It's all Greek to me

[caddyman]

It is, I suppose, the way things are going. We have just received an email showing the latest version of what the office floor plan will look like once the long-awaited “re-stacking” exercise is completed. This has been on the cards for what, three years now, but every time it gets close to becoming a reality, there is a divisional reorganisation and the various branches are moved (on paper) to different divisions, this making existing seating plans obsolete and revised ones pointless.

It keeps someone in a job, I guess.

Someone has clearly been shopping. The furniture we have now (on this floor at least) is around ten years old and in the current climate takes too much space. We have to lose more filing space – not that I can immediately recall the last time I did, or managed to con anyone else to do any filing – and the fancy new furniture we will be getting if other floors are anything to go by is neat, snazzy and takes about half the space of the current set up. That means that we will take up half the space of the current set up. I have never liked open-plan and now we seem to be moving towards battery open-plan; workspaces in banks of six with only vestigial dividers between you and the person opposite. Can double-decker desks be far away?

To add to the fun, everyone other than divisional managers (now relabelled “Deputy Directors”) will be out in the mix, so already scarce meeting space will be even more limited.

This brings me to the next point: “Deputy Directors”. The third name change in six years. What was wrong with “Head of Division”? A bit of a mouthful, perhaps, but accurate. Then they became “Divisional Managers” – pretty much the same thing, but in these days of cutbacks, fewer syllables. Now though, we seem to have bottomed out and I see signs of movement in the other direction where we take up more impressive job titles in lieu of working space or proper pay rises.

It is a symptom of the civil service in the UK (and probably elsewhere too), that movement toward greater simplicity in the work place can only be managed through increasingly Byzantine methods and nomenclature. Think: Levellers with a Greek gloss. It can only be a matter of time before the Permanent Secretary is given the title Pantocrator and that this reflects down the management tree into deputy pantocrators and assistant pantocrators ad absurdum (though how someone can be the assistant all-powerful is beyond me, quite frankly – though change the word order and it makes crystal clear sense.

I am looking forward, in this brave new world, to my new job title. I very much hope it will be along the lines of Assistant Deputy Humble Office Clerk or “Ad Hoc” for short.

Remember kids, you can’t have a pantisocracy without the pants.

Comments

[fencingsculptor.livejournal.com]

I just Gaffawed into my coffee.

Let me know if you want me to unbolt the 'Ministerial Fires Axe of Bureaucracy Busting' …

[ash1977law.livejournal.com]

Pantocrator is such a beautiful word

[pax-draconis.livejournal.com]

The re-org gets my sympathies - we've just done one, leaving me with health-and-safety-busting microns around my chair for lazing backwards. Stiull; at least I still have a window seat rather than a fellow drone to look at.

Today, I discover whether I am Purchasing Intelligence Manager, Information Control Manager, (Yes, herr Goebbels) or even more terrifyingly, Head of Business Intelligence and Information Control. As you sink further into the grip of the Eastern Roman Empire, so my life more and more resembles a Robert Heinlein novel.

[agentinfinity.livejournal.com]

You should try working in a school. M'colleague is regularly blinded by the sun coming in through the window in our office, but apparently the budget won't stretch to a blind (surely 10 quid from Argos, we thought) so someone came in yesterday and nailed a lump of wood over half the window. It looks lurvely, as you can imagine, whilst also failing to block out the light.

Excitingly they also left their cordless drill behind, which we didn't notice until one of the kids started doing an impersonation of the bloke off the WKD advert. Health and safety a go go.

[ladkyis.livejournal.com]

When my daughter worked at Salford University they amalgamated several engineering departments into one school and put them alphabetically into the title. They used acronyms to identify each department, or they did until said daughter pointed out the one for the School of Aeronautical, Civil and Mechanical Engineering became SACME and did they want her to say that every time she answered the phone
"SACME Andrea speaking"

[fredlums.livejournal.com]

If NHS reorganistions and reconfigurations renamings and any other re's that you can think of are anything to go by- next week it will all change again - I stick to my title of dogsbody.

My experience of receiving new furniture etc is that it is half the size, half as useful and has half the life expectancy of the stuff that is already there. This renders it totally useless but it looks good.

Do not under any circumstances let them take away your filing cabinets! Chain yourself to them if necessary.

[bluesman.livejournal.com]

New furniture half the size of the old furniture? Does this mean that your new chair will be so compact that you can only perch one butt cheek on it at a time? Now there's a notion.

Regarding bullsh*t job titles, I have unofficially been That Englishman Who Snarls At You through many a cosmetic re-organisation, under several new-broom bosses. Heh, heh, heh...