Taxing My Equanimity

My first experience with unemployment came in 1988 when I was retrenched by Kanematsu (see Kanemat Zoo in the index on this page). It didn't worry me particularly because I'd never had problems getting a job—but I'd never been over fifty either. Nobody wanted to know me.

After trying vainly to find something suitable (since I hadn't registered for unemployment benefits my savings were eroding rapidly) I took the public service examination and went to work with the Australian Taxation Office. It paid the bills but proved to be the worst job I ever had.

Hopefully this story won't sound like whinging but if you want to reach the funny bits you'll have to persevere with the depressing build-ups. I'll try to keep them short.
[If you're unfamiliar with Australian usage, whinge rhymes with hinge and is an Australian whine. Whingers are not well thought of in the Land of Oz so I'll limit mine to the bare minimum to set the scene for the story.]

My first job at Tax was opening envelopes. To do this I was told to tear the envelope so nothing could be accidentally left inside, then unpin all the documents which were pinned on the right hand page where it was marked "Pin Here", and pin them to the left hand page. Why? Because Canberra, who designed the forms liked documents pinned to the right but Parramatta, where I worked, liked them on the left.
This kind of pointless make-work is probably the main reason why the public service is so inefficient.
During the first afternoon when I was beginning to despair, I opened an envelope containing a payment cheque. Scrawled across the outside was "I hope you choke on it." I loved the guy.

After a week I, and the people who had started with me, were sent on an induction course. The kid who took it certainly tried hard to work up some enthusiasm and it was a shame to see it all wasted.
"Who had a highlight last week?" she asked.
Silence.
"Surely somebody had a highlight!"
Apathy.
"Anybody?"
Silence and apathy.
"Anything at all?"
Since nobody else was going to respond I put up my hand. "I had one."
"Ah! That's wonderful, David. What was it?"
"Saturday," I said.
It wasn't exactly what she wanted to hear.

At Parramatta, because the staff had grown too fast, we were spread out through several office buildings. Perhaps once a week, sometimes more often, there would be a bomb scare and the message was usually something like: "There's a bomb in the Australian Taxation Office in Parramatta."
Since no particular building was pinpointed everybody had to evacuate and waste an hour or so while the buildings were checked.
But let's have another look at that warning. The bomb was in "the Australian Taxation Office". Nobody calls it that. It's the Taxation Department, or just Tax, or even something much less complimentary—the only people who use its formal name are its employees.
Oops! Did I mean that?
You betcher. All the bomb threats were phoned in by staff who wanted to get paid for sitting in the sunshine.
If they timed it right it would be too late in the day to return to work and we would all get to go home early.
Don't you just love it?

When my group of new employees was introduced to the section we were told that the public service had changed. "We know that some of you come from good jobs in the private sector. We want your input if you can see any way to make improvements."
Now I stopped believing in Santa Claus a long time ago and I didn't believe that line either. However, they kept repeating it at staff meetings week after week and, since there were a lot of things that needed fixing in the section, I gave my manager a two page report titled "microFICHE and silicon CHIPS".
I was a marked man from that day forward and I heard her discussing the suggestions with my immediate supervisor. "He'll get a promotion over my dead body," she said.
Ah well, it was my own fault. I should have known better.

I lasted four months and nine days (yep, I was counting) and I would have left a lot sooner if I hadn't made friends with a guy named Kent Williams.
Kent is an aborigine from the country town of Casino. He took the job to get some computer experience so that he could go home and work with the Aboriginal Housing group. He was about my age, we had lots of common interests, and we managed to keep each other more-or-less sane in what proved to be a kindergarten environment.
Our manager was an enormous woman who hated all men. I won't label her a feminist, since not all feminists are bigoted, but she certainly had an attitude problem.
Kent once referred to her, not without some awe, as "the big heifer". One of the office girls overheard and told her friends but, being from the city, she didn't know what a heifer was. Instead she called her The Bull.
It stuck and the woman was known as The Bull for the rest of my stay.
It occurred to me later that I may have been working with the first female Minotaur in history.

I soon learned not to make quips or tell jokes. There was no point. I was working at entry level and many of the people in the section had been working at that level for up to twelve years. They just weren't bright enough to get promoted and they certainly didn't understand my sense of humour.
During a coffee break one morning (all the tables were pulled together so we could sit around them as one big table) I accidentally dropped in a pun. I was surprised to get a laugh from the other end of the table.
When I looked to see who it was, I realised I didn't know the woman. It was her first day on the job.
I hope she managed to keep her sense of humour.

Once the woman sitting opposite me, an Indian, said to a telephone enquirer, "Just a moment. I'll put the manager on."
I wondered what she intended to do because neither the manager nor the supervisor would accept calls from the public. On this occasion both of them were standing near enough to have heard what she said, and both seemed to be looking for some way to escape.
They needn't have worried. My friend handed the phone to me and I got the job of impersonating the manager while the manager stood by listening.
There were no real problems. When the guy hadn't been able to understand the lilting Indian accent he became offensive.
I finished the call and turned toward the manager who simply shrugged and walked away.

When I found another job I felt so good about it that I typed a resignation in Old English script and flowery language and dropped it on the manager's desk. It looked like this:

I expected her to request a formal "official" resignation. Instead she simply brought it back and said, "You forgot to sign it." She wasn't going to refuse it in case I changed my mind.