The Bureaucrat

[JFKResearcher]

Here's one I heard years ago... http://jfk.fanforum.co/post/the-bureaucrat-7501366

[Codenwarra]

As a former bureaucrat I could relate a few stories myself. Nine out of ten people seem rational enough, it's the others you have to look out for.

[Peter B]

Ah, I remember back to a time when public servants were given a choice of superannuation funds to join. One of the young women in the office was on the phone, talking to a young male employee who wasn't sure what he was supposed to do about the superannuation choice. Poor young Maggie (not her real name - even now I think it's polite to protect her identity) was a bit distracted, and when describing the type of letter she wanted him to write, got caught half way between asking him for a direction and an election, and asked him for something else entirely...

Fortunately the young man took her malapropism in good humour.

The rest of us in the office weren't so kind and gave her grief for the rest of the day.

Edited March 12, 2016 by Peter B

[Peter B]

My first boss was an irritating little red-nosed gnome called Phil (again, not his real name). He wasn’t the brightest man, and one of his little lexical failings provided some amusement to the rest of us – a change from the exasperation he usually caused.

The amusement arose as a result of a minute written to him by a female employee. She normally had her child in childcare, but for some reason had been unable to arrange childcare for a particular day, and she wrote to ask if she could bring her child in to work that day. Phil, perhaps not unreasonably, had no idea, and wrote to the Public Service Commission to ask for their advice (we're talking the 1980s here). They wrote back saying they would not condone the employee’s request. Phil then wrote to the woman, saying that he was pleased to inform her that she could bring her child to work, as the PSC wouldn’t condone her request...

[Peter B]

Several years later, in a new job, Reg was my boss. Anyway, one day when I'd just got back from lunch, and while most of the rest of the people in the office were still out, Reg's boss Helen strode around to his office. She stuck her head in and immediately re-emerged.

"When Reg gets back from lunch, could you tell him that I want to see him urgently?"

I nodded, and she strode off.

About five seconds later, Reg emerged from his office, holding a newspaper, looking very puzzled.

"Was Helen here a moment ago? I was just sitting in the visitor's chair, reading the paper, and I heard her talking to you."

It appeared that Helen had looked only at Reg's desk, and, not seeing him there, assumed he was still at lunch.

It wasn't long before Reg was credited with the mystical powers of the Newspaper of Invisibility...

[Peter B]

Here's one I heard years ago... http://jfk.fanforum....eaucrat-7501366

While the punchline is pretty funny, there's a couple of things wrong with the story.

Firstly, any bureaucrat going to a farm to check compliance with regulations is going to be wearing a boiler suit and boots, not a dark business suit. Secondly, any bureaucrat going to a farm to check compliance with regulations is likely to be driving an old car, not a late model.

Anyone visiting a farm while wearing a dark business suit and driving a late model car is more likely to be a banker, and is probably also likely to be a merchant banker too (that's for the Aussies here).

[Peter B]

Back in the early 1990s, various Australian government departments sent contingents to Cambodia to oversee elections there. My job at the time involved monitoring the conditions of service paid to our people while they were over there, and responding to questions from employees and the union. To that end, I kept in contact with equivalent people in other departments who also had contingents over there. One of those people told me how at their pre-departure briefing, one contingent member put up his hand and said, "I'm going to be going to Cambodia via Bali for a short holiday first. Will I be covered by workers compensation if I get the clap while I'm there?"

My contact also told me how one of their contingent members had brought back a ferry ticket to seek reimbursement of the expense. It was calculated at 5 cents.

[Peter B]

Obviously, one of the jobs in Payroll is to start up the pay of new employees.

Anyway, one day Roy came along to start his six month contract, and it was my job to do the induction: here's your salary, please give us your tax details, we get paid fortnightly, your pay will be this much, do you want any deductions, you get this much recreation and sick leave, and so on. Oh, and can I have your bank account details to send your net pay to.

"Oh no, I'd like to be paid by cheque please."

I explained politely that all employees in the department were paid by direct credit.

"No, no. I know I'm entitled to be paid by cheque, so could you please arrange that."

I explained how he'd be the only person in the department paid this way (out of a couple of thousand staff), and that direct credit was much safer than being paid by cheque.

"No, I understand all that. I'd still like to be paid by cheque. It's my right."

So we agreed, and set Roy up on the system to be paid by cheque. Of course, because the process was so antiquated, this meant we'd have to send someone over to the Department of Finance especially to collect this one cheque, a half hour round trip.

So, come payday Thursday, Helen, our office courier, drove over to Finance, collected the cheque, and handed it to me.

I was about to walk the cheque up to Roy when my supervisor stopped me and asked what I was doing. When I explained, he smiled and told me to put it in the internal mail.

"He'll never learn if we baby him."

And so, thanks to our incredibly efficient (not!) internal mail system, we figured he got his cheque on Monday morning.

We had a letter from him detailing his bank account details by Tuesday morning.

[Golden Duck]

My first boss was an irritating little red-nosed gnome called Phil (again, not his real name). He wasn’t the brightest man, and one of his little lexical failings provided some amusement to the rest of us – a change from the exasperation he usually caused.

The amusement arose as a result of a minute written to him by a female employee. She normally had her child in childcare, but for some reason had been unable to arrange childcare for a particular day, and she wrote to ask if she could bring her child in to work that day. Phil, perhaps not unreasonably, had no idea, and wrote to the Public Service Commission to ask for their advice (we're talking the 1980s here). They wrote back saying they would not condone the employee’s request. Phil then wrote to the woman, saying that he was pleased to inform her that she could bring her child to work, as the PSC wouldn’t condone her request...

Hmmm...I deduce you were working in DFAT and your former bosses name was Kevin

[Peter B]

Hmmm...I deduce you were working in DFAT and your former bosses name was Kevin

Heh. No.

Another department at another time.

'Phil' was a man who belonged in the 50s or 60s, one of those guys who was just the cliche male chauvinist pig. He had a red nose from drinking too much, was an incompetent manager, spoke to women while making eye contact with their breasts (he was short, so his eyes were usually at that level, but still he could have made the effort to raise his line of vision), and pretty much had no clue how objectionable his behaviour was, until...

One day he and a mate were standing at a window watching people return from lunch (a little surprising, as they often didn't bother to return to the office from the liquid lunches they used to enjoy with the senior staff they were sucking up to). They were engaging in their usual banter of rating the women, when his mate spotted one young woman in particular. "Phwoar, she's pretty good looking. I wonder what she's like..." et cetera et cetera.

Phil turned to look at his mate, a pained expression on his face. "That's my daughter."

[Codenwarra]

My first boss was an irritating little red-nosed gnome called Phil (again, not his real name). He wasn’t the brightest man, and one of his little lexical failings provided some amusement to the rest of us – a change from the exasperation he usually caused.

Back in the late 1980s while working in a company that served the mining industry, I was asked to write a letter to the half dozen or so underground mine managers in the region. I tend to be a bit long winded in an attempt to make myself clear and the local laboratory manager Mike decided to rewrite the letter. This was duly typed by Rhonda, the office supervisor and sent over to me to sign. I read it through. The entire thing was strewn with grammatical errors and at least two of the "sentences" completely lacked verbs. I refused to sign, it would make me look like an idiot. Rhonda said something like "You know, I thought there was something wrong with it when I typed it up." So I rewrote it, Rhonda typed it again and it went out without Mike seeing it.

A few years later, I took some German lessons. You could see Heinrich's face fall when one of the women, an engineer by qualification ask "What's a verb?" I scraped through an examination, I think she dropped out.

[Peter B]

I have a lot of time for unions, especially in terms of providing protection for employees vulnerable to exploitation – the young, the low-paid, the disabled, or those not speaking the local language. The problem is that those vulnerable employees are then reliant on the competence and honesty of the union officials. In my experience, most of these officials are both competent and honest. Unfortunately some are competent and dishonest. Then there are the officials who are just plain incompetent.

= =

Kelly was the Executive Assistant to one of the senior managers in the organisation. One day back in the 90s when mobile phones were still a bit of a novelty, she took a call from union official Craig, who was a bit excited by his mobile phone.

Craig (smarmy): Hi Kelly. Is your boss in?

Kelly (puzzled): Yes…what’s that strange noise?

Craig (cheerfully): Oh, I’m just going to the toilet while I call you on the mobile.

Kelly (appalled): Then call me back when you’re sitting down in your office!

*slams down the phone*

= =

Then there was the time Reg had some discussions with the union about introducing an indigenous employment program. The idea was a simple and cheap program to provide training and employment to a small number of indigenous people, giving them some skills and experience, and making the organisation look like a good corporate citizen.

The two men from the union were polite and curious about the idea of the program, but they also completely misunderstood its purpose.

“Well, what are we going to employ them as? Native trackers?”

= =

Then there was union official Gerard, who went to use the showers at work one day.

He knew that the shower cubicles had a tinea infestation. But he hadn’t brought any waterproof footwear to use in the shower.

Smart guy that he was, he improvised.

He stood on his underpants.

He didn’t get tinea on his feet…

[Peter B]

Needless to say, it’s not just bureaucrats who can do with a humility kick up the backside. I have a bit of a thing about financial advisors.

A few years ago I was offered a redundancy. As part of the program I was offered a couple of hundred dollars to go out and get some professional financial advice. Our accountant recommended a particular financial advisor, so we made an appointment. After reviewing our financial circumstances, the FA recommended we give him power of attorney over something like three-quarters of our liquid assets (that is, not including the family home and car), so that he could invest it as he thought best, charging us for the privilege, and no guarantee he wouldn’t lose money in the process. We declined to take his advice.

More recently, a work friend told me how he got advice from a financial advisor, telling him to sell one of his two investment properties and put the profits into superannuation, because the return on investment was so much better than on rental properties. He went to his accountant to check out the advice. She did some sums, and within five minutes had worked out that even if he earned no other income that year (and he earned a lot more than nothing), he’d still face a capital gains tax bill of $70,000. So even if the return on investment for super was better, he’d still have been starting out having to make up a shortfall of $70,000 before he’d see any financial benefit. He also declined to take his FA’s advice.

Then, a couple of years ago I was employed as a contractor to run a redundancy program – calculating estimates for something like 300 staff at a government agency, and then processing something like 400 actual redundancies. So I got to see all sorts of employment situations, and got to be quite familiar with the relevant conditions of service and the relevant tax rules.

Of course, I’m not a tax expert, but I’d always assumed FAs would be. Silly me…

Anyway, one day I received a letter from some random FA on behalf of an employee who’d recently been made redundant. He accused us of deducting too much tax from his client’s leave and severance payments. He’d even attached a document from the Tax Office which explained the tax treatment of employees made redundant, and he quoted the section about the tax rules which applied to genuine redundancies.

The problem was that genuine redundancies can only be paid to employees aged under 65. This employee was 67 when he left, so a whole different bunch of tax rules applied to him.

I politely wrote back to him explaining this, including references in the document he sent me as evidence.

The following day he emailed me to apologise (to his credit), adding that he was unfamiliar with those tax rules - even though they were in the same document he’d quoted at me (not so much to his credit).

We could only speculate how much the former employee paid that FA…

[Peter B]

And proving you don't need to be terribly bright to be a bureaucrat...

= = = =

Conversation overhead in the office...

Public Servant 1: We're getting takeaway pizzas again. Which one do you want? Bacon and egg?

Public Servant 2: No, an Aussie pizza please.

PS1: Okay, just in case the shop calls it something different, what's on that?

PS2: Bacon and egg.