The Cassandra Complex

Some of you will have heard the first half of this story already. Please bear with me; I just need to have a rant.

As part of my job, I have the dubious privelege of processing the financial approvals for people that have had a workstation occupational health and safety assessment that has recommended the purchase of an ergonomic chair. This includes ensuring that all the appropriate approvals are sought and that no one will get thrown in jail for any reason.

Recently, there have been a spate of chairs that have needed to be purchased. For the most part, this happens very smoothly. Get report, get quote, get approval, get chair. It's not rocket science.

But then there's Bart. (Note: Not his real name.)

At first it seemed to all go swimmingly. The chair was on order, and arrived. I collected it and it was sitting near my desk. I emailed Bart and told him his chair was in. The reply? "It already arrived last week, thanks." I beg your pardon?

It turns out that Bart (boo! hiss!) had gone out to a second chair supplier - not the one we bought the chair from but one of the prestige ones that makes the chair custom for you - and had a personal fitting for a chair. This second supplier had then delivered the extra plush - it was described to be by a third party as "like something out of Star Trek" - chair to Bart.

Bart came down to look at the chair I had sitting near my desk. He didn't want it... strangely enough.

I got approval to take the Star Trek chair off him, because it wasn't approved and, what's more, bore no resemblance to what the hardworking OH&S assessor had recommended. But by this point Bart had written his name on the chair in white out and it was well outside the trial period. We had to pay for it. So I gave it to a very happy senior executive, who didn't mind the stray smudges of white out that I hadn't quite gotten out.

Bart still refused to take the original chair, so I got approval to issue it to someone else who'd had the same model recommended. Waste not, want not. You snooze, you lose. Etcetera.

Bart was also - supposedly - told off for going off and spending funds without approval.

His supervisor, presumably seeking to shut Bart up, went back to the OH&S assessor with the dimensions of the Star Trek chair, seeing if that would be ok for Bart. No, it wouldn't, came the reply (so if we'd let him keep it we would have been negligent!) - but a chair that had some of the features of both might be ok.

So I got a quote for a chair that matched those specs. It was twice the price of the original (though still less than the Star Trek chair). We requested that they prepare and send us a trial chair.

That brings us to today. Today two different people told me that they saw Bart accepting delivery of a chair in the foyer. I rang my contact who was actually processing the order of the chair to confirm that was our expected trial chair. No, it wasn't.

My contact then rang Bart (because I knew if I did I'd scream obscenities at him) and found out that the chair was from a different supplier - in fact, the original supplier I'd bought a chair from.

As far as we know, he has no approval for it. Again.

Best of all, it turns out that it's the exact same chair that we purchased for him in the first instance, the one he refused to take because it was "uncomfortable"! Of course, Bart refuses to acknowledge that it is the same chair. But given that he only sat in the original chair for two seconds (I counted) I'm not entirely sure that he is the best person to judge that.

And of course, none of what I've written here conveys the arrogance with which this person has dealt with me, with my contact, and with the system.

This is the straight jacket I am soon to be issued. How stupid can people possibly be?!

(As an aside, if you want to laugh at some very poor taste senior citizens humour, check out Info4Pensioners, which is where I got the straight jacket image from.)