Reorganise!
Friday, April 24th, 2009 11:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanAh, this is the good stuff: the minutiae of office reorganisation.
Since the Government has plunged us all into debt unto the seventh generation, it has decided that it ought to save a bob or two here and there. Actually, it decided to do so before borrowing billions here and there to pay bankers’ bonuses for them. When you are in the market for billions in loans, it’s important to save the odd couple of million here and there. I’m not saying that they are wrong, you understand, but it’s a little like asking your bank manager for a £250,000 mortgage and producing your old piggy bank full of coppers to prove that you are saving money.
Anyway.
The Department is currently spread across two buildings in central London and management have decided that we should all be crammed sardine-like into one building, the one I’m in. To achieve this, we are all to be shuffled around and the amount of file storage reduced, new desks added and so on. There are 2,000 of us in the building at the moment and they want 3,000. Several of the floors have made a case to be left as they are and Ministers don’t like being reminded that there is anyone in the building except for them and their immediate staff, so their football pitch size accommodations, easy chairs, TVs and drinks cabinets are unaffected by the changes. So we will be absorbing an additional 1,000 people on three floors of the building.
We will have 7 desks for every 10 people. This ratio was arrived at by counting empty desks over a period of four weeks last summer. In August, the height of the holiday season. What planning.
Hidden away amongst all the new Führer Directives is the intelligence that the Department is intending to meet its Green Agenda target of reducing waste by removing all bins. If there are no bins, there will be no rubbish and with no rubbish, no waste. Q.E.D. Marvellous.
We will be having instead, recycling hubs. No-one is quite sure what these will look like or in fact be, but I am hopeful that they will be big steel and chrome machines that belch smoke and oil fumes as they compact old pieces of paper and sandwich wrappers.
Since the Government has plunged us all into debt unto the seventh generation, it has decided that it ought to save a bob or two here and there. Actually, it decided to do so before borrowing billions here and there to pay bankers’ bonuses for them. When you are in the market for billions in loans, it’s important to save the odd couple of million here and there. I’m not saying that they are wrong, you understand, but it’s a little like asking your bank manager for a £250,000 mortgage and producing your old piggy bank full of coppers to prove that you are saving money.
Anyway.
The Department is currently spread across two buildings in central London and management have decided that we should all be crammed sardine-like into one building, the one I’m in. To achieve this, we are all to be shuffled around and the amount of file storage reduced, new desks added and so on. There are 2,000 of us in the building at the moment and they want 3,000. Several of the floors have made a case to be left as they are and Ministers don’t like being reminded that there is anyone in the building except for them and their immediate staff, so their football pitch size accommodations, easy chairs, TVs and drinks cabinets are unaffected by the changes. So we will be absorbing an additional 1,000 people on three floors of the building.
We will have 7 desks for every 10 people. This ratio was arrived at by counting empty desks over a period of four weeks last summer. In August, the height of the holiday season. What planning.
Hidden away amongst all the new Führer Directives is the intelligence that the Department is intending to meet its Green Agenda target of reducing waste by removing all bins. If there are no bins, there will be no rubbish and with no rubbish, no waste. Q.E.D. Marvellous.
We will be having instead, recycling hubs. No-one is quite sure what these will look like or in fact be, but I am hopeful that they will be big steel and chrome machines that belch smoke and oil fumes as they compact old pieces of paper and sandwich wrappers.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-24 10:31 am (UTC)IF the overcrowding over a period of time doesn't seem quite as bad, AND the recycling hubs are BIG... and especially if you see anything labelled "SOYLENT GREEN", run. Fast.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-24 11:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-24 11:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-29 08:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-24 10:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-24 11:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-24 11:48 am (UTC)Each cluster takes about the space of one desk - but in awkward places where desks couldn't be fitted, and each has a large transparent plastic bag in them, which our cleaner has to drag outside whenever it's full.
No one has ever followed her to see if they all get tipped into one large skip, as is generally suspected.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-24 12:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-24 01:19 pm (UTC)If you arrive at 10:am ...or there-abouts.... you'll be able to consistantly wve your hands in the air, proclaim your aggrivation and distress at not being able to be seated next to your colleagues and have to wander off to find a quiet room where you can be left to you own devices....one without a computer even would be prefferable....
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-24 02:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-24 02:40 pm (UTC)That is (of last December before the necessary redundancies began) 1798 employees, now to fit into 850 desks.
Even with the redundancies, that's 1450 employees into 850 desks ... they're relying on shift patterns, sickness, holidays, dependancy leave etc etc to create the space, because apparently we operate at 45% shrinkage. In which case, one desk to two people will be perfectly adequate.
We'll see. I can imagine scrapping for desks every day. At least they're going to provide 1500 lockers so that we can pick our stuff up on the way into the building every day as we take the random desk lottery.
I'm also anticipating more redundancies before September.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-24 03:13 pm (UTC)Of course if we follow that logic through and removed the sudden increase in (argueably superfluous) Grade 6 and 7s then we might reduce the the waste of resources casued by the dreaming up of rubbish</> policy.
There are no Pointy headed people, there will be no cr@p polices - we can just get on with making sure that what remains functional of the 'machinary of Government' is gradually repaired and restored to effective use since this current crowd threw multiple spanners in it....
By spanners I mean complete 'spanners' like ......er can I mention her name on 'ere ? prollably not then.....
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-24 11:07 pm (UTC)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/23/cab_office_pcs/
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-29 08:04 am (UTC)Yoiu may be amused!