{"id":27466,"date":"2014-08-22T07:11:24","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T12:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=27466"},"modified":"2014-08-22T07:11:24","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T12:11:24","slug":"overtime-by-charles-stross","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/08\/22\/overtime-by-charles-stross\/","title":{"rendered":"“Overtime” by Charles Stross"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another short work from the “Laundry” series by Charles Stross<\/a>:<\/p>\n

All bureaucracies obey certain iron laws, and one of the oldest is this: get your seasonal leave booked early, lest you be trampled in the rush.<\/p>\n

I broke the rule this year, and now I\u2019m paying the price. It\u2019s not my fault I failed to book my Christmas leave in time \u2014 I was in hospital and heavily sedated. But the ruthless cut and thrust of office politics makes no allowance for those who fall in the line of battle: \u201cYou should have foreseen your hospitalization and planned around it\u201d said the memo from HR when I complained. They\u2019re quite right, and I\u2019ve made a note to book in advance next time I\u2019m about to be abducted by murderous cultists or enemy spies.<\/p>\n

I briefly considered pulling an extended sickie, but Brenda from Admin has a heart of gold; she pointed out that if I volunteered as Night Duty Officer over the seasonal period I could not only claim triple pay and time off in lieu, I\u2019d also be working three grades above my assigned role. For purposes of gaining experience points in the fast-track promotion game they\u2019ve steering me onto, that\u2019s hard to beat. So here I am, in the office on Christmas Eve, playing bureaucratic Pok\u00e9mon as the chilly rain drums on the roof.<\/p>\n

(Oh, you wondered what Mo thinks of this? She\u2019s off visiting her ditz of a mum down in Glastonbury. After last time we agreed it would be a good idea if I kept a low profile. Christmas: the one time of year when you can\u2019t avoid the nuts in your family muesli. But I digress.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another short work from the “Laundry” series by Charles Stross: All bureaucracies obey certain iron laws, and one of the oldest is this: get your seasonal leave booked early, lest you be trampled in the rush. I broke the rule this year, and now I\u2019m paying the price. It\u2019s not my fault I failed to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,57,28],"tags":[702,970,85],"class_list":["post-27466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-humour","category-media","tag-nsfw","tag-occult","tag-sf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-790","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27467,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27466\/revisions\/27467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}