A Day Late and a Dollar Short: When lawyers write copy.

For once, I actually have a decent excuse for not posting on time! The answer, of course, is Minbari fanfic the quarterly report.

Once every three months, it is my esteemed duty to take myriad pieces of badly-expressed statistics and poorly-disguised propaganda and, by means of a Faustian pact with the nefarious regions of the netherworld and my all-mighty English degree, re-form these pitiful excuses for composition into a document glorifying labor and the department wherein I toil.

Then, as per departmental policy, it will be ripped from my hands, dressed in all the verbiage that I had liberated it from, tarted up like a two-penny whore, and sent to the Boss on High.

A civil servant's life is not an 'appy one.

It does, however, afford me an interesting glimpse into the minds of people not accustomed to put pen to paper or finger to keyboard for the purpose of composing the written word. Sometimes, the results are amusing, such as the sentence informing me that such an amount of money was "collected from violating employers." *pauses while you read that*

And sometimes the results are cringe-inducing, such as the passage explaining how domestic workers "appear and congregate" during the summer months.

Yes. "Appear and congregate." Like lemmings, apparently.

Thankfully I am the Wielder of the All-Mighty Red Pen, so that phrase got chucked, but I still have to wonder about people who refer to their customers like that in an official and public document.

And this is why we have a Communications department.