Bureaucracy

As those of you who've entered the world of work will know, and the rest of you will soon find out, red-tape is pretty much everywhere. Some regulations can be ignored, some rules bent, but every now and then you'll run up to a brick wall and just have to do something which seems at best, just a little silly.

Microsoft's fairly good in this department, and you can often get away with 'tweaking' things a bit if they're just ridiculous, so I'm not posting to complain about them. Instead, here's just a few short stories I heard at the lunch table when the topic came up:

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First we've got a graduate, working at one of the UK's big insurance firms. Normal policy here is to come into a 'graduate' role whilst you learn the ropes, before moving on to a 'real' job, and allowing someone from the next batch of graduates to take your place. The firm however, had recently decided that the job this graduate was in was in fact a 'real' job, and that he could simply stay in his current role.

Sounds fine no? The amusement started however, when he got an automated email reminding him he hadn't yet filled out stage 1 of the handover procedure. Naturally he informed HR of their mistake, but was told that the process was automated and he'd have to complete every stage of the handover, or risk disciplinary action. This poor chap spent about 15 hours or so in total, handing over his old role, responsibilities and clients to himself.

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Secondly, we've got a fairly large UK software house that installed new coffee machines in all their kitchens. They must have been pretty impressive machines (sidenote: we have Starbucks machines at work - leet or what?) because apparently no-one could use them without proper health and safety training.

Naturally, as the new machines were already in, and the old ones already out, people began to ignore this regulation, and so the administrative folk introduced a £25 fine for anyone caught using a machine without having completed the training. The most notable fine came about when someone asked the health and safety chap giving the demonstration to show his certificate - he'd never participated in the training himself, only given it.

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Thirdly, and less audaciously (though, possibly more believable), we've got me. At the start of this year I was meant to list some 'commitments' that I'd then be measured against. However, with the confusion of the three managers I've had to date, I never actually knew about this, or made the list.

An internal process has recently whirred into shape and states that I've got to have my 'mid-year review' by...four days ago, which involves...seeing how I've done against my commitments. As such, today I had the great opportunity of firstly working out what I wanted to commit to, and then deciding how well I'd done compared to that list. I must say though, I did surprisingly well. Must be my wonderful planning skills and forward-thinking nature.

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Completely unrelated but...if you see a fat person eating in a restaurant, cafe etc, do you look at what they're eating, and secretly hope it's unhealthy, so that you can judge them? Or is that just me...