Freckles & Doubt

I'm a Commissioner of Oaths in my employment capacity, as a result of the fact that my Cherished Institution requires CoO certification for anyone above a certain payclass. Generally I don't have to do much with my Madly Official Stamps, since, while the institutional Powers That Be do generate a list of available commissioners, they only seem to advertise it in a locked filing cabinet in a basement somewhere behind a sign saying "beware of the leopard", with the net result that few tragically uncertified students actually work out I'm available. However, there's been a slightly odd rush of certification requests in the last few days. Either they've fired the leopard, or something about the approaching end of year brings people out in documentary hives.

The certifications of copy are dead routine, and, as I just said to the nice young man whose certificates I stamped, probably among the easiest things that students could possibly ask me to do. What is more difficult is the commissioning of a document, which is the whole sworn oath thing where I'm attesting that the signature on the document is that of the person in my office who is also the person appearing in the identity document they've given me as proof. Which is a madly ritualistic bit of legal wossname where I actually have to administer an oath, and always makes me feel as though I should be wearing a gown and wig and breaking out the more cumbersome sort of legalistic jargon. (Even though I always, without fail, default to the "truly affirm" version rather than the "so help me God" one, on the grounds that someone else's relationship with God is none of my business, and also that the invocation of a deity doesn't assist the integrity of my participation in the slightest being as how I don't believe in him).

I don't have to commission documents too often, and at least two of the occasions where people have arrived in my office with a commissioning request, I've had to gently decline. Both were fellow staff members, who wanted me to commission a document on behalf of an absent family member, and both of whom, while they didn't say anything explicit, managed to convey by generally huffy body language their annoyed incredulity at the fact that I wouldn't just stamp the damned things already, good grief, despite the inarguable absence not just of the vital personage concerned, but of every sort of verifiable element to which I'm supposed to be attesting.

Lawful Good doesn't work like that. I have a stamp which says I've verified things to my own satisfaction, and a quite clearly written and unequivocal guideline document which lays out exactly what I'm supposed to be verifying, and I'm quite frankly buggered if I'm going to make a mockery of the system by using my powers for anything other than their intended purpose. What the hell, even. How dare you expect it of me.

Dear attempted-falsifying colleagues, in that momentary drawing of lines you tried to implement, where you and I were comrades standing against the giant mechanisms of meaningless bureaucracy, you have badly misunderstood my position in the whole thing. I'm not on your side of the line. I frankly resent that you think I might be, particularly given that both of you are higher ranking in institutional terms than I am, and the whole momentary-comradeship thing elides a power balance that might conceivably be read as pressurising a junior staff member. I get that you are not attempting massive fraud, and this is convenience, and your family member almost certainly is who you say they are, and probably even signed this. But no. It might not matter in the greater scheme of things, but the integrity of my word damned well matters to me. We live in a world where, globally, systems are being systematically screwed by this sort of personal-convenience thinking. This is a tiny meaningless microcosm, but I will have no truck with it. You want my signature, you take the system on board.

There's that annoying little intersection near our home, where there's a stop street to the access road before the main yield to the major road. I always stop at the stop street, because cars tend to peel off madly from the main road and dive diagonally into the access road in front of me without warning. So yesterday I paused in my usual restrained and law-abiding sort of fashion according to my Lawful Good, and the complete idiot in a souped-up Corolla with a black paint job and mag wheels came roaring up behind me and overtook me at the stop street as I was pulling off. I slammed on anchors enough to miss him, probably with centimetres to spare, and engaged in a few seconds of extremely unladylike behaviour during which hooting, shouted imprecations and the employment of the middle finger may have featured. (I am a little tense at the moment, because work, but also because I am not driving legally and a collision would ramify into serious nastiness).

There is a point to this anecdote other than bloody bad drivers - bloody bad drivers are a fact of life and hardly worthy of comment. The point is that I drove behind this idiot for the next five or ten minutes in traffic, addressing to him an angry monologue which cast aspersions wholesalely on his ancestry, personal hygiene, mental processes, life choices, taste and moral standing, with added hand gestures and a considerable degree of non-Wiccan-approved ill-wishing which with any luck will cause all four of his fancy tyres to explode just in time for his car to be stolen while his wife leaves him for a rally driver and the police ticket him for dangerous driving. The fun thing is that he was doing exactly the same thing to me. I could see his hands waving, and he kept glaring at me in his rear-view mirror as I lurked behind him mouthing abuse. We were having this sort of virtual, abstracted shouting match which was actually weirdly satisfying despite being completely intangible and disconnected. As road rage responses go, it was relatively non-destructive, although beautifully illustrative of that strange power-trip driver thing where it's automatically the other person's fault. (It was totally his fault. I mean, really. What was he angry about? that I stopped at a stop street? good grief.)

Work is hell, I am utterly exhausted and still somewhat husky, and I am responding to the dear gazelles by mutating into a grumpy grizzly bear. Life is full of seething hordes of people who don't read my notices, something I take personally. Even the advisors are doing it. There is frustration. But after this week things settle down and I may once again be human. librsa just gently pointed out that I'm hardly blogging and not seeing anyone, which I fear is to be expected at this time of year. I will send up flags when humanity is restored.

I have a new skill. It entails running a critical eye over the agenda of any committee meeting I'm expected to attend, and working out where in the agenda items stop being (a) relevant to me, (b) useful, or (c) interesting. Then I invent an entirely specious and apocryphal second meeting which I have to attend starting at that point in the agenda, and solemnly inform the servicing officer of my need to leave early at same. This skilled avoidant behaviour is, for some reason, absolutely failing to trigger my Lawful Good. Clearly committees are evil and it's ok for my paladin soul to dodge them when necessary. It's also necessary for my mental health, given that my pile of committee folders is currently just under a foot high.

Today I enlivened the final in a series of three meetings in quick succession by delicately suggesting that the contribution of a particular department to a particular project may not be entirely necessary in the greater scheme of things. That department has hitherto been staunchly behind the idea of eliminating unnecessary participation and elements have been falling like flies, right up until the principle was applied to them, at which point they became upset and defensive and couldn't see the logic. Fortunately I don't particularly care about this particular outcome and my entirely apocryphal meeting fell due shortly after the arguments started, enabling me to waft out of the room in a haze of smiling calm, leaving wrangling and dissatisfaction in my wake. I also spectacularly fail to feel bad about this, which was absolutely a chaotic action in all possible senses of the word. I may need to re-watch Captain America, my Lawful Good is slipping.

The re-working of my job description is involving increasing numbers of high-level committees in which hideous power is mine, but I still hate committees. Benevolent dictatorship remains my political system of choice, possibly because, somewhere deep in my psyche, I am horribly aware that people cannot be trusted in their own best interests.

In other, entirely unrelated news, the question is whether bunnies, corgis or babies make the most adorable Doctor. The answer, of course, is "owls".