| April 1, 2003 - Betty battles Mrs. Tomias at the BB |
| Dear Friends, you'll remember that I once worked for an organization that I call the "Bumbling Bureaucracy" or "BB" for short. You'll also remember that on another page I discussed a woman I called Betty and another person named Mrs. Tomias, who was in charge of the Office Concerning All Things Written. Mrs. Tomias way, way outranked Betty, and that's what makes the following stories so funny. The BB had one xerox room that served the whole organization, so that meant you sometimes had to wait a while for a copy machine to become available to make your copies. One time Betty was in there xeroxing something like mad. A woman came up to her and said, "Excuse me. I'm from Mrs. Tomias' office and I need to xerox something for her urgently. May I bump you from this machine?" To which Betty replied, "You can tell Mrs. Tomias that my work is just as important as hers." Well, that went over like a fart in church! Mrs. Tomias' assistant began asking around and found out Betty's name. The next thing you know, telephones were jangling and memos were being written, etc. etc. etc. I think Betty was reprimanded, but things like that seemed to go over her head; she probably still felt she was in the right. I guess she never heard of the RHIP principle (Rank Has Its Privileges). The next run-in occurred when Betty worked late one night. You got to park around the building and in the parking garage according to your rank. So, of course, Mrs. Tomias had a spot right at the front door. One night when Betty was working late, she waited till everyone left and then moved her car from the garage to a spot in front of the building; Mrs. Tomias' spot in fact. Now this was understandable, because Betty didn't want to go into a parking garage late at night and I know everyone understood that part of it. However, Betty ended up not going home at all. So when Mrs. Tomias pulled up at 9:00 the next morning and found that she couldn't park her car, she was a bit put out. The guards did research on the parking decal and discovered it was Betty's car. So Betty was hauled out of the office and made to move her car. Now, I don't know that Mrs. Tomias ever asked the guards whose car it was, but knowing Mrs. Tomias' personality, I wouldn't put it past her and to then take vengeance on the miscreant. However, wouldn't you think Betty would have guessed that those prime parking spaces belonged to the higher-up's? Wouldn't you think that even out of common courtesy, she would have made it a point to move her car before 8:00 a.m.? But that was Betty! When she transferred out of our Division, I was forced to organize a farewell lunch for her and collect money for a gift, although I was contractor scum. When we were all seated in the restaurant, we waited and waited, but Betty never showed up! They accused me of not having let her know what time it was or the place or whatever, but I kept assuring them all that Betty had the details of the event. We went back to the office after 2 hours and she was sitting at her desk! She said she had only just got in because she had had car trouble on the way to work that morning. She then opened the gift I had bought her (a beautiful notebook and pad set) and just nonchalantly tossed it aside like so much dreck. Couldn't she have phoned that morning to say her car was broken? Couldn't she have asked a friend for a lift or taken a cab? But that was Betty! Next entry Previous entry Go to diary entries Go back home |