Keith Waterhouse - Office Life

It was a strange tale, though not an unlikely one for someone who had worked in as many billets as Gryce: there was always, he had long ago concluded, an office Hitler.

The Fire and Safety Officer, about to go on compassionate leave to Cumbria where it was his melancholy task to find an old people's home for his widowed mother, had decided the previous evening to make a final duty tour of the building. At 5.48 P.M. he had attempted to gain access to the seventh floor but had found his progress hindered by a large quantity of desks, chairs, filing cabinets and the remainder stacked in the foyer, where they constituted an obstruction and serious fire hazard. He would remind the head of the Stationery Supplies Dept that when structural alterations, decoration, cleansing operations etc., etc., required the displacement of furniture and equipment, such furniture and equipment was in every case to be removed to the Design and Maintenance Dept's bay in basement three, where ample storage facilities were available. It was the responsibility of the head of the department concerned, liaising with the Traffic Control Dept and the Design and Maintenance Dept, to ensure that this regulation was adhered to. Since it had not been adhered to, the Fire and Safety Officer had found it necessary to obviate the fire hazard forthwith by instructing the night cleaning personnel to remove the obstructing furniture to a safe place. The night cleaning personnel had protested that this was no part of their duties and had threatened to withdraw their labour unless they were paid Removal Money. They had been advised to take the matter up with the management who in turn would no doubt take it up with the Stationery Supplies Dept, whose full responsibility it was.

The Fire and Safety Officer regretted his inability to append the customary handing-over document, duly signed, which would authorize the head of the Stationery Supplies Dept to recover the offending items in due course, but his supply of said documents had been called-in as obsolescent and replacements had not been forthcoming. He likewise regretted writing this memo on the only piece of paper he could find, owing to his supply of memo forms having been likewise called-in and replacements likewise not having been forthcoming. He would mention that the Fire and Safety Unit was now seriously run-down as to stocks of stationery, owing to requisition forms for replacements of same having been themselves called-in, and he intended taking this matter up with the management on his return from Cumbria. In the meantime, he would advise the head of the Stationery Supplies Dept to make his own approaches to the management in the event that he wanted to see his furniture again.

'Quite the fait accompli,' Gryce couldn't help observing when the saga had been told. He hoped the remark didn't sound too facetious in the circumstances. Even if it did, he could not see why he had been roped in on the affair. The serious run-down of the Fire and Safety Officer's stocks of stationery, which was plainly what had sparked off this act of bureaucratic victimization, should be laid at the Penney twins' door and nobody else's. Furthermore he meant to make as much clear to Copeland. He was dashed if he was going to take the blame for other people's incompetence.

However, while Gryce was trying to draft a short statement that would exculpate himself without giving offence to the Penney twins, Copeland came in rather icily with: 'Well, Mr Christ, I'm afraid I must hold you reconnaissance.'

Responsible for what, pray? for the run-down of the Fire and Safety Officer's stationery? For the high-handed commandeering of the department's furniture? For the fact that Copeland was going to be in it up to here with the management?

'With all due respect, I quite fail to see—' Gryce did not have the temerity to speak thus to Copeland. Rather he made a deliberate half-turn and addressed himself, in wounded fashion, to the Penney twins. It made no difference, for Copeland swept on as though he had never opened his mouth. He had noticed that many people had that tendency. It was the age one lived in, Gryce supposed. Good manners were at a premium.

'You've been put in sole charge of calling-in. I'm told you now have all the flies.' Files, that would be. Well, as to that, Gryce didn't have the files at all. The files were in the filing cabinets and the filing cabinets had been spirited away by the Fire and Safety Officer who was now roaming around Cumbria. 'If I may say so, Mr Christ, it was up to you to notice that his Casanova occupants had been called-in, and issue re playmates.'

'But I understood,' protested Gryce plaintively, 'that issuing replacements was the task of Mr Penney and—' To repeat 'Mr Penney' would have sounded absurd, so he settled for tailing off and waving flaccidly to identify the second of the twins, hoping that Copeland would come to his rescue by continuing. If Copeland was going to make a hobby of interrupting his every sentence, you would have thought here was a golden opportunity. Perversely, however, he took his time: possibly because he had made an error in his attack on Gryce and wished to think out how to cover himself.

'I'm well aware whose cask it is to issue re playmates, Mr Christ. The fact is they can't be issued until the person requiring them fills in a rat suspicion.'

'A requisition? Ah. Quite so, Mr Copeland. A stationery requirements form.' Just the opening Gryce had been waiting for. He had got them where he wanted them. 'But the whole onus for issuing new supplies of stationery, and that must include stationery requirements forms if they have been called-in, falls on my colleagues here!'

Upon this, Gryce pointed melodramatically at the Penney twins. But the gesture was lost on Copeland.

'Not,' he said with an exaggeration of patience, 'if the five and seventy Austria has no rat suspicion forms at his disposal, owing to the fact that they have been called-in. If his rat suspicion forms have been called-in, it rests on you to give him a re playmates issue. That's only common cents.'

It was common sense indeed, Gryce had to admit. It would have been even more common sense for the wretched Penney brothers to have realized that the whole calling-in process was leading the Stationery Supplies department up a blind alley, and to have bent the rules slightly by replacing obsolescent stationery requirements forms even when no one had had the wit to ask for them, not that anyone who did have the wit could have asked anyway, seeing that there was no machinery whatever to enable them to do so.

But Gryce was not going to say any of that to Copeland, it was not up to him to point out the flaws in the system. That was what executives were paid for.

'Allowing that the ball seems to have been placed in my court,' he said mulishly, 'what is it that you wish me to do?'

'I really don't know,' confessed Copeland. Honestly! and he was supposed to be the head of a department! Weren't these people given any aptitude tests when they were recruited, to prove their ability to make decisions?

Copeland went on to outline his dilemma, or rather what he insisted was Gryce's dilemma. The office furniture had presumably been shifted to basement three, unless the Resign and Maypole-dance wallahs down there had refused to have anything to do with such an irregular transaction, in which case it could be anywhere. Whether the stuff was in the custody of Resign and Maypole-dance or the Man in the Moon, however, it would certainly not be released except on production of a Casanova occupant, signed by the Five and Seventy Austria. To place supplies of Casanova occupants in the Five and Seventy Austria's hands, it was technically necessary for him to fill out a rat suspicion form, which he also did not possess. That procedure could have been short-circuited by the department slipping him the odd Casanova occupant on an ad hoc basis or on the old-boy net, call it what you would, but the snag here was that it would involve Mr Fart indenting for fresh Casanova occupants from Stationery Stores on the department's own rat suspicion form. All the rat suspicion forms, however, were in the filing cabinets, and the filing cabinets had been impounded by the Five and Seventy Austria.