Brendan 的个人资料Desperately Seeking...So...照片日志列表更多  |  工具 帮助 |
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2月6日 Friday FeastsFor someone who holds spelling and punctuation in such high regard, I can make some very silly mistakes sometimes. It was Jodi, my caustic Canadian chick friend that bought a kettle for my folks, not Jody, my tall Texan guy friend. I'm sorry. Appetizer I really like Crunchy Nut Cornflakes; they're sweet, but for some reason because they have nuts in them I can delude myself that they're providing some much-needed nutrient. I couldn't get them in Korea though, so I ended up with an industrial size box of Quaker Oats from CostCo. They were all pretty good, though after the first week I was on cinnamon overload. Soup I can't really think of anything that I've bought for the house. I was going to buy a kettle back when we needed one, but Jodi beat me to it (and just so you don't think that my friends regularly buy household goods for my home I should explain that she bought it to thank my parents for giving birth to a son who willingly gives up his bed for weeks at a time so Canadians can sleep comfortably). Before Christmas my room was a mess. Many years of accumulated crap was threatening to overtake the few shelves I had, so that they looked like this:
(If you look beyond my delight in drinking that bottle of Coopers Pale Ale you'll see some seriously overloaded shelving.) In the redecoration effort, my mother did most of the buying, while Rose and I (read: mostly Rose) did a lot of the work, including stripping wall paper, filling cracks in those walls, sanding and varnishing shelves, dusting books and washing pint glasses, and moving furniture, so that my room looked like this for a while:
Then it began to take shape: And now it looks like this: And the reason I'm answering this question in this way is simple: I bought the paper-scraper, half the paint, and the varnish for the room. (Also there are a number of people who wanted to see what this much-talked-about redecoration looked like, and I haven't got around to sending them photos.) Salad Lots of Korean commercials were funny, but I can't really think of any right now. This one for Berlitz is quite good: as are all the Carlsberg commercials, like this one:
Main Course Damn, Cinnamon Monkey is the sort of thing I'd come up with! Saffron Sidewinder. Dessert I haven't cried since Saturday. Appetizer When I was a teacher it was at least 5 times. Now it's more like 2, depending on what I'm reading or listening to. Soup My main sunglasses are black and kinda big in the eye with wide legs. They're very cool. Salad Moscow. Main Course The beer is very good, not as good a lots of places in England, but certainly better than Dublin, and miles better than Seoul or Valencia. Dessert I like purple skies and burnt orange skies, but only at the times of day - dusk and dawn - that you expect to see them. I can't imagine it being that colour all the time, because it's not even blue all the time! How our biggest employer no longer employs anyoneThe worst thing about being unemployed isn't the soul destroying feeling when you wake-up every morning and realise that the most important decision you're going to make that day is whether to watch Diagnosis Murder or Murder, She Wrote, nor is it the lack of finances that cripples your social life, nor is it even being told by a journalism graduate that your commerce and Spanish degree is "irrelevant", the worst thing about unemployment is discovering that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people out there employed in jobs that have been created solely for the purpose of employing people. I've nothing against this sort of thing when it results in tangible benefits for the rest of us (I mean Hitler achieved near-full employment during his early years and Germany got a super road system out of it), but when it results in more levels of bureaucracy and deeply frustrated citizens, I have to rebel.
Case in point: the Northern Ireland Civil Service. Every contact I've had with the Civil Disservice has led to feelings of confusion and intense anger. Last week I fired off an e-mail to one department to complain about the service, or lack thereof, that I had experienced. Over the following week I received no less than three e-mails, all from different areas of the organisation, but all saying exactly the same thing, telling me that my complaint was important to them and that someone would be in touch to discuss it. After the third e-mail I got fed up and wrote a letter to a newspaper and, amazingly, they printed it. On the very same day that my letter was published I received a letter from the manager of the department in question apologising for the way I had been treated. I didn't need a letter. I wrote to them via e-mail, I expected, and would've been happy with, an e-mail apology (e-mail, letter, or over the phone it would have still sounded insincere!) but instead I got three pointless e-mails and one unnecessary letter. That means four people are employed to do jobs you could have trained one monkey to carry out.
And it's not just in the customer complaints department where this desperate attempt to justify job titles is evident.
Despite frequent ads in the classified sections of our newspapers, the civil service no longer really employs anyone other than Human Resource consultants. These guys are supposed to help the civil service employ the right people, but rather than do this via resumes, references, and interviews, they're using the all-pervasive aptitude test. In the 17 years of my formal education I must have sat hundreds of tests and exams. Not one of them was as complicated in its administration as these aptitude tests.
The tests themselves aren't that bad (well actually, the first one I took involved a lot of maths without the aid of a calculator - I haven't had to do maths without a calculator in 13 years!) but the way they are administered is insane. You'd think they'd simply put the test paper on the table, put the answer sheet next to it, and wish you luck. Not so. They leave you with the answer sheet, and, it being multiple choice you can't simply write your name or index number on it, instead you have to fill in countless little circles that represent the letters and numbers of your identity. Then they give you the test paper and stand over you like hawks in case you try to sneak a peek, while the nominated speaker recites a monologue in a voice dripping with such boredom that you know she's done this 10 times already that day, and yet she still hasn't learned it by heart...After that you can take a few practice questions, but it's not as if they're located on page 1 of the paper, nor can you fill in your answers on page 1 of the answer booklet. Instead they'll be on page 7, with the answers to be completed on page 4. Then they'll read out the answers and explain them, at length. These practice questions, rather than warm-up your brain for the activities ahead, are so easy that they lull you into a false sense of security. When you open the test your head is addled through boredom and you can hear small yelps of panic as the candidates read the real questions. So then you'll do the actual test, which can be found on page 3, and fill in your answers on page 9. Then they take that question paper away, and you move on to another paper, but with the same ridiculous routine of practice and answer and rules and explanation. Again, none of this is necessary - it's simply a way for the HR firm to justify its own existence, and commission, to the civil service.
I sat there thinking two things: 1) This stupid, and 2) I can do better than this.
What's worse than all that though is the fact that the tests, as far as I can see, don't really test you in any meaningful way, nor does the way they're administered help to select the best people for the job. For one thing I don't know anyone who would really try to perform a serious calculation without a calculator. In fact, considering the fact that Excel is a prerequisite for most office jobs these days I have to wonder if people even really use calculators that much anymore. In the same way, the verbal reasoning tests require you to read a passage and then answer questions relating to it. But what do you do if you spot spelling and / or grammar mistakes in the passage or questions? (!)
What really grinds my gears though is when candidates don't follow the most basic instructions before they even get into the centre. Because, if you believe what you read in certain papers, there are a lot of bad people out there pretending to be me and you in order to get jobs, and benefits, and healthcare, and free taxi rides, you're now required to bring 7 pieces of identification to do anything. For the civil service exams you're supposed to bring photocopies of these documents. At least 1/3 of the candidates didn't, for whatever reason, do this. I cannot understand why; the excuse that you don't have access to a photocopier doesn't wash with me - I don't have access to one, at home or in work, but I can think of about 10 people who do (and that's not even considering family members) not to mention the fact that there are copy shops all over the city that'll do it for about 15p a page. Personally, if I were in charge and someone failed to follow the first instruction for the test, they'd automatically be disqualified. Same goes for people who don't bring calulators. I didn't have one but had to borrow from a cousin because it said in the invitation, in bold type, that they wouldn't be provided. They were. Again, no calculator, no jobbie.
When you see the civil service process from the inside you begin to understand why the service is so poor on the ground, and when you consider that the sort of people applying for the jobs can do long division but can't follow simple instructions you'll understand the meaning of the phrase "red tape". At this rate, the civil service is eventually going to employ more citizens than it actually serves, and I'll still be waiting for a sincere apology from a real person.
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