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All you need to know to work with me
STACIA BRIGGS
24 November 2008
As I sweep into the Evening News of a morning, my writing crown glistening in the early winter sunlight and my talent practically bursting from every seam, I can't help that feel disappointed that - to date - no one is following my 11-page behaviour document.
My desk is still the hideous mess it was when I left it, no one has made me a cup of tea, the EDP has been left skew-whiff on my keyboard (hello! Why do you think there's a SET SQUARE on my desk?) and I note the brown ones are still present in my packet of M&Ms. It's a wonder I can win awards in such dismal conditions, I can tell you.
Of course if I worked for the government, it'd be a different story.
Liam Byrne, the man promoted to the cabinet as Gordon Brown's new “enforcer” has issued a detailed 11-page manifesto to civil servants spelling out exactly how they should behave when basking in the glory of his employment.
The document, modestly entitled: Working with Liam Byrne, instructs officials on when to bring him coffee or soup, how to conduct themselves verbally and warns that they will be blamed if he falls behind schedule.
In addition to timetabling coffee breaks, Mr Byrne dictates what size font should be used in his briefing notes, says his room should be cleared before he arrives in the morning with the papers set out and the white boards cleaned and tells staff to be on 24-hour toilet warming alert in case he goes 'off-road' and has an unscheduled dump. I may have made that last one up.
“Never put anything to me unless you understand it and can explain it to me in 60 seconds,” he says, adding: “I am often not very clear or my writing is illegible. If I'm in the middle of thinking about something, I might ask you to come back - don't be put off by this.
“It's your job to keep me to time. It's rude for me to draw meetings to a close. I like 10 and five-minute warnings. You need to know what I am doing next. If I see things that are not of acceptable quality, I will blame you.”
The last three of these demands sound eerily like a guide to parenting as written on a wall in biro by a particularly self-aware and literate three-year-old with dictator delusions.
Byrne then goes on to explain how civil servants should explain issues to the public, a concept that basically boils down to them s-p-e-a-k-i-n-g r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y without using fancy book learnin' words, urging them to: “eliminate absolutely, positively all extraneous words”.
In a sentence about eliminating non-essential words, it's a triumph for post-modern irony that three out of six of those words are, themselves, completely extraneous.
As a mental jolt to my colleagues, many of whom are total strangers to the concepts of respect, loyalty or demeaning servitude, I present an updated guide which I call: Working with Stacia Briggs:
Please think twice before asking me to do anything too early in the morning, bearing in mind that before I so much as sit down at my desk, I will have already dealt with 729 enquiries at home about plimsolls/work shirts/football boots/school trip forms/ homework books/juice cartons/medieval serf costumes/trousers/shoes/hairbands etc.
If I see things that are not of acceptable quality, I will blame myself. I should never have gone back to work while the children were young. I should have stayed at home, made butterfly cakes and sewed samplers. When society breaks down irrevocably, it will all be my fault.
Never explain anything to me in less than 60 seconds. I probably wasn't listening to you for at least the first 45 of those, and the last 15 are unlikely to have meant anything to me. If possible, draw me some kind of picture or show me a cartoon.
If I seem to be in the middle of thinking about something, it is probably wise to make sure that I am still conscious. I may be having one of my turns.
I am often not very clear. Full stop.
Accept that I will always include, absolutely, positively all extraneous words. If something's worth saying, it's worth saying over two pages with a big picture byline and city-wide billboards.
If you know what I am doing next, you are definitely several steps ahead of me. I haven't got a bloody clue.
When that bloke, Barry George or whatever his name is (actually, wasn't Barry George the one who didn't kill Jill Dando? It probably isn't him, then) started advertising Cillit Bang, I admit that I fell for the schtick, and went out and bought a bottle.My loose change had never been cleaner, although that could have been because up until that point, I'd never washed it, or indeed harboured any desire whatsoever to wash it.
It was all very well showing us dirty pennies miraculously stripped of their tarnish in seconds - and at this point I'd like to say that mine never cleaned up so fast, maybe Norfolk dirt has more staying power - but there's absolutely no need to start drawing attention to our children's socks.
In the latest advertisement for CB, Barry knocks on a woman's door, barges in and remonstrates with her about the cleanliness of her daughter's socks, which have a light coating of grime on the soles and would, in my household, definitely pass the 'can I get away with them for tomorrow?' test.
Without so much as a by your leave, or a 'I like what you've done with the place!' Barry launches into a scathing attack on the woman's cleanliness regime, like a vigilante hardcore social worker (who isn't based in Haringey).
“Looks like your floor isn't clean…” he tells her.
At this point I would be ejecting Barry who would, within a nanosecond, have become irreversibly as one with his Cillit Bang after some strategic, and demeaning, product placement in the downstairs department.
Instead, the woman says, apologetically, “but it looks clean…”
Barry looks at her pityingly and proffers a bottle of Cillit Bang, which is visual shorthand for: “Well, it isn't, love. Your floor's not clean and now look what you've gone and done - you've made your daughter's socks slightly dirty. You're not fit to be a mother. You disgust me. I wish you were dead.”
We're then informed that 'a few days later…' presumably after copious Cillit Banging into the early hours, the woman's floor is “really clean”. Well I'd bloody well hope so if you've been cleaning it for the past few days - Time Team take less time to uncover a Roman mosaic, and that's generally several metres under the ground.
There is, of course, a simpler solution to using Cillit Bang to keep your children's socks clean - buy them dirt-coloured or, at the very least, black socks. They'll still be filthy, but Barry will have to get a magnifying glass out to prove it and that's if he get close enough and can stomach the smell from (a) the kids' feet and (b) the revoltingly dirty floor in the first place.
You know the world has gone mad when a comedian resigns over smutty phone call to Manuel from Fawlty Towers and the director of social services at Haringey stays in post after a litany of failures in her department helped seal the fate of a 17-month-old toddler.
At the time of writing, Sharon Shoesmith is yet to fall on her sword. Of course if she does fall on her sword, we can only hope that she isn't visited by her own social workers, who would probably conclude that she was injury-free and that her case was in no need of any further action.
It's cases like these that make me thank all that is holy that my back-up plan - to be a social worker - never had to be deployed. Having been told by a particularly malevolent careers adviser (“the computer suggests Norwich Union or the Army”) that I was unlikely to make it in the field of journalism because it was “very competitive”, I made damn sure I had a second option, because the third option 'stay in Old Costessey on the dole forever' was frankly no option whatsoever.
My degree led me to the point where, with some extra training, I was ready to be unleashed as a member of a social services team. I deliberately chose a career so thankless and miserable that it literally forced me to succeed as a reporter.
I'd have been a rubbish social worker - I'm highly persuadable, weak-willed and desperate to be liked, even by scumbags. On the plus side, I'd always have been able to get work with Haringey Council.
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