Out there in cyber space there are well known lists of Dead Porn Stars and Dead Wrestlers. Both professions have an unfortunately high mortality rate due to various circumstances. However, from my own career perspective, there is another list I would like to add to this sad pantheon. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to the world the list of…

Dead Public Servants

Now I’m not referring to this guy – http://www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/fivedays.asp Rather, in the office last week, a departing employee was gushing to a couple of us how he would keep in touch and never forget us, and I replied, no you won’t. We’ll never hear from you again, and in a few days we will have forgotten you ever existed.

Because it’s true, in the public sector, there is such a high turnover of personnel, that once a public servant leaves – they are dead to us!

A point well illustrated this week when I turned to the other party in that conversation and asked, ‘Hey, who was it that left last week, and we said we would forget they ever existed in a couple of days?’

‘It was Nigel.’

‘Christ, that’s right. I’ve forgotten already.’

In my lengthy public service career, which has gone on far too long cos I never got a real job, like decades, but it feels like centuries, I’ve palled up with so many people. People of both sexes with whom I’ve established a wonderful rapport because we all had some common quirk or interest which we could riff off endlessly and lighten up the endless hours of meaningless busywork.

But in almost every case they have gone, moved on, and we’ve never kept in touch. Not one of them. Dead to me. I’m dead to them. It’s like they never existed. Well, except for the ones who did something really naughty and really memorable and were forcibly removed from their positions, and of course that guy in Queensland when I was passing through in the eighties, who turned out to be a serial killer with a penchant for cute young guys like me. Boy we never forgot him… except I’ve even forgotten his name. Which I guess illustrates my point succinctly.

Which makes me ponder, now that I myself am entering the last lap so to speak, the final years of my stellar public service career, will I too be forgotten the day after that last tearful day I walk through the revolving door, probably pissed out of my head after one final knees up with all my great pals. Eh? Will they be gathered around the water cooler a few days later asking, hey, who was that guy who left last week? What was his name?

Well fuck that. That’s not how I want to go out baby. When I go I want them to remember me. I want them all going, ‘Boy, now that guy really got canned.’ In fact I want to go out like this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yngq9NmOnFw

But sadly that’s the lot of the public servant, the anonymous cog in the wheel. There’s no list of Dead (to us) Public Servants. The Dead Porn Stars and Wrestlers get a gong, but for us, it’s just a couple of people gathered around a water cooler going, ‘Damn, who was that dude who left last week?’