I HATE Officious Government Workers...My vent for today...

Arrrrrgh! Ok now that I have had my growl...this week has been one heck of a week work wise. Really busy and because I'm still recovering from flu this has made me even crankier than normal...read on if you dare!!!

Anyway the organisation I work for is a non-profit one and as such we rely on government funding to operate. Government departments know this so they love to hold us to ransom over many little things. Now I know they are doing their jobs and there are right ways and wrong ways to do things and I can accept that there are protocols in place otherwise there can be total anarchy. BUT!!! When you have a gazillion forms to fill in every day for every one of our 50 odd services all of which need to be signed by authorised people who usually are never in the office when you need an urgent signature, then sometimes you work out an easier routine that saves time and effort and is more efficient. All is good most of the time and I have developed a good rapport with most of the government people I deal with as we do the same stuff together all the time and we know what is expected of each other and we let some things slip by because we know between us that there is nothing fraudulent going on and they understand where we are coming from most of the time. UNTIL (like today) some officious little government moo cow (my apologies to all the innocent moo cows out there!) who obviously forgot to have her daily latte and prozac, decided that all the forms we filled in and had signed, sealed and delivered by Express Post on Tuesday, will need to be re-sent to us and resigned BECAUSE...(wait for it...) we had removed a staple when the document apparently clearly SAID staples must not be removed AND because one of our authorised signatories signed on the wrong line. It was still a signature line but apparently not the line he should have signed it on. It should have been the line below and now the whole process was ruined because of it and well the documents just have to be done again.

Now after speaking through clenched teeth to said moo cow and telling her that it was the line we had always signed on and had been done that way for the past 17 years by another lady who is still doing the same thing mind you and no-one had ever said anything before, I am beyond furious as it means our funding will be late. As for the staple removal, I told her it was agreed by other department staff that we could remove the staple as we wanted to copy and archive the documents for our records. Not a chance says she...the staple is there for a reason...what reason she couldn't tell me but as the document apparently says the staples MUST NOT be removed and no changes could be made to the document without prior notification then that is what we MUST abide by. Now both my boss and myself tried to find this little gem of information and for the life of us we cannot find where it says that and I spoke to the lady in this office who usually does the forms and well...I can't repeat what she said lol but she vented in a much more forceful way than I am right now! Perhaps the staple is what is holding their department together...who would know!

So now we await the return of the forms and will go through the whole thing again next week.

*Sigh*