This Is Not A
BLOG!
Date: 02/04/06
Staying Put
Well, I decided not to jump in the end.
Actually, I'd all but made my decision about a week before, but
hung on until the last minute. There were two reasons for this:
- I wanted to see what (if anything) would change in the last week
before I had to decide
- I wanted to leave it as late as possible so as to f#&k up
their figures.
Not that '2' needed any assistance from me. They were looking for
165 volunteers to outsource themselves. In the end, they've ended up
with about 130-odd. If that. About fifty or so pulled out in the last
four or five days.
My colleague Chris decided to transfer. It must have been a
difficult decision. He's only slightly younger than me, with a wife,
daughter, car, mortgage and dog to support, so the pressure on him must
have been huge.
And then he finds out that, because he's no longer an employee of
the Depratment, he's no longer entitled to a staff parking space...
In the short term, nothing will change in any practical sense, as
the move across to a centralised Help Desk is being phased in, and
Chris and me (and our other colleague Derek in Bangor, who's also
staying put) will keep on working together as we always have done.
So, you might say, why bother to change things? Your guess is as
good as mine, of course, but it's all politics when you come to the
point: outsourcing is the quack nostrum of our time, a sort of feng
shui for the upper management classes.
(Someone of my on-line acquaintance recently went in to his local
branch of Waterstones, walked up to the counter, casually
informed the assistant that all their books on feng shui were
lined up wrongly, then walked out again).
So, I'm still a civil servant, destined to continue working for an
ungrateful public for not-very-good wages. I suppose safety has its
price.
