Philoscifi

On the brink of destruction, the world desperately needs a Hero. Phil Safari, a reluctant Candidate, must prove himself worthy to the gods by completing a Heroic Task: change 1000 lives for the better… or else! The following is part of the Safaris – a collection of Phil’s misadventures in Heroism. Find out how it all started and what he has learned about love, life, and the pursuit of happiness.

Tank Karazhy was an amiable guy and a great listener, just the sort of guy you want to talk to vent. I soon became a regular at his office.

I collapsed in the chair with a sigh.

“Tank, how the hell do you get any work get done around here?”

“Mmm?” Tank looked up from his laptop and swiveled around in his chair. “I don’t, not during office hours at least. Things do get done eventually; it just takes a tremendous amount of time and effort.”

“I’m beginning to see that. It’s getting really tiresome trying to get things done in spite of your team.”

“Team?” Tank chuckled. “There is no team here, just a group of petty clerks. This includes management too. If you haven’t found that out by now, you will.”

“Man, you are so right. I turned in a travel request form a month ago, and Sally just told me today that I would have to redo the entire form because I didn’t get an exact estimate. Like hell I will! Since when is an estimate expected to be exact? It took a month just to get all the signatures on that form, including hers. If this was such a problem to begin with, then why did she sign off on it the first time?”

“Ha, typical clerk behavior. There’s no point in trying to reason with them; they follow rules literally because it requires no brain power. That’s bad, but the real killer is when you combine it with the unprofessionalism. This is the most unprofessional place I’ve ever worked in my 30 year career. The outcome of any task here depends entirely on someone’s mood; I call it ‘management by mood ring.’

“Then there are some bad apples like Sally that just love saying ‘No.’ You know Jimmie? He’s always running around, delivering stuff, so we wanted to get him a City cell phone. Sally said, ‘Temps don’t get cell phones.’ Of course that’s not true, but she managed to delay Jimmie’s phone for several weeks.”

“That’s terrible. So why not just get rid of her?”

“What?! Fire someone?” Tank exclaimed in mock horror. “But that would make too much sense, which is why it’s impossible to do here. I’ve been here two years, and the best we could do was to get someone ‘indefinitely suspended.’ And that took several hearings, mountains of paperwork, and over a year to achieve.

“No, under the City’s ‘Discipline without Consequences’ policy, you’re really better off leaving people alone. You can’t officially move people, although we did manage to move one deadweight to free up a spot for you. But that only worked because we actually offered her a promotion to a different position.”

“Discipline without Consequences?” I burst out laughing. “That’s a good one. Let me guess, you’re talking about Delita?”

“Yeah.”

LOL. It all made sense now. Delita walked by my area a hundred times a day to pester me. She was obviously bored of her new position and wanted her old job back – at the higher salary, of course.

I sighed. “You know, a crappy team is much worse than no team at all. At least when you are alone, you don’t have to rely on anyone else. When can I expect some competent teammates?”

“Rule #1 - hope, don’t expect, and you won’t be so disappointed. But to answer your question, we’re working on it. It could be a couple of months, given how HR works here. You see, just as we can’t get bad people out, it’s difficult to get good people in.”

OMG, how much more stupidity can I take? I paused for a good ten seconds to ready myself for the next blow. “Ok, hit me.”

Tank took a deep breath. “Well, you see, the City pays relatively little yet maintains relatively high standards. Beggars can’t be choosers…unless they are governments. Despite this, enough good people trickle in to keep the system afloat. The kicker here is that the City is a stickler for rules, so if you don’t meet the ‘minimum qualifications’ you have absolutely no shot at getting the job.”

“That actually doesn’t sound unreasonable…”

“Oh yeah, it sound good until you try to apply it in real life. Consider your own case. You know why it took so long for us to call you back? We were trying to figure out if you actually qualified for any admin positions. You see, we can’t just hire anyone we want – we must choose a title from a catalog of existing job titles formulated by Downtown. Even though you are obviously overqualified, on paper you may not have enough admin experience.”

I laughed. “Let me see here…you can’t hire or fire anyone, and there is no incentive to improve. Apparently communism is alive and well…in America, of all places.”

“Welcome to the CCCP.”

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