There came Gyptians to Corse Field yeats,
Black, tho they warna bonny;
They danced so neat and they danced so fine,
Till down came the bonny lady.
She came trippin down the satir,
And her nine maidens afore her;
But up and starts him Johny Fa,
And he cast the glamour oer her.
CHAPTER 16 THE NEW BUILDING
John Gilchrist walked to the end of the plastic boxes and cut open the cable ties holding lids on.
The lights flickered, dimmed and came back.
“You will be careful with those scissors won’t you,” said Mrs Lexington.
“Yes,” said John “I will.” He wanted to tell his new boss he was grown up and used scissors before, but he knew better. Just go with the flow and hope something would turn up. Maybe she would fall under a bus. Useless cow.
“Well I don’t want you getting cut do I.” She probably treated John like a child to show her superiority, and if she took on a micro management supervisory role, she didn’t feel useless.
“No Mrs Lexington.” John stacked the lids against a partition. This new building was open plan on three floors round a series of courtyards. The only actual rooms were for kitchens, photo copiers and senior staff.
The flickering lights were supposed to be motion sensitive and switch off if no one was there. Worried looking sparkies wandered by with remote controls, while people in cheap suits made notes. John supposed they were contractors who'd persuaded MOD to pay for all this.
It was built to house departments from older sites like Middleavon and Winchester that were closing. It wasn’t as big as Abbey Wood, but it was getting there.
And since Middleavon was only 15 or 20 miles from Carbonec, most of the staff had moved here with their departments, including Mrs Lexington the E1, now Johns boss.
This new block was blessed by the attentions of interior designers working to a budget. Which meant the sturdy old grey metal cupboards and filing cabinets were replaced with blue plasticy ones from a supplier “approved” by the designer.
“I don’t think we have room for all these files,” said John.
“Yes we do, it was all calculated before we left Middleavon,” said Mrs Lexington “One filing cabinet equals two pull out drawers in these new cupboards.”
“OK.” John had no idea what the titles meant. Things like “ Finance FOO Phase Three” probably didn’t mean much to anyone, but at least the numbers followed a sort of order.
Except there weren’t enough suspension files.
John saw Mrs Lexington was gassing with someone, so he went to the old stores building himself. At least that hadn’t changed.
“Got any suspension files?” he asked
“Blimey. What is it with suspension files,” said Merryweather the store man “I’m almost out. Everyone wants em.”
“It’s the new filing system. These drawers we’ve got to use.”
“What drawers?”
“You know. They’ve got rid of the filing cabinets and we have to use these cupboard things. Except the drawers have no bottoms. It’s just this frame that takes suspension files. So everyone's got to use them now.”
“Everyone? For every file?”
“Yes. I suppose.”
“That could be hundreds of thousands of them.”
“Yeah. I suppose. Did no one tell you?”
“No they fucking didn’t. Bloody ‘ell.”
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