#jobsworths

[360degreesasthecrowflies]

I am absolutely about to SNAP today. Yesterday I started work, at my office desk, at 7.30 in the morning and finished at 3.30pm, a normal 8 hour work day. I left the house at 6.45am and was thinking about work really from 7, which I could have counted too if I wanted.

Having been informed when I started this job several months ago that our regular work hours run 7am-7pm and are fully flexible within that period.

Today I wake up to snippy email from my workstream manager that I didn't REQUEST to 'finish early' and that apparently now we have regular hours that I should be working (9-5) and I'm just over here like...

Do you actually think that you CONTROL me?

Are you really sitting over here trying to make POWER PLAYS over THE SPECIFIC HOURS WITHIN THE DAY that I do my work, given that the work in question is a list of pre-set tasks that I have a weekly amount of time to put towards that has already been signed off by people WELL ABOVE YOUR pay grade?

Sorry but I will not be 'requesting' anything of somebody who is not actually my BOSS and who is only a few years older than me and who I already do more work than in the company.

I didn't 'FINISH EARLY' if I STARTED working in the day 2 hours before you did...

Noting also that since I started this job where apparently the work hours are 9-5 Mon-Fri now I have already worked:

on a Sunday, for no extra pay, because she asked me to prepare something for her

into the evening beyond 5pm up to 6 to get something urgent finished

Up to 5.30 pm most days! So I've been doing extra have I?

You can shove that kind of passive aggressive email up your ass miss local government. What is WRONG with people that they get off on controlling others like this? Get a kink or a hobby and leave this out of the workplace please.

[deus-regina]

GeneRick and Jobsworth Rick are having an argument...

(Page 1/?)

[soniabigcheese]

Typical

Recycling day today. I try my best to separate everything

BUT

Our council have only supplied us with two tiny little boxes to recycle glass, metal tins/cans, paper/cardboard and plastics.

There is nothing else, so I HAVE to mix them up a little bit. So I use boxes for the cardboard and paper, and the rest, I've got to find a way of storing them safely

And now they left a box absolutely packed full of glass (6 at last count) bottles, and the rest were tins/drinks cans because these were 'mixed'

And to add insult to injury, next door have a wheelie bin which they mix everything up in.

Not only that, I enquired about getting an extra box and was told we had to pay for it as we 'don't qualify'

Next time, the bottles will be in a bag or a sopping wet box. Let's see how they figure that one out.

They're definitely lazy, as the last recycling, I noticed loads of plastic bottles strewn around the street, where they'd been dropped and these fellas couldn't be arsed to pick them up.

[eurofox]

Some dog owners need to get it through their skulls that not everyone likes dogs, and they especially don't want to be around them while their eating.

[ohbutwheresyourheart]

10am on Monday morning and I'm already up to four bouts of yelling at my laptop and two instances of screaming into a pillow

[davidhencke]

Disciplined: The Adelaide train driver who said he locked disabled people on a train if they used the wrong carriage

Our visit to Australia using a wheelchair to get around six big cities has been a heart warming experience. Visiting Darwin,Brisbane,Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth we found staff in museums and galleries and the Northern Territories Parliament extremely helpful. Pavements had dropped kerbs and public transport was disabled friendly with spaces for wheelchairs on trains. Margaret on the…

[chicknstripz]

That man ain't got the spoons to bleach his hair after dealing with Anakin 'imma commit a war crime' Skywalker all day long

[natalieironside]

It's actually good to be a jobsworth. If something isn't part of your job description, you shouldn't do it, and most things are more than your job is worth.

Personally I think ppl are only saddled with the epithet of jobsworth by customers and by upper management types who don't take "no" for an answer or "because that would be illegal and the SEC would get involved" for an explanation

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

So, uhm.

Who’s Borusa? Whats his deal with Rassilon?

Who is Borusa?

Borusa was a high-ranking and influential Time Lord on Gallifrey, having served as a tutor to the Doctor (and others like the Master and Romana) and held important positions such as Cardinal, Chancellor, and eventually Lord President. He was a staunch traditionalist and an authority figure who valued power, stability, and Gallifrey's traditions.

🎓 Borusa as the Doctor's Mentor

Back when the Doctor was a young scallywag at the Academy, Borusa was the strict teacher trying to keep him in line. He was all about tradition, rules, and Gallifreyan superiority. He wasn't a fan of the Doctor's rebellious nature and often gave him a hard time (even when the Doctor saved Gallifrey from the Master, Borusa only gave him a 'nine out of ten' for it).

💼 Borusa's Ambition and Fall

Though Borusa started out as a respected leader, his ambition ultimately led him down a dangerous path. Obsessed with Gallifreyan tradition and convinced that he alone should rule Gallifrey forever, Borusa sought immortality. He orchestrated a massive plot involving the Doctor's past selves, believing that gaining eternal life from Rassilon would solidify his rule.

Unfortunately for him, it was all a trap. Instead of ruling Gallifrey for eternity, Borusa was imprisoned as a statue in Rassilon's tomb—stuck in stone but still with a consciousness, which is quite possibly the most disturbing thing that's ever happened, like, ever, in anything, and I'm still having nightmares about it.

💥Final Chapter

The story doesn't end there, though. During the Last Great Time War, Rassilon freed Borusa from his stone prison, though had no intention of giving Borusa his freedom—he needed him as a tool for his own schemes. Borusa's mind and body were constantly regenerated to predict the best outcomes in the war, suffering through countless transformations. He was eventually freed from this misery by the War Doctor.

Funnily enough, Borusa, who had once sought immortality for personal glory, finally found peace in death—choosing to sacrifice himself.

🏫So ...

Borusa started out as a strict, by-the-book leader and mentor, but his ambition drove him to seek ultimate power, which led to his downfall. He was eventually tricked by Rassilon and trapped in eternal imprisonment as a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked ambition.

Related:

💬|👤👑Why is Rassilon everywhere?: Who Rassilon is and why he’s so important.

💬|👤🔥Who/What is Lord Burner?: Looking at the entirely fictional role of the entirely fictional Lord Burner.

💬|👤💂Who is Commander Maxil?: Looking at Gallifrey’s resident jobsworth.

Hope that helped! 😃

Any purple text is educated guesswork or theoretical. More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →😆Jokes |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired😴

[melrosing]

Something a bit less hatering, if only 'cause I'm curious on your thoughts about Jaime/Criston and the Kingsguard in HOTD/ASOIAF, because I do feel that Criston's general trajectory is interesting, especially in contrast to Jaime (& his probable decision to go fight the dead v. Mr Annihilation) and the whole tangled up in the Targaryen self-immolation of it all

(uh. Pardon the pun. Anyways love your rebellion SparkNotes and Braimeposting, it's always great to read)

I did actually like the note Criston's S2 arc ended on, my only criticism was that it felt like we didn't really see all the workings that got him between point A (absolute kg jobsworth) and B (craving annihilation). like yes he did look about him in horror as the dragons laid waste to his army but that might've worked better as the climax of a more built out arc (like how Aerys' wildfire plot is the thing that sends Jaime over the edge, but is ofc preceded by a gradual breaking down)

but still as I say I did like it bc I think the KG is a really interesting institution to interrogate and it makes sense that Jaime wouldn't be the first to do so. and I like the neat little parallels like Criston functionally joining the KG for Rhaenyra (as Jaime did for Cersei) and thinking becoming a KG will lift him up in society whereas functionally it only makes he and Rhaenyra an impossible match and he's surrendered all agency to the white cloak. so he tries to make the white cloak his whole life, and ends up more lost bc of it.

I think they differ though in that whilst Criston gives more and more of himself away to the KG (I feel like S2 ends with him just accepting that this is both his life and his death now, he will never be anything more), Jaime is starting to look beyond the KG. I've said before I think he will in fact be removed from it, and that that will mean he has to continue reckoning with what true knighthood must mean, if it didn't mean the KG. it's a much more hopeful story, and I think having this idea of Criston's even makes it more poignant, in that we can imagine there have been many men who have been swallowed by the cloak, and here's Jaime carving a new fate for himself.

also thanks!! love me braimeposting. love me sparknotes

[saintsenara]

waitt i need to know why you hc ludo bagman as a genuine death eater sympathiser omg. that sounds fascinating

thank you very much for the ask, pal!

that bagman was really a death eater sympathiser is something i've been committed to believing since i first read goblet of fire, but it's something i've been pondering particularly recently as part of writing subluxation, which is a big look at the set-up and function of the wizarding state during voldemort's takeover in 1997-1998 from the perspective of percy weasley.

which means - of course - that it requires a bit of grappling with percy's main man - and bagman's frenemy - barty crouch sr.

the way the canon narrative - not only harry's perspective but also characters harry implicitly trusts, like sirius and dumbledore - wants us to react to crouch sr. is something that really interests me. because i think it's reasonable to say that - while the series doesn't regard him as a villain villain, per se [as it does for characters such as umbridge] - it doesn't see him as someone we are supposed to regard in a particularly positive light either, even after the reveal that barty crouch jr. was a death eater and his father was justified in sending him to azkaban [even if he didn't keep him there...]

crouch - like cornelius fudge, rufus scrimgeour, and percy himself - is a victim of the narrative's general consensus that ministry workers who are not under the impression that the ministry cannot function admirably or efficiently without input from dumbledore are people we should have no real respect for. he is shown, in his canon appearances, to be something of a jobsworth - officious and dull and uncreative in his thinking, which serves both as a personification of what the series thinks about the civil service and as a narrative device to make the reveal that he broke his son out of prison and kept him, essentially, drugged at home all the more shocking.

but crouch is also interesting in another sense - in that he is not a villain, but that he does not fit into the way the series categorises the behaviour of its heroes surrounding mercy.

we are told in goblet of fire that crouch - as head of the department of magical law enforcement in the 1970s - was responsible for the escalating harshness of the government's response to voldemort. policies such as the instructions for aurors to shoot to kill if they encountered suspected death eaters and the use of internment without trial of those accused of collusion with voldemort [both of which, as i am always banging on about, are references to the actual behaviour of the british state in northern ireland during the same time period] emanate directly from him.

and this ties into a theme which is prominent in the run of books between prisoner of azkaban and half-blood prince: that the world is not split into good people and death eaters. the purpose of these central books in the series is to show that - once harry's worldview widens from the hogwarts-exclusive focus it has in the first two, more childlike, books - the rot in the wizarding world goes far beyond voldemort. the wizarding state is shown - time and time again - to be cruel, corrupt, prejudiced, and stagnant, and the ministry's most loyal bureaucrats and their unwillingness towards mercy are largely blamed for this situation.

because of course - as i have complained about before - the morality of the harry potter series is individualist. good and evil are located by the text within the individual, which means that states and their institutions are automatically less interesting to it than singular heroes and villains in an epic baddies-versus-goodies showdown.

but it's also true that - as a protagonist - harry's morality is extremely self-serving. by which i mean that he has a tendency to reach black-and-white judgements on people he encounters - they're good if they're nice to him, they're bad if they're cruel to him - and to never deviate from them.

and - indeed - to never have to deviate from them. it's worth saying that harry's conversion rate on being right about people is really high - his immediate dislike of characters such as draco malfoy, lockhart, and umbridge is entirely justified; his immediate trust of characters such as sirius is the same. his only misjudgments relate to characters who are crucial to the narrative outside of harry's feelings towards them - he's wrong to trust the teenage tom riddle in chamber of secrets, he's wrong to trust the fake "moody" in goblet of fire, he's wrong to trust "bathilda bagshot" in deathly hallows, and he is, of course, wrong about both snape and dumbledore.

but - outside of this - his judgements are usually proven to be right [and, indeed, his good instincts are lampshaded by the narrative in deathly hallows, when lupin literally says this]. and so we are supposed to assume, i think, that character judgements he makes which we see no broader resolution to are correct.

for example - harry's conviction that stan shunpike is under the imperius curse is never taken by the text as anything other than true. there is no suggestion whatsoever that harry is wrong and that stan - a young, working-class man with delusions of grandeur, who would presumably be reasonably easy to radicalise - might be a genuine supporter of voldemort, and harry's complete certainty that stan is falsely imprisoned [with the callbacks this gives to his feelings about sirius' treatment] isn't used by the narrative as an example of him being naive and self-righteous, but as an example of the fundamental goodness, sensibleness and mercifulness of his character which justifies his ascent to an allegory for christ in the latter stages of deathly hallows.

and the same applies to ludo bagman. when harry witnesses his trial, he finds the suggestion that he might have been a death eater absurd, clearly finds the jury's immediate dismissal of it amusing, and is unsympathetic to crouch when he is infuriated by bagman's acquittal. he takes dumbledore's assurance that bagman has never been accused of any nefarious activity since without question [something he does not do for snape] and his view throughout goblet of fire - much as it is for stan - is that bagman is seedy and not particularly clever, but that he is also such a transparently ridiculous person that to suspect him of being someone voldemort would care about is idiotic, and that crouch's inability to bang him up in azkaban on spurious charges can only - given what happened to sirius - be a good thing.

but the issue is that - notwithstanding his commitment to extrajudicial punishment - barty crouch sr. is... clearly right to investigate bagman thoroughly.

we are told in order of the phoenix that voldemort's power depends on a vast network of ministry informants. we are shown in deathly hallows that his coup is only successful because almost the entirety of the civil service remains in post. we are shown time and time again throughout canon that voldemort's views - on blood-supremacy and magic-supremacy, on the supposed value of maintaining the class system - are incredibly mainstream political opinions, and we can infer from this that a majority of the population of wizarding britain have the view sirius tells us his parents did: that, while they're uneasy with voldemort's violence and while they're certainly not paid-up death eaters, they think voldemort has the right idea.

dumbledore - and the order - are shown throughout canon to be preoccupied with the big fish. the death eaters they target are voldemort's inner circle - the marked loyalists he trusts as generals. we never see - outside of the snatchers - the lower-profile but infinitely more important cogs in voldemort's machine: the people who traffic stolen goods and lift ministry secrets from filing cabinets and observe potential recruits in pubs and pass gossip along whisper networks until it reaches the dark lord. the sort of people crouch clearly wanted to eradicate, but couldn't find the goodwill within the ministry to do so.

bagman can easily fit this profile - he's presumably a pureblood or a half-blood and raised in the wizarding world, since his parents canonically have at least one wizarding friend [augustus rookwood]; he is clearly relaxed about making use of the class system, since he expects to finesse a job out of rookwood when his professional quidditch career ends; and he is possessed of extremely dubious morals. we also know that pleading ignorance of who you were working for was a famously successful - and, presumably, voldemort-sanctioned - way of getting away with having colluded with the death eaters. it makes just as much sense - then - for bagman's "oh, i just thought i was chatting about state secrets with rookwood as a mate" act to be in the same vein as lucius malfoy pretending to be under the imperius curse as it does for him to actually have been that dumb, and so it makes sense for him to have gone actively looking for information he could pass to rookwood because of some sympathies [even if they were uneasy ones] with rookwood's cause.

do i think he was a marked death eater? no - i think voldemort couldn't pick him out of a line-up and he never achieved anything other than being an informant rookwood could tap for details and documents he could pass up to his master if they looked interesting.

but this would have been what voldemort's ministry infiltration actually looked like - and it is a much more insidious, and interesting, concept than loads of aristocrats fighting and being sexy, which i think is really worth exploring when we think about wizarding politics.

[servants-hall]

[...]

The new season will see Mrs Hall taking on the role of being a blackout warden in the village – but it's a responsibility that Siegfried doesn't take too well to.

Chatting about that dynamic to Channel 5 ahead of the release of the new season, when asked how Siegfried's reacts to Mrs Hall's new job, West said: "Extremely badly. Selfishly and overstepping the mark, and in ways that an analyst would have a lot of fun dissecting, he doesn’t really understand why the village warden, Mr Bosworth, makes him so angry."

He continued: "I think Siegfried is caught up with ideas of protecting Mrs Hall and being angered by Bosworth’s jobsworthing. And he oversteps the mark in trying to protect somebody he would see as staff but also as a friend.

"And he’s slow to realise that, but then when he does – because of the sad loss of a dear animal companion and some detective work to find out how – all is right in the end, or nearly."

West added: "But Siegfried does feel slightly out of it, strangely at a loss when James is away, because the brother that I am related to isn’t there, and the son that I never had but do love enormously isn’t there either.

"And my friend and companion and housekeeper is away doing important stuff that I’m not being asked to do. And he slightly feels like a spare part at a wedding."

Revealing more about how Mrs Hall finds out about becoming a blackout warden, Madeley said: "Yes, in seeking something to do that she can contribute to the war effort beyond knitting, she goes to the community meeting and hears that they need wardens.

"This is basically the job of going around, making sure everyone's safe at night, and ensuring the blackout is being enforced. Because she knows the community well, she thinks that would be a good job for her."

And there's set to be a brand new character in the mix as well, as Mrs Hall meets Mr Bosworth.

Madeley revealed: "We meet a brilliant character called Mr Bosworth, played by Jeremy Swift, who’s an interesting fish - quite pedantic but also a lot of fun.

"He trains her up to be an ARP warden (Air Raid Protection), and they develop a really fun relationship. Bosworth is a very funny character, and it’s an unlikely friendship that evolves through that work. It’s a fun storyline for me."

[elephantbitterhead]

The very heavy, 3.8m slab of wooden countertop has now been successfully driven up to the house by us (typical jobsworth British delivery people did absolutely nothing to help, of course) & then nerve wrackingly maneuvered into the kitchen. Now I just need to get it oiled up. All of our clearance measurements were perfect and the last terror-inducing aspect of this kitchen renovation is OVER.

[upsettingandunfortunateclasshate]

The hate for Starmer is serious. We've all been reminded of how much we hate blairite nomark jobsworth grasses law types middle management types etc who coldly tell you you're going to be sanctioned

From the posh boys to this

[olympain]

It's been fun because he's his own worst enemy and he's so conflicted. He is such a jobsworth and a wannabe superhero. He has these delusions of grandeur where he feels like everybody is failing before him.

[zeldaelmo]

Chapter eight - Odd Coincidences

Princess Zelda had not had enough after their excursion to the bar—he should have anticipated as much, no matter how many weeks in blissful ignorance he had spent in her presence afterward.

The elevator of one of the annexes of the castle became his trap yesterday when her fingers buried into the stiff fabric of his sleeve, her warmth oozing into his skin like a heating pad.

“I need you to change your shift,” she had whispered into his ear. “I’m going to Hateno tomorrow and I want you to come with me. The other jobsworths will only cause me trouble.”

Uh, ok. He had conquered the status of jobsworth and evolved to something better. Idiot probably, at least that was what he’d call himself. Nice. No, not nice. Bad! Very bad. He wasn't supposed to be anything for her.

Just before they stepped out of the elevator—back in perfect three-step-distance—he had learned that she planned to meet with a friend after the conference with Hyrule’s agriculturists that she attended. He was too relieved that she had explained her plans this time, so it was much easier to agree. He hadn’t wasted a second thought if that meant that she began to trust him, really trust him apart from the scene in the sub, either. A meeting with a friend, how could he deny her that?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/58009699/chapters/148809493