The full English

This morning the caffeine, nicotine and assorted prescription medication that forms the full English breakfast is taking its time to kick in properly. I keep yawning so haed that my eyes water like lawn sprinklers. It's the typing equivalent of driving down the motorway with the windscreen wipers on half speed during a light rain shower.

By and large it's doable, but now and again a truck goes by and smears your vision for a few moments leaving you horribly disoriented.

I may upgrade to a French breakfast. A full caffetiere and a pack of Gauloises. I'll need to regrow the goatee to carry that off.

The full English

This morning the caffeine, nicotine and assorted prescription medication that forms the full English breakfast is taking its time to kick in properly. I keep yawning so haed that my eyes water like lawn sprinklers. It's the typing equivalent of driving down the motorway with the windscreen wipers on half speed during a light rain shower.

By and large it's doable, but now and again a truck goes by and smears your vision for a few moments leaving you horribly disoriented.

I may upgrade to a French breakfast. A full caffetiere and a pack of Gauloises. I'll need to regrow the goatee to carry that off.

(no subject)

Pah. Just when you want them, Yahoo groups are down again.

(no subject)

Pah. Just when you want them, Yahoo groups are down again.

Not to be confused with "ER"

Trying 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.

Not to be confused with "ER"

Trying 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.