FoundSF

"I was there..."

"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in Processed World magazine between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.

by THEMIS, that complaining bitch over on the fifth floor

—from Processed World #5, published in Summer, 1982.

George Orwell MUST have worked for the government at one time. How else could he have known so much about doublethink, or the fact that 2 + 2 = 4 when you're talking about engineering but 5 when you're talking about the budget.

We were sitting around the bar talking after (during?) working hours, talking about a promotional exam we had to take. Jerry (all names are naturally fictitious) said how part of the exam was to see if you could write logical, terse, to-the-point para­ graphs. I said that they should have selected people who could write paragraphs that were as ambiguous as possible, so that when policy changed with changes in administrations. no one would be embarrassed.

Susie added that she would have picked people who could mention as many supervisors' prejudices as possible, without offending any of them. This is one organization where they pay good money (taxpayers' money, remember?) to send you to school to learn how to write, and then shitcan your letters and documents because they're too honest. "That isn't the way we do things. So-and-so doesn't like that word."

I could handle it if it was the ordinary business bullshit. What gets to me though is that this is supposed to be an agency that has some responsibility toward environmental protection, and although they glorify it mightily in all their statements of policy, the truth of the matter is that no one could give less of a fuck about the environment, because it just gets in ,the way of the REAL work of the agency, which is building dams or roads, or dislocating Indian tribes, or tearing down neighborhoods, or whatever. So part of my job is to MAKE IT APPEAR that the agency is doing everything humanly possible to comply with our many state, county, and federal environmental regulations, while in ACTUALITY I have to minimize or downright quash or at best find a nice convenient loophole to get around any real environmental problems and hope they don't hit the light of day.

It isn't just my agency that does this. They all do it. I know this because I have to work with them all. But that's just part of it. Part of it is the way you lose your job skills through over-specialization, so that after a couple of years you're as useless on the job market as a dodo bird. Part of it is the crummy and demoralizing work atmosphere. Part of it is being as a "professional" and finding out a computer program could probably do your job... with a good deal less anguish to all concerned. And part of it is the total illogicality of the red tape itself, which somehow transcends mere human pettiness, and becomes something awesome and immovable, like a glacier.

I once figured out that to do my job according to the book, following all the procedures, would take 32 working days per item. Then I figured out how many were allowed me by all the time limits in the system. 15 working days. So I HAVE to do my job wrong in order to follow the rules. Theoretically, what I'm doing should take thought, analysis, independent judgment, and professional standards. But I don't HAVE THE TIME. If you have 15 days to do a 32 day-job, you don't have time to think. You have time to use buzzwords and recycled phrases from other documents. Then this stuff gets unloaded on the unfortunate public and they complain about gobbledygook. No wonder!

It took me about a year to figure out why government has the lousiest reputation in the world. Then I realized it's because they're denied even the elemental satisfaction of doing a good job. The politics change too fast. They change the rules in the middle of the project. Things you write, work on for months, disappear and you never see them again. Original thought is about as welcome as a nun in a whorehouse. So after a while you drop out spiritually. You have to keep going there to pay the rent and feed the kids. But nothing in the world can induce you to feel involved, or God forbid, responsible.

Needless to say, this is not very good for you.

That's why I spend as much of my working time as possible drunk or stoned. When you're drunk, you don't feel. When you're stoned, you at least have a handle on what's going on. You can watch your mind go CRUNCH as you step in from the sunny streets into the dull, stale­ smelling building. You can see every­ body avoiding eye contact. You see how damn programmed everybody is, sitting at their desks, trying to or pretending to work. Not thinking. Daydreaming about the next 3-day weekend. Thinking about that glorious day when they'll be too old to work.

You watch people deteriorate. Like in any other institution, the longer you stay there, the crazier you get. The 25-year-olds look at each other with terror in their eyes, as the possibility occurs to them that they may be there the rest of their lives. Just like a prison. Or an insane asylum. Except we're respectable. We're government workers.