2004-03-15

The other day at work I saw a woman come into the bathroom, wash her hands, go into a stall, flush the toilet, then sit down and pee. It was backwards day and I didn’t even know it!

The public service is full of these people – germ-phobes, recluses, eccentrics, social maladroits and assorted weirdos at various points on the mental illness spectrum. Then there’s the white trash contingent: women who think acid wash jeans and stiletto heels are the apex of professional fashion; women who have the public service to thank that their carefully-coiffed perms are not hidden beneath a hairnet.

The public service creates an amniotic haven for these people. The public service will not go bankrupt if it doesn’t provide cutting-edge service; therefore, there’s no competitive impetus to engage a motivated, competent, streamlined workforce. You can find a filing job for your crazy cousin as a favour to your aunt, and twenty years later your crazy cousin will still be arranging files according to their texture and taking hour-long breaks to wash his hands a hundred and eighty-seven times; except now he’ll have the title of “Information Management Officer” and he’ll be making more than his homecare worker. Nobody ever gets fired here. The disciplinary process is so convoluted and ineffectual that you basically have to make the evening news before you’re sacked. If someone is at the point where they’re making an active nuisance of themselves or refusing to do any work at all, managers have a standard practice of providing positive references to find jobs for them elsewhere.

And that is why I ended my week on Friday listening to the branch charity case tell me how much he likes Shania Twain. Sometimes he tells me how much he likes Jesus. I’d like to observe the cognitive short circuit that would ensue if I told him that Jesus, in fact, hates Shania Twain (as would any saviour with a lick of common sense); but I’m too busy these days washing all the doorknobs with bleach.