An Introduction to the Chaos of Follyville

Sorry no blog for a while ...... holidays etc. But it's back now to the chaos that is Follyville.

Follyville is the fictitious local authority I work for. Well .... I try and work for! Every day they try to make it more difficult to work for them. Some kind of perverse reverse logic I suppose. They want to increase efficiency but every move they make decreases it.

Everyone in my office has to move out by the end of the year. The burghers of Follyville have sold the office (in a prime position in the central High Street) and we are to be relocated to another office on the outskirts of the town. The trouble is, that office is already full with other employees. To make matters worse, part of that building has now been leased to a completely different organisation. The result will be about half the number of desks for the number of people that need one and very little storage space for anything else. Staff will have to book a desk and computer when they can get the chance, and work out of the office for the rest of the time.

We have now been ordered to empty all our drawers and cupboards by the end of the month in preparation for the move. At present we each have a neat little draw unit to accommodate much of what we need, which also extends the working area of the desk itself. Each draw unit has one of those little plastic inserts that hold all your paper clips, staples , rubber bands and all the other paraphernalia that is the mainstay of office life. It is a piece of equipment which is specifically designed for the purpose for which it is used. But now we have to empty it and try and find something else suitable to put all this stuff in ....... and then find somewhere to put that. And we can't just leave it on the desk-top because we won't actually have a desk-top to leave it on! At the moment I have put it all in a plastic box under the desk and am running a serious risk of getting a slipped disk or a hernia every time I try to retrieve anything. I am just wondering how many compensation claims it will take for the burghers to realise what a stupid mistake they have made.

All files and other documents must be scanned onto the computer as there will be nowhere to store them in the new office. This, initially, sounds like a good idea. But some paper copies are essential, to take to meetings or out on site. The cost of printing will rocket as everyone tries to copy scanned documents to work with .......... and then destroy them afterwards (until the next time) because there is nowhere to put them!

More about Follyville later