The mood was sober. I had just joined a government department, as part of a year away from private sector work, and had been warned about the efficiencies of the new office. I say warned because most people expect a rather cushiony and delightfully inefficient existence in government departments but the one I had joined had a reputation of not taking things lightly. And thus far that morning, it seemed true.
It was my first day on the job and a Departmental Meeting had been summoned. In the private sector, you have to force people to hold meetings but here at this most efficient government office, no one had to try and everyone was assembled. The person in-charge of the meeting had a determined look on his face. Everyone sat down around a table and the man announced me as the new arrival. He then proceeded to disclose that the meeting had been called for a most important purpose. I listened more closely. What was the agenda? Someone asked. The man leaned in towards the desk and looked at everyone before saying, The purpose of this meeting is to decide how to conduct a meeting. Therefore, let the Minutes of this meeting be titled How to conduct a meeting.
So, everyone had to give ideas about how meetings ought to be conducted. It was all comfortably inefficient till Power Point slides were mentioned. That was when the question arose: should they be handed out at the beginning or at the end of the presentation? Seven people, no less, who were paid by the tax-payers money were sitting around a table agitating over the timing of handing out Power Point slides. One gentleman said that it was accepted that they were handed out at the beginning while the other insisted it was not so. Since consensus could not be reached, they obviously had to drop names. One said that his cousin worked at a blue-chip software company in California and they always do it after the meeting. To counter this, the man In-charge had to come up with something authoritative and what better authority than the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? My cousin works in Saudi, he said, and there everyone receives a copy of these slides before the meeting. There was a tense silence in the room but eventually it was settled. Authority and Saudi Arabia would trump the US and the Silicon Valley business model and Power Point slides were to be handed out before each presentation.
Another thing that I realised about a government job was this: titles/designations matter and they matter a lot. You could be forgiven for forgetting someones name and lineage but not their designation or the associated deference. One fine day, the man In-charge asked a new-comer (at the bottom of the food chain) to dig up some case-law on a particular point. The new-comer had earlier been admonished about using language, in her emails, that did not sound official enough. So the poor young thing wrote the following message. Dear Sir, As requested by you, I looked up some case-law and have attached it with this email for your kind perusal. All hell broke loose. Within 5 minutes, the new-comer had an e-mail in her inbox that read as follows: Request?!! You think I would request you? You are the junior-most person in this office while I have ten years of experience. I will never request you for anything. Please do not flatter yourself by thinking that I could not do the work and hence requested you. I really thought it was, in a way, rather sweet of the man-in-charge to clarify that no requests had been made. Do bear in mind that this story pre-dates the law on sexual harassment at the workplace so the man-in-charge was being extremely conscientious.
Another thing that I realised about government jobs was that you have to look the part. Its amazing how such a large proportion of government officials have the same body and muscle movements. The clerks mostly smile too much and without rhyme or reason and they will always wait for the senior officer in the room before they start laughing. The Sahab will sit in the car and look out of the window, never at the people seeing him off, as the car pulls out.
The offices of the Government of Pakistan move like a behemoth; awe-inspiringly slow but with remarkable flexibility. They are also refreshing in some way. I say this because after having worked at this office for six months I ran into a gentleman I had never seen before. We met in the elevator. I introduced myself and he said, Oh I know you, Sir. I thought he was merely ingratiating himself in some obscure way but it turns out he did know me. His designation was my Personal Assistant and the Government of Pakistan employed him. An irrelevant matter if he never showed up for work.
The writer is a Barrister of Lincolns Inn and practices in Lahore. He has a special interest
in Anti-trust / Competition law. He can be reached at [email protected]
