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BOFH: Pain fear games
It's an austere year ahead - let's get festive
And yet the money ends up being spent anyway
“They transfer the money to us but unfortunately we don’t have enough time to process the transaction, place and order with a vendor and have it delivered and receipted in that financial year. So we’d end up with an item having to be paid for out of next year’s budget...”
“And yet the money ends up being spent anyway,” the Boss says
“Some of it does,” The PFY agrees “On incidentals – just rats-and-mice end-of-year expenses.”
“Rats-and-mice end-of-year expenses like 4 cases of wine?”
“Departments are permitted – nay encouraged - to give a small gifts to other departments to foster end-of-year goodwill.”
“Three new laptops.”
“Off-the-shelf items that are used for remote access by some users. With no lead time for delivery they’re easy to purchase with any end-of-year surplus.”
“A 54 inch Plasma TV and a case of whisky.”
“For Security. Long work, often in very lonely surroundings, we feel it’s important to recognise them with something special.”
“Well it’s not going to happen this year! The departmental managers have agreed that they’d rather not risk any untoward incidents this year and have elected instead to give Christmas bonuses in lieu of the costs of an official function.”
“Well everyone likes a cash bonus I guess,” the PFY nods
“Well it’s not exactly cash. To foster keeping money in-house we’ve decided to issue meal vouchers as the bonus.”
“Meal vouchers? But the meals are free!”
“Not as of next year... For anyone below level 4.7 pay grade leastways.”
“So there’s no more Christmas wine?”
“No.”
“No more freebie laptops?”
“No.”
“No more TVs and whisky”
“No.”
. . .
In retrospect the paintball game was the best Christmas activity the PFY and I have ever organised. Three elevators' worth of management types, all frantically groping around in a darkened basement for their car keys while an assortment of 4.6 and under pay grade staff armed with night vision goggles and high powered fully automatic paintball guns bombarded them with ½ frozen pellets.
And security apparently saw nothing.
Must have been a power glitch...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
