Not to be confused with "ER"
Tuesday, March 9th, 2004 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanTrying to get information from our HR division is rather like going to the dentist and pulling your own teeth out.
Such is the Stasiesque secrecy under which they appear to operate, that it has taken me until today to isolate the probable contact and send an email requesting details on inter-departmental moves (i.e. between Ministries).
When first I joined the civil service, some 20 years ago, things were quite different. Establishments as they were then known were in your face and busy at every level. You knew who they were, where they were, and who your contact point was. You might not know what they actually did, but you at least knew where to find them.
These days the only thing that has remained the same is the fact that you probably don't know what they do.
As part of my degree all those many moons ago, for my sins Manpower Utilisation was part of the syllabus. This was an essential requirement for anybody hoping to get into personnel or industrial relations. Although now long forgotten, I fancied for a while that I knew something about personnel management. I was of course deluding myself. Personnel departments, in their post-modern guise of Human Resources are quite something else.
They are rest homes for the weary professional. They hide away in out of the way buildings in well-appointed offices and think grand thoughts. They devise new and more developmental programmes and initiatives and then they change them again.
I want to work in Human Resources. I can spell the buzz words, enabling, and empowering. I understand diversity and can say, "developmental"* without cracking a smile.
I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears**
I want to work for Human Resources. It's like being a spook with tea and buns.
* "Developmental" is a term used for any task no-one else wants to do and how your boss tries to justify lumbering you.
** FromVenus in Furs by the Velvet Underground. This fragment of the lyric is the unofficial motto of the personnel manager.
Such is the Stasiesque secrecy under which they appear to operate, that it has taken me until today to isolate the probable contact and send an email requesting details on inter-departmental moves (i.e. between Ministries).
When first I joined the civil service, some 20 years ago, things were quite different. Establishments as they were then known were in your face and busy at every level. You knew who they were, where they were, and who your contact point was. You might not know what they actually did, but you at least knew where to find them.
These days the only thing that has remained the same is the fact that you probably don't know what they do.
As part of my degree all those many moons ago, for my sins Manpower Utilisation was part of the syllabus. This was an essential requirement for anybody hoping to get into personnel or industrial relations. Although now long forgotten, I fancied for a while that I knew something about personnel management. I was of course deluding myself. Personnel departments, in their post-modern guise of Human Resources are quite something else.
They are rest homes for the weary professional. They hide away in out of the way buildings in well-appointed offices and think grand thoughts. They devise new and more developmental programmes and initiatives and then they change them again.
I want to work in Human Resources. I can spell the buzz words, enabling, and empowering. I understand diversity and can say, "developmental"* without cracking a smile.
I am tired, I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years
A thousand dreams that would awake me
Different colors made of tears**
I want to work for Human Resources. It's like being a spook with tea and buns.
* "Developmental" is a term used for any task no-one else wants to do and how your boss tries to justify lumbering you.
** FromVenus in Furs by the Velvet Underground. This fragment of the lyric is the unofficial motto of the personnel manager.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-09 06:01 am (UTC)You have described in a nutshell the experience of attempting to get documents from either the EU or the Vatican. Conspiracy?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-09 07:47 am (UTC)Modern conspiracy theories aren't as sinister or complex as they used to be.
That makes me suspicious.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-09 06:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-09 07:50 am (UTC)And I want to write it. But as yet I'm not sure when I will get the time or what the inspiration will be. I'm toying with the idea of building a sequence of stories around my Dimpler Towers characters.
Take a root around in
(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-13 06:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-03-14 04:13 am (UTC)I've just realised how far back into 2003 you will have to go to find much of my stuff - I just don't seem to have had much time for creative writing recently.
Other than the bloody awful poem...
Oh dear. ;-(