If you haven’t read the Redundant Public Servant’s Blog yet, you should.
I loved this bit:
HELLO! HE’S BEING FIRED. I’M BEING FIRED. WE DON’T CARE ABOUT THE FILING SYSTEM. IN FACT BEFORE WE GO WE’RE GOING TO SWITCH ALL THE COLOUR CODING AROUND AND SWAP YOUR CABINET WITH THE ONE THAT NO-ONE HAS OPENED SINCE THE 3-DAY WEEK. THE ONE WITH THE DEAD CACTUS ON IT AND THE DAVID ESSEX STICKER. JUST FOR FUN.
There are cupboards like that in most offices. They usually contain the mugs, stickers, pens, balloons and posters from all the corporate change initiatives that have run into the sand over the years. They are great places to file all the stuff you don’t want people to find until well after you have left.
I kid you not; a (now publicly owned) financial service client introduced me to just such a cupboard a few years back. Inside were maybe 40 consultants reports ranging over about five years, some pricey ones, too. “This is what we do with the stuff that we can’t implement just yet” the Strategy Director told me, “you’re welcome to look through it for inspiration or just to make sure you’re not telling us what we already know”. His team called the cupboard ‘The Tardis’ and had a picture of David Tennant stuck on one side. perhaps they were just preparing themselves for Nataionalisation.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the consultants’ reports.
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