I appear to be considerably better than you

It's one of those sad truisms that people are judged by the jobs they do. We all come with preconceptions about what kind of person does a particular kind of job, but sometimes these are so ingrained into people that they stop thinking of you as a person and more as an idea; they build you into a thing that fits their comfortable little world and refuse to acknowledge you as anything other than that even when you shatter their sad little illusions.

One of the worst types of people for this are those who are 'students of the law' and assume - as a worker in an administrative position - that you:

(a) have no idea about anything legal and
(b) are inferior to them

Curiously enough we have a few admin workers who are law graduates themselves, which leads me to wonder if they were ever the type to call up complaining and claiming to be 'students of the law'.

Those who go on to make something of their degrees - typically ending up as solicitors - usually retain the notion that admin staff (and most other people, for that matter) are inferior beings. In my mind I mock them through word play, reminding myself that - as solicitors - they must spend their days soliciting (though who would pay to sleep with some of them is a thought not worth pursuing).

But back to students of the law. There's no good way to deal with people who make a point of 'knowing the law' and quoting line after line of irrelevant pseudo-legal nonsense. I like to throw them the odd curve ball, play them at their own game and see how they like it. Usually it riles them up more and I have to excuse myself so I can walk around the corner and stifle my giggles. A typical conversation might go like this:

Me: Hello there, how can I help you?
Student of the law: I need to look at my file from when I was in two months ago.
Me: Right, why do you want to look at it?
SOTL: Listen here, I'm a student of the law and I'm entitled to look at documents relating to myself and you trying to stop me is a violation of my human rights as defined by the Geneva Convention, so you need to give me access to them.
Me: I'm not trying to stop you, I'm simply asking why you need them.
SOTL: Why I need them is none of your concern, I'm protected by the Data Protection Act and all you need to know is that they're my documents and I want to look at them, so you need to go get them.
Me: The reason I ask, sir (I make a point of being extremely polite at this stage) is because we're not a court of records and so we're not obliged to provide a copy of your file to you without a valid reason. So I need you to put your request in writing, along with a valid reason, so I can pass it on to the relevant person to deal with. They'll look it over and decide whether or not you're entitled to look at the file.
SOTL: (getting very irate) Unlike you I've studied the law and you're trying to illegally block me from accessing my data. I demand that you give me my documents now or I will file an action against you that will mean you have to give me what I want and you'll suffer the full consequences of the law for blocking me.
Me: You're on the verge of causing a Section 4 Public Order Act offence and I'm going to have to ask you to calm down and put your request in writing. As I said, if you do that I can pass it on to the relevant person and they'll see if you're entitled to the documents you're after.

The last part of this conversation is usually repeated several times over until, frustrated, they either leave, ask to speak to a manager (who tells them what I've just told them) or put their request in writing and we do exactly what I said should be done from the start.

You might be a student of the law, I'm steeped in the nuances of bureaucracy. Guess which one invariably wins?

I love The Queen

If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't have had Tuesday off this week as well as Monday. O Your Maj, how I do love the privilege you bestow upon me and my fellow Servants on your 'official' birthday. Now if The Crown would just loosen its purse strings enough to pay me a decent wage I might approach a state where I don't have complete contempt for my job.

Failing that, make me an MP and I'll pay it to myself...

Hell is other people's inadequacy

Half my job is dealing with other people's mistakes (actually it's much more than that, but half sounds better). I've learnt to accept this. Many of the people I deal with are imbeciles. I've learnt to accept this too. Some of the people I work with are also imbeciles. That last one always catches me out; I keep falling into the trap of expecting some level of adequacy from fellow employees when history has shown that they typify why your tax pounds aren't always hard at work.

Take the Legal Advisor who invaded my territory today, seeking to use the photocopier. Let's call him Mr Slug. Mr Slug has been working for the court service for longer than I've been alive (and I'm touching 30) and I'm sure he must be doing something right to have maintained his job for that long, in spite of what some of the ushers whisper about him. Mr Slug likes to create training materials for other people - this is a Good Thing. Mr Slug likes to use my photocopier in the production of said materials - this is Not A Good Thing.

It used to be the case that he would sneak in on a night, just as we were leaving our particular hole, and go to work, leaving us to deal with the unholy mess that was invariably left during his exertions when we returned the following day. We got wise to this and started locking the office before going home. No more Slug trails.

Mr Slug took to coming in during the day instead, usually at some point in the afternoon when we were invariably busy. He would make his usual mess, but also cause the machine to jam, which would necessitate one of us breaking off from whatever vital task we were doing in order to help him. Today was one such day. Today (all week in fact) I'm in the office on my own trying to do the jobs of 3 people myself. You can imagine how enthralled I was to see him slither into the office just as I was trying to meet two deadlines at once with my usual aplomb.

It took 2 minutes for him to jam the photocopier. I cleared it. He watched me. The photocopier jammed again 3 minutes later. He tried to clear it. He failed. I tried to clear it. I succeeded. Three minutes later it jammed again. This time, leaving him to work out how to sort the damn thing out for himself, I shouted from the other room that copying double-sided on coloured paper invariably causes this copier to jam as it's an old machine and the paper we use is cheap and nasty. I suggest going downstairs to use one of the newer machines, which he seems to like as a suggestion as I tell him they're much less likely to jam.

Over the hour that followed, Mr Slug insisted on using the photocopier, jamming it every few minutes, trying to sort it out and - to my intense irritation - stating: "I think I'll go downstairs and try that photocopier instead, if it's less likely to jam." He must have said this a dozen times or more, each time failing to leave and re-entering the same tedious cycle of stop-start double-sided copying. I'm not equipped to understand what kind of intelligence underpins such actions.

Finally, after a lifetime during which I had to remind myself I was already on a written warning and couldn't blurt out exactly what I thought of him in order to get rid of him, he had enough and left. I ventured tentatively into the photocopying room and looked at the carnage left behind. It was like an explosion had gone off at a gay pride parade. Multicoloured paper was strewn everywhere, reams of it wasted by Mr Slug's efforts. Somewhere a tree in an empty forest shed a tear for the saplings that had died to make this grim scene a reality. Me? I did what I always do - cleaned up his mistakes and went back to doing three people's jobs.

But even after all that, I'm calm. I bought a kilo bag of salt today - I'm ready if the fucker comes back.

Urgh, Monday

And so it begins, the rationalisation and bargaining. You have to go in, it's your job. It doesn't matter if you've only got half staff in, you've worked that way plenty of times before. You can't call in sick - even if you are - you can't risk the disciplinary for being off. Just get through today and it's one day closer to the end of the week.

Just get through today.

Get through today.

Most days feel like I'm trying to get through Monday.

This is not a blog

It's a catharsis. A means for me to work out the frustration accumulated across the course of a day spent dealing with The General Public as they stream through the law court where I work and - invariably - pepper me with their stupidity.

This is my own particular slice of hell, visceral and unkempt.

Welcome. Make sure you wipe your shoes first.