True story: the departmental facilities manager comes to my door, smiling and asking, “D’ya have a minute? Can I close your door?” Can he close my door? What did I do now?
Six years ago, when I first started working for the government as a citizenship judge, our department didn’t have a facilities manager. If the building management company had a problem to report (east entrance closed for construction or whatever) they had email addresses for everyone in all the departments, and they just emailed us. Meanwhile, if you needed to sign out the department car, you grabbed a binder in the mailroom with the mileage record and car key. If you needed a taxi, the chits sat in a drawer in the mailroom – and be sure to return the copy for month-end. If an office lightbulb burned out, you phoned this number.

Then, a couple of years later, a clerk was promoted as the new departmental facilities manager, and everything changed. The building management still sent out emails to the whole building, but then the departmental facilities guy re-sent the same email to everyone in our department. The taxi chits now sat in a locked safe, and only his two assistants had access. The car also had to be negotiated through his assistants, and the binder had four new checklists. When I tried getting a lightbulb replaced, I was told that henceforth, all such requests went through the departmental facilities manager.
My favorite was his email about new safety equipment for the department car. Given the health dangers posed by windshield washer fluid, the car is now equipped with goggles and rubber gloves. Henceforth, department staff must employ the appropriate safety equipment when refilling the windshield washer reservoir. No kidding.
So now: here was He Himself, closing my door and sitting across my desk. “It’s about your email…” he said, still smiling. “Some people might find that thing about rocket science demeaning. Y’know, I don’t have a problem, coming to you and talking about it… But some people might feel that they’ve been demeaned and take it to their supervisors.”
The issue? Two months earlier, after a morning citizenship ceremony, some kid went up the judge’s podium and reefed on the microphone, breaking it off at the plug. So I sent an email, asking that it be repaired. The reply: the facilities manager had to send the request to Vancouver. Okay. Two weeks later, I sent a second email, and the request was still being processed. A month later, with a third email, I learned that the original request to Vancouver had somehow screwed up… screwed itself up?
Meanwhile, we were running three citizenship ceremonies weekly, each with a formal procession – RCMP, Judge, Clerk of the Ceremony, a hundred new citizens and two-hundred guests – and throughout the ceremony, the judge (me) and the clerk had to trade a single bulky mikestand back and forth. It looked amateur, like the government couldn’t afford another mike.
So, as we entered month three without the mike, I sent email four, suggesting that we only needed a quick trip to Walmart, a $30 microphone and a petty cash receipt: “This isn’t rocket science,” I concluded. And this remark is what brought the facilities guy to my office.
“I never said that anyone in particular wasn’t a rocket scientist,” I parried lamely. “I only said replacing a microphone isn’t rocket science.”
Still smiling, eerily: “But somebody might feel demeaned by that comment.”
Now, in the Cult of Administration, it’s almost impossible to tell whether someone is cynically gaming the system or genuinely insane. Was this a “gotcha”’ moment, setting me up? Or did he truly believe in Administrative Self-esteem and the War on Disrespect? Was he simply trying to warn me about politically incorrect language? His weird smile gave no clue.
At that point, I foolishly turned back to my computer, put fingers to keyboard, and returned to work. I ceased to acknowledge his presence (crassness I now regret). Moments later, I heard him let himself out. Then, for the next week I waited for the other shoe to drop.
At least I didn’t apologize. A year earlier, another judge apologized to a clerk for an innocent compliment, for which he was punished with a 12-hour “sensitivity” course. In the War on Disrespect, apologies are blood in the water. So no apologies. My defense would be: “I was so intimidated! This big guy sat there, grinning at me and accusing me of demeaning people! He was attacking me!” It could’a been fun.
A week later, I finally received another email from the facilities guy, but one sent to the whole department. He was announcing his promotion! He was getting his reward for making everybody’s job more difficult – a sideways promotion out of everybody’s hair. I was saved!
Now, in the HUMA’s ruling Public Service, there are two kinds of people: people who have a “job” and find satisfaction in serving others; and people who have a “career” and make the job harder for their colleagues. The fundamental problem of the Public Service is the fundamental disconnect between getting the job done and advancing one’s own career.
In private industry, there is a real Bottom Line. Success usually requires cooperation from the people under you. Or you may get ahead short-term as a Type-A dictator, and your underlings may eventually sabotage you. But either way, dictatorial or cooperative, the measure of one’s personal worth is efficiency, the Bottom Line.
In HUMA’s Public Service, there is no Bottom Line, except performance targets any department sets for itself – which it always proudly surpasses. There’s no competitor to set real benchmarks and no real connection between performance and budget. So how do ambitious young managers earn promotion? What is the visible sign of sanctity? Here are the Holy Words that can consume a lifetime: “Transparency and Accountability.”
Now, our facilities guy was like a Type-A dictator in private industry, working a short-term strategy and vulnerable to sabotage. On the other hand, there is also the competent, well-loved manager, who may be ambivalent about sacrificing herself to an all-consuming career, but who’s protective toward “her people” and actually gets the job done.
But then, defining the Public Service culture, there are the Ambitious, true devotees of the Janus-faced god of Transparency and Accountability. Their ritual sacrifice is the Meeting. Their sacrament is the Report. And their sanctity is CYA, jumping through constantly multiplying procedural hoops, while avoiding responsibility for any decisions and disasters.
More about this later. Meanwhile, when dealing with Public Service clerks, the people actually on the shop floor, remember that they are almost certainly oppressed far more by their own managers, than they may be (unavoidably) oppressing you. So try a little sympathy.

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