It's all Greek to me

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.

It's all Greek to me

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.