is full of pens. I’m sure of it.
Never try and hide things from your missus, women know everything and we always find out. You might not be able to work out how but rest assured, whatever it is, Mrs Gadget knows.
Good piece of admin baiting!! I can’t believe you have to fill in an entire form to request stationary, that’s mad. I just go to the cupbpard and help myself.
I once phoned PSD and informed then that I felt compelled to refer myself to them. The silence was deafening as they wired up the phone to record my conversation.
You could almost feel the tension over the phone as having wired up the phone I was asked what is it that I wanted to discuss. I went on to tell then that I had just received a speeding ticket. It was one of my better wind ups.
I bet she has her own parking space in the rear yard in the bays for essential users only!!
Our custody suite has a near limitless budget for pens thanks to a near coup by a couple custody sgts a few years ago who closed custody two days in a row after they had no pens to write up the records. The result?? they are now constantly stocked with free pens for everyone, especially handy as everyone I know goes through about 5 per shift
Another morale boosting bonus thanks to Operation Safeguard (and not just near limitless overtime when you can get it) is that the home office also pay for things like tea and coffee for the prisoners so there is an unlimited amount that can be ordered. Why is this a good thing you might wonder?? because the list also includes instant cadbury hot chocolate packs.
The morale bit comes in where on nights said instant cadbury hot chocolate packs can be liberated from the custody blocks (covert training put to good use there) and then placed neatly in the team locker so everyone can benefit throughout the shift from nice tasting drinks instead of overpirced stale coffee from the canteen.
Small victories, but good ones.
Ha! I feel the pain of your sergeants
Disappearing Biros. . . one such wormhole is undoubtedly the PNB pocket of stab vests. One of my colleagues was compianing once that he couldn’t find a pen anywhere. Eventually we get him to remove his stab vest, removed his PNB from said pocket and checked the murky depths. The result? A grand total of (and I kid you not!) 27 biros at the bottom of that pocket. For crying out loud you normally have trouble getting your PNB in that pocket! To share it with 27 Biros is an achievement indeed. Fun was had extracting the urine for a while until he gew tired and did the same to my vest. The result? 19 Biros in *MY* PNB pocket. I think they must set up breeding colonies in the dark moist depths of PNB pockets. So check yours, you may be surprised!
Always good for a reaction is to accost the female stationery clerk, brandishing an empty clutch pencil crying plaintively “I’ve got no lead in me pencil, can you help…”
We have a main station in our area and various satellite stations.
The doors of the main station are keypad controlled, and the code changes with laughable regularity. Noone is informed that the door code has changed until they arrive, when the unfortunate officer is left standing looking confused at the door while the collection of public dross in the front office stare at you like you are pond filth.
With a deep sigh, the front office staff will buzz you in after several minutes.
A few months ago, an email came round from the civvy in chief at the station pointing out that it was rude and discouteous to stand there at the door waiting to be buzzed in by the front office staff who had much better things to do with their time, and that when the door code is changed the new code is recorded on a board out of public view in the front office, and it was every officers responsibility to record learn the new code.
I made the fatal error of replying to this email, pointing out that having the code displayed inside the station I was trying to get into was rather problematic.
The civvy in chief copied my email to the chief inspector, and the next day I was hauled in to explain my unhelpful attitude.
I don’t know the best way to deal with these people; do we ignore tham or hunt them down like dogs and dump them in shallow graves in the woods.
Boss,
On the topic of Organisational terrorism.
Before the property system went totally computerised, they used to send us all memos reminding us that we had booked something into property, then a further memo reminding us that they had sent a memo & on it went. You probably all remember it. Now they do it via email. The bane of many a poor bobby’s life.
Well I pioneered a very subversive method of counter memoism.
Collect all the property memos, place them in one large envelope & yes you guessed it. Book them all into the property system. Perfect.
I used to walk slowly past the open door to their office turn my head towards one of the staff & smile whilst leaning backwards as I walked.
Small victories.
shallow graves. i have a trowel & some masking tape if that helps.
L&B are now using PDAs so biros are now obsolete….and boy do I miss ‘em
It is stationery!
I never use a pen at work.
Actually that was a joke.
Not very funny.
Sorry
I’ll get me coat then……
Dear gods! As a civvie member of staff I hope to all the gods that I’m not as petty as most of the examples here.
How you manage to keep your tempers and sense of humour is beyond me.
Congrats on small victories, they add up
As civvie HR we are always filling in pointless forms with duplicate and triplicate copies which is mind-boggling considered that all the systems are computerised.
But that spell in the dog house must have been so worth it for the free cake & getting
shiny new pen (mind you don’t lose it).
Organisational Terrorism…. Think i may have to give it a whirl.
We could try some dramatic cultural quotes suitably adapted of course during our next attempted Biro forays against the Jobs worth s of this world, e.g.
What, drawn, and talk of “requestion forms”, I hate the word,
As I hate hell, all Bureaucrats, and THEE!
It may distract them long enough to get a pen, particularly if accompanied with a Home Office Approved Baton Draw embellished with an overly ostentatious flourish of said baton. However given the amount of training we get using batons a dynamic risk assessment should be conducted first as you’ll probably just smack yourself about the head and the paperwork that would follow such an incident would be utterly stupendous.
It has come to my attention that the simple issue of a pen or two can become a little bit difficult.
I have now taken upon myself to take direct action against the fuhrer of the stationary cupboard.
It seems to me that allthough I am not allowed a folder for my latest file that is going no where at all, the same office is responsible for agreeing my request for all manner of sneaky beaky courses. Therefore, I see it as my peel given right to employ the skills that much money has been spent to furnish me with, and mount a massive covert operation to break and enter the stationary cupboard at precisley 16:15 hours on a friday and liberate those items that are important to my colleagues, such as yellow perils and those wierd star clips that come in two sizes.
I’m not yet brave enough to turn up on a monday morning and watch the chaos that I have created when the few penny’s worth of stationary is noted as missing, but when I can find financial solvency elsewhere, I look forward to seing the ditsress I have caused when it is noticed that a paperclip is unaccounted for, and all the highlighter pens have been replaced by the admin office tea bags.
vive la revoltioune!
Fish (in a very covert manner)
You guys are subtle. On this side of the pond we extract office supplies by force. Sister Rosetta Stone from Our Lady of the Supply Cabinet didn’t know what to think when my entire shift charged in screaming, in balaclavas and our active-shooter vests, vaulted the counter, and stole every retractible black ballpoint, legal pad, and AAA battery out of her cabinet.
Her reaction was about what I’d have expected, had my sergeant asked to introduce her teenage daughter to the joys of adulthood on a billiards table while surrounded by cheering firefighters.
[...] officers themselves to re-do, even if it’s a date or postcode which could be corrected by the admin clerk who discoverd [...]
We were once issued with pens that were one inch longer than our pockets, I sold them down the market every Sunday.