I must have done something unspeakably bad at work, because I’ve been sent off to work a few days a week for the government. It’s not too bad: the people are nice, diligent, intelligent and want to learn. It’d be good if my workload at my real work were reduced in recognition of the fact that I’m now spending several days a week out of the office, but you can’t have everything.
But you do notice things about working for the government:[ul][li]You have to get a security pass with some magnetic thingumy to make the lift go, which is common enough these days. But on the first day I was there I was taken to what appeared to be the dungeon to get mine.[/li]
I’m led through a building with gold fittings and deep carpeting, but then we take a turn down a small staircase. We are going down into the fortified vaults where they used to keep the gold. We go through a door, then through an actual interior iron-barred gate to a room with three foot thick walls, metal doors and gun slits pointing up from below street level! It’s the old guard room, but now it’s host to the security guy who takes your picture and looks like it’s the most interesting thing that’s happened all day.
[li]There are useful notices in the tea room. One of them is a list of contact details for federal and state parliamentarians. On closer inspection it is a list about football teams - what Aussie Rules and/or rugby league team the pollie supports. The list is headed “Useful Information for Icebreaking when Lobbying”. [/li]
[li]Another tearoom notice gives helpful hints about what to so if you pick up the phone and it’s an anonymous whistleblower wanting to dish the dirt on some public service scandal. It gives the contact details for the designated person who deals with such matters. But in bigger type it advises you not to ask the anonymous whistleblower’s name and phone number.[/li]
[li]I’m not a government employee and I’m only there some days. But on my return I find a bunch of increasingly threatening emails from alarmingly senior people noting that I have failed to complete the required training for government employees on the use of electronic resources and in the handling of confidential data (and that dire consequences - like being unable contact the outside world - will soon follow as a result). Deciding that it would be quicker to do the online training than explain that I don’t work there (aided by the fact that all the senior people I know are on a Strategic Planning Retreat [sic]), I log on to the courses, which are provided no doubt at great expense by some firm specialising in interactive quality management or somesuch.[/li]
There is new legislation about privacy and copyright and tendering. Bloody hell, I’m supposed to read a hundred pages of information. Let’s see if you can just skip to the test at the end, eh? And let’s see if you can guess by the questions’ wording what they want to hear. Yup, you can. The only question I get wrong, I refuse to answer “correctly”: When an important deadline is about to be missed, would you send confidential information by email? I tell the truth on this one.
[li]These sort of interactive thingies are evidently quite common. As I’m coming back into the building, I notice someone doing one. It is poorly designed from the privacy point of view, but I don’t know to whom to report it. On his monitor in 56 point bold is the question “Are you happy with your current salary?” with two huge clickable boxes as the alternative answers. The guy seems unsure about how to answer the question.[/li]
[li]It’s around 6.30, and I’m engrossed in what I’m doing. Gradually I realise that it’s very dark. I stand up and some lights come on. It’s not that the lights have been switched off, they’re motion sensitive and it’s dark because every single person on the whole floor has gone home. Including the cleaners. I have to let myself out the front door because the security staff have gone too.[/li]
And that guy talking about how in the old days public servants used to leave at 5.06? I saw him go at 5.09.
If I can avoid the team-building exercises, I might just get used to this.[/ul]