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Tuesday, January 04, 2011

The Stone Begins to Grind

The queue for train tickets wrapped round the ticket office and out of the door. Two people were serving tickets and there was a queue at the self-service machine. It was a good job the Gorse Fox had allowed plenty of time.

By contrast the train itself was quiet throughout the journey and GF was soon at Starfleet – (soon, being a relative concept). This gave GF time to prepare for the exit interview of one of his team, who was retiring.

The interview went well, and the parting comments were very much what GF would have expected. GF was presented with 2 old laptops and a mobile phone to dispose of, and this is where the day turned silly.

To return laptop you must fill in a form and await an email that registers the return, then the laptop can be returned to the right department. This would be fine if the process worked in a speedy fashion – but it takes a minimum of 24 hours (for some stupid reason). This means that GF now has 3 laptops to worry about – and he certainly wasn’t going to cart two spares home!

He went to the Deskside support group and they said they couldn’t help, he went to the deployment group and they said they would not help, so he went to security.

Security tried to help – they suggested GF went to the deskside support group or the deployment group. GF explained. Security said they couldn’t help.

In the end GF found a friendly colleague and locked the laptops in his locker… and that’s where they will stay until GF is next in Starfleet’s offices.

1 comment:

The Gray Monk said...

Has John Cleese been involved in setting up Starfleet's procedures? This put me in mind of a sketch he did for a management training film some years ago - on a par with his Ministry of Silly Walks...