How very true!

Subject: Passport Application


Dear Minister,
I'm in the process of renewing my passport but I am a total loss to understand or believe the hoops I am being asked to jump through.

How is it that Bert Smith of T.V. Rentals Basingstoke has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a satellite dish from them back in 1994, and yet, the Government is still asking me where I was born and on what date?

How come that nice West African immigrant chappy who comes round every Thursday night with his DVD rentals van can tell me every film or video I have had out since he started his business up eleven years ago, yet you still want me to remind you of my last three jobs, two of which were with contractors working for the government?

How come the T.V. detector van can tell if my T.V. is on, what channel I am watching and whether I have paid my licence or not, and yet if I win the government run lottery they have no idea I have won or where I am and will keep the bloody money to themselves if I fail to claim in good time.
Do you people do this by hand?

You have my birth date on numerous files you hold on me, including the one with all the income tax forms I've filed for the past 30-odd years. It's on my health insurance card, my driver's licence, on the last four passports I've had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I've had to fill out before being allowed off the planes and boats over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms that are done every ten years and the electoral registration forms I have to complete, by law, every time our lords and masters are up for re-election.

Would somebody please take note, once and for all, I was born in Maidenhead on the 4th of March 1957, my mother's name is Mary, her maiden name was Reynolds, my father's name is Robert, and I'd be absolutely astounded if that ever changed between now and the day I die!

I apologise Minister. I'm obviously not myself this morning. But between you and me, I have simply had enough! You mail the application to my house, then you ask me for my address. What is going on? Do you have a gang of Neanderthals working there? Look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I don't want to activate the Fifth Reich for God's sake! I just want to go and park my weary backside on a sunny, sandy beach for a couple of week's well-earned rest away from all this crap.

Well, I have to go now, because I have to go to back to Salisbury and get another copy of my birth certificate because you lost the last one. AND to the tune of 60 quid! What a racket THAT is!! Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day? But nooooo, that'd be too damn easy and maybe make sense. You'd rather have us running all over the place like chickens with our heads cut off, then find some tosser to confirm that it's really me on the goddamn picture - you know... the one where we're not allowed to smile in in case we look as if we are enjoying the process!
Hey, you know why we can't smile? 'Cause we're totally jacked off!

I served in the armed forces for more than 25 years including over ten years at the Ministry of Defence in London. I have had security clearances which allowed me to sit in the Cabinet Office, five seats away from the Prime Minister while he was being briefed on the first Gulf War and I have been doing volunteer work for the British Red Cross ever since I left the Services. However, I have to get someone "important" to verify who I am -- you know, someone like my doctor...
who, before he got his medical degree 6 months ago WAS LIVING IN PAKISTAN...

Yours sincerely,
An Irate British Citizen.

Mansions to Palaces

Time to move

More corporate silliness abound at The Company as we now move under the command of our new boss. I liked the Belgian Billyboy, he was brusque but despite being from Belgian he had a sense of irony and understood cynicism and sarcasm, which are generally very British traits.

But now I have a new threat manager. Don’t get this wrong I still report to The Master, but now instead of BillyBoy, we have Mr Blonde.

I'm sure the fact that his wife works in HR has had no bearing or gave any interview advantage when he applied for the role as Big Boss Of The Business and Customer Stroking Department.

Why Mr Blonde? Well, film aficionados will know Mr Blonde as the smiling, vindictive, sadistic assassin in the introductory masterpiece of Hollywood’s “enfant terrible” Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (well he was the "enfant terrible" when it was released!) . Watch the film to understand Mr Blonde’s persona.

Especially the torture scene.

Well, Mr Blonde came in just before Christmas all smiling and saying the usual things about how much he was looking forward to working with us…blah, blah, blah…you know the spiel by now. On that day he even declared himself a Chelsea fan…….”Born and bred in SW6” to quote him. Blimey, I thought…things are looking up. But I should have known better.

The reality is somewhat different and since then he has almost been invisible to us all, bar one "team briefing" which announced nothing, amnd a spot at a recent "leadership update" session. All this talk of Leaders makes me wonder if I'm living in North Korea...perhaps the Beach Babe should now be called Dear Leader....yeah..I like that. Anyway, presumably Mr Blonde had hidden away as he strives to build his new organization under the current “transformation” of the business.

Something doesn’t ring right here for me. A man who doesn't communicate with anyone can't be a good thing. Something tells me we’ve just witnessed the arrival of the psychopathic assassin who is making jokes with you one minute and then gunning you down in cold blood the next.

Watch this space for more information on whether I dodge the bullet or not.

Anyway this weekend saw the first move from Mr Blonde as we all moved to the Corporate HQ Palace from our previous home in Technology Mansions, located in a stereotypically bland Business Park on the outskirts of town. Technology Mansions was a bit more rough and ready and much less salubrious than Corporate Palace. Plus, having worked there for around 90% of my tenure with The Company it’s fair to say there weren’t many I didn’t know. Oh, how different it is at Corporate Palace. And these differences are……?

The food is worse and more expensive

The coffee is dearer and the "large" is smaller than the "large" back at the Mansions

People smile less...in fact hardly at all

Power dressing is everywhere and everything (that’s me fucked then)

It’s a posy-yuppie paradise full of testosterone filled knobs or vacuous mangirls giving mental corporate blow-jobs to the people in power, keeping their assassins knives ready for the day they can dispose of their rivals and predecessors.

Car parking is utter carnage after 8:30 in the morning.

There is a lot of ….ahem…….talent....

The toilets are unisex…we think…who knows?

In fact it seems a typical soulless campus full of wannabee corporate cock suckers desperately trying to vie for a place on the greasy pole of success. Sad bastards.

I'm gonna hate it.

Later, GrocerJack

What runs the world?

It's not my job I hate, it's just some of the complete fuckwits that work there. I love my team, I truly do. It's taken them time to get used to my style, but we get the job done, never let anyone down and always deliver on expectations. The added bonus is we do it with good grace and good humour.

Of course we now have to live in this fucked up age whereby everything is measured. Everything is or has a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) or worse still, as some fuckwits call them Key KPI's and yes...you're right that'd be Key Key Performance Indicators then. I wonder what the upper limit is on Keys for KPI's?

Anyway I digress...my life is run by KPI's. My team operate to KPI's, we're measured on KPI's, we collate data and publish KPI's , we measure KPI's we amend KPI's, challenge KPI's, produce trends of KPI's and basically kneel at the feet of the Great God Kay-Pee-Aye. Wherever we look in the news, we're bombarded with information and data based on KPI's, KPI's from the government, KPI's from QUANGO's, KPI's from the NHS and about the NHS, KPI's about Schools and for all I know there's even KPI's for those who work in MacDonalds.

Today, a report my team publishes was released. Every month we take the data, feed it into complex programs or Excel and produce results which show how our Operations bit of High Tech Pipes, Tubes, Strings and Rays are performing. We measure the KPI's on Finance, Processes, Customer Value and interestingly enough, Growth and Development...see posts passim for my views on "Development". Anyway, the report shows all this stuff for January, which was a huge pile of fresh dog turd in terms of systems failures. We had tons of Very Bad Things (VBT's) happens...around 15 during the month as opposed to the average of around 2 or 3. We also had
a high number of Pretty Bad Things (PBT's) happen as well, which aren't as bad as VBT's but still need to be on peoples "radars". Fuck me, how I'd love to superglue some radars on peoples heads for real! I'd also love to give them a ball each and see how long they can walk around with it until they drop it.

Anyway, despite this piss poor performance, in turns caused by a heady mixture of shitty "asset sweated" equipment, underfunded software failing and, of course, the inevitable "foot, gun, aim, shoot" Jesse James Engineer culture of changing things whilst wearing a stetson, boots with spurs and shouting "Yee Hah", the KPI's came out as Green. Yep, Green. Just like grass. Vert as the French would say. This is because we use a RAG status system to depict how KPI's look. Red is BAD, Amber is BAD, Green is Good. Of course BillyBoy , the Head of Operations isn't happy about this as January was such a pile of puke he's been arse kicked from pillar to post by that mysterious community known as "the business" and so he doesn't want to go to them saying how well we've done..and how things are Green, ergo things are Good.

Whilst I understand this, the fact remains...he agreed and in some cases help design the KPI's and the measurements that make them! So, like all Senior Managers, he's happy to take credit when things are Green and Good, and happy to accept the results from his agreed measurements, but when they're Red and Bad...well...you've guessed it...the measurements are wrong, and the messenger (me and my team) have obviously fucked up...Shoot the Messenger!
His email suggested exactly this, so for once I remained calm (ish) and decided to hold my reply. Despite the fact that The Master, my boss is now involved and is doing his best impression of a sandal wearing social worker in "trying to understand" the issues, I've decided to reply to Billyboy stating exactly that...

He made the rules
We merely abide by them
The way we calculate has not changed for months
He was always happy before
If he wants stuff changed he goes through the proper Governance process
He's paid a fucking barrow load of money, so he should go to the business, put some exercise books down his trousers, tell them January was shit, explain why our KPI's show Green, and then come back and work with us to find an appropriate measurement.

I may have worded the last point more ...ahem...diplomatically.

I might also suggest we do away with "facts and figures" and publish on "instinct, gut feel and perception" with added "tell them what they want to hear" as well

Later, Grocerjack.