Good to Get Things Off Your Chest

I worked for Scottish Government for a while a few years ago and it was awful! The cliques, the pettiness, just awful. It reminded me of primary school though a lot less fun.

At the interview, of six ‘competency areas’ I scored six for each. 36 out of 36. I had a good degree and extensive research as well as life experience. So they stuck me on payroll, a role I was least suited to and utterly joyless. Except for this one guy, a nice fella who’d at least have a natter with you. I met him years later on Porty High Street and I asked him what his impressions were of working at SG. “Bloody terrible” he said “full of cliques and who you know. Like the bloody masons”

I remember a stale-mate with some sullen bitch on another section. She had the key to an archive cabinet I had to access on a fairly regular basis. In fact, oft-times I couldn’t do my job without it (legacy investigations – turgid, unfulfilling stuff but necessary). She did everything to prevent me accessing this key. The key belonged to her and her section and we couldn’t even get a copy of it for security reasons. No amount of argument could convince her and she believed she had right on her side. I went to the high heid-yins who hated me instantly for making it an issue as, palpably, they were scared of this lady and the least notion that they may be breaking any security regulations by a) insisting she share the key with me, or b) insisting on a copy.

I was stuck in a curious limbo and it would be me who would be blamed if my work was not being done due to not being able to access the archives.

I tried to get the union involved and, even though I’d been the only one to join a strike from my entire lily-livered section, but they wouldn’t touch it with the proverbial.

Eventually, the bitch-lady was encouraged to see her way to a compromise. If I gave three days notice and complete a request slip she’d devised giving reasons why I needed the key and promised to have it returned after every task then that would be OK with her.

Problem!

I couldn’t give her the reasons I needed it for security reasons.

As I say; primary school.