Carnsel
I used to work for the local council. I had seven bosses above me, who gave me different orders (depending on whether they attended the same meeting that day (with a selection of sandwiches, etc), who in turn had three bosses above them, who were governed by one boss, who was eventually bossed by director (who I assume was directed by a chairman or something). I was part of a team of three people. It took seven people to manage us. The work just about got done, purely because 50% of it was eventually thrown out, because it didn't fit in with the council's new restructuring of their new quarterly plans, and because we found we were moved about to other jobs doing other work as part of some crazy induction and to get us to mix with our colleagues, and when we finally got paid, we found we hadn't actually been paid because the process of payment from an unofficial source (ie. not for the job we usually do), had to be OKAY'd (which was in a queue), and when it was OKAY'd, it went into another queue to be processed.
There should be 50% less of civil servants, and 10% of the current number of people working in middle management. When there is such a massive hierarchy of orders being passed around, it is easy for the elbow to not know what the arse is doing.
Oh, and a mate got paid 6 grand on top of a month's pay because she had to do extra hours of NOTHING because of Health & Safety, which had to have a 24hour security guard present.

You have not seen wastage until you have worked for a Local Authority. I happily left, though feeling a bit disgusted.
And 'the computer age' has not got rid of much paper, at it's gone and emulated paper tenfold.
(Nibi, Sat 28 Jul 2007, 20:54, Reply)