The Memo Fights Back In Us War On Waste
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday October 9, 1987
WASHINGTON, Friday: In an effort to cut Uncle Sam's housekeeping costs, many agencies are electronically blocking telephones so workers can't make personal long-distance calls. Other US offices are installing sound-activated cutoff switches in federal bathrooms so that prolonged periods of silence result in the lights being turned off.
This high-tech war on waste has produced some savings. It has also spawned underground resistance from "feds" (federal employees), some of whom survived building blackouts under Lyndon Johnson; chilly offices under Richard Nixon; pay parking and cold-only water faucets from Jimmy Carter and now a give-at-the-office drug testing program being pushed by Ronald Reagan.
These intrepid fed-up feds, whom government officials say represent only a tiny portion of the civil service, are fighting back with the tool they know best, the ultimate bureaucratic weapon: The Memo.
A number of bogus memos and edicts, on official stationary and written in governmentese, dealing with phone policies and urine tests have been been written by the government employees.
This week, four readers of The Washington Post (two feds, one a contractor and another the spouse of a concerned civil servant) sent or brought to the paper an official-looking Pentagon directive that is now making the rounds. Each asked if the memo was true.
Pentagon officials say the memo is a fake. But the fact that some people think it is for real gives an idea of how things are going in the federal establishment.
The memo in question deals with "rest room policy". It allows employees a ration of 20 rest room trips per month and sets out a code for rest room behaviour and "voice identification" via a computerised system. But its final paragraph is perhaps the most alarming and, potentially, the most embarrassing:
"... all rest room stalls are being equipped with timed paper roll retractors. If a stall is occupied for more than three minutes an alarm will sound, the roll of paper in the stall will retract, and the stall door will open."
© 1987 Sydney Morning Herald
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