Prescott’s a lightweight, if this BBC story is anything to go by:
Civil servants on Tyneside are under investigation amid allegations staff romped around naked in offices and had sex in toilets.
One person at the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) in Newcastle has been sacked after officials began an investigation.
The antics emerged after some members of staff were caught on CCTV cameras.
The RPA is part of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and administers millions of pounds in agricultural payments to farmers.
The agency said it was investigating claims that staff leapt naked from filing cabinets, had sex in office toilets, held break-dancing competitions during working hours and fought in a reception area.
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0 responses to “Naked Civil Servants”
“Antics”? “Romped”?
Well I’ve only worked in three or four office blocks in my career there have been examples of all those kinds of things (except for leaping naked from filing cabinets – get a life people) and quite a few a lot worse than any of that lot. I mean *so what*. This appears to only be news because it’s a civil service office.
In any work environment where stress levels rise a fight of some kind is a (remote) possibility, and sex in the office toilets? How tame. Just be glad all they were doing is screwing, in my experience there are plenty of worse things that could be happening.
And they got this from CCTV? How do they know it was a break dancing competion? It could have been someone having a fit ;-)
> This appears to only be news because it’s a civil service office.
It’s a civil service office who were already in the news because they have recently been getting no work done. Loads of farmers are in serious financial difficulty because this office haven’t sorted out their payments. Now it turns out that they haven’t failed to get the work done because they’ve been snowed under or something else forgivable, but because they’ve been busy having orgies.
People are more forgivable of such practices in private firms because (a) they can choose not to be their customers if they like and (b) private firms generally manage to combine fucking around with productivity. It’s not unfair that “You have to pay these people to have sex when they should be working or you’ll go to jail” is bigger news than “You don’t have to have anything to do with these people who may be having sex at work but who will lose their jobs if they don’t also get things done.”
I’m not sure I agree. After all you may not go to jail because of the messing about at companies I work for, but you certainly may miss out on some pension payments for a while due to administrative failings – and that’s pretty serious too.
OK so you’re right that the private sector is more lilely to actually bother to compensate you for such a mess up – and effectively discipline someone for the cock up.
And yes, people care more because ‘it’s their money’ but that applies to everything and anything the government ever does. By that justification Tony Blair taking a dump on government time is a major news item.
What really amazes me about it is the level of tabloid shock – considering how *tame* it all is. Although I am intriged. I just don’t get what’s so exciting about jumping off a filing cabinet – naked or otherwise ;-)
>>exciting about jumping off a filing cabinet
Desk fans with no guards would make it exciting.
> In any work environment where stress levels rise a fight of some kind is a (remote) possibility, and sex in the office toilets? How tame. Just be glad all they were doing is screwing, in my experience there are plenty of worse things that could be happening.
Oh, absolutely. I see appalling misbehaviour in my work environment all the time.
/self-employed
/works from home
Blimey, yeah. I’d like to see some civil servant EAT A DOOR.
Heh.
>Desk fans
But would it? There’s no mention of what they’re jumping on to. It appears to be the (naked) leap off the filing cabinet that is the attraction. There’s also no mention of whether or not the clothed leap was equally popular. I just don’t geddit.
>/self-employed
Exaclty – just think what would happen if there was more than just you and a puppy on site…
Maybe that’s the point of the story – Civil servants aren’t even any good at office misbehavior. It seems the private sector is more inventive, exciting, and efficient even at just plain arsing around! ;-)
>EAT A DOOR
I’ll second that…