Mr Pipe rather than Cover Her Arse

Remember those days when you used to get paid weekly and you shuffled up to the window of the wages department and have a brown envelope thrust into your hand by a gent in a green tank top, a bristling grey moustache, smoking a pipe and the charm of an East German border guard. and then the window would slam shut. You never saw inside the office and never spoke to these guys, maybe there was a lady who seemed to make tea in the office, but you never saw these people outside the wages dept. They always maintained their jesuitical distance.



Then around about the 80s, maybe, the name changed to Personnel. The gruff men disapeared slowly, pensioned off to their allotments or caravan sites, doing things with their whippets and brassicas. The new people of personnel were ernest women carrying tick lists of requirements, needs and functions. They didn't deal with wages, just oversaw contracts, arranged interviews and such like. The smoky fort knox office became the open door office with a plant.

Then in the thrusting 90s it transmutated into Human Resources and disapeared up into its own fundament. So concerned with Resources that they barely have time to deal with people in the company. At least you knew where you stood with Mr Pipe in the Wages Dept, he didn't give a fuck about you and let you know it. Human Resources don't either but as in all the 00s they lie about it. they are there, those nice women, with barely a pipe amongst them to cover the the company's arse. Remember resources are mined, quarried until they're exhausted and everything that was useful is spent and ends up on the slag heap. Why do companies do appraisals? Most of it is lip service to developing people and a means of controlling the work force; all shit and piss. Just give me Mr Pipe, the window and the total lack of interest.