Two: The Memo (continued)

"I approached my supervisor within the Complaints Department and told her that I had a complaint to make. She said that staff complaints were dealt with by the Personnel Department. I went and spoke to the Personnel Department who told me that because my complaint was about the personnel within the Complaints Department I'd have to speak to you."
"What's the great big problem, then?" says Tash. Then she laughs, a brief, excruciating, fake little laugh and I worry momentarily that Napier is going to knock her unconcious with a chop to the side of the neck, something that he has threatened to do from time to time.
"I feel that all the other employees within the department are striving towards my redundancy."
She wants to tell him to stop being silly, and probably should do just that, but something about the childlike look of appeal with which he fixes her provokes the question:-
"How so?"
"I look at it like this," Napier begins to explain. "Our stated aim is to improve levels of customer satisfaction by dealing with complaints swiftly and efficiently and reporting customer service issues, where appropriate, to other departments, thus minimising future complaints."
"Quite right," says Tash. She hasn't caught on.
"In which case, if we all do our jobs properly there will be less work for us to do, and presumably less of us required to do it."
"Ah, I see where you're coming from." Bet she doesn't. "Of course, we can't expect to eradicate complaints altogether."
"If that's the case then what are we doing here? We would seem to be working towards an unattainable goal, pursuing the ghost of an idea. It makes no sense."
"Surely we can consider ourselves successful if we get it right almost all of the time."
"Can we?" He asks, making it clear that he thinks this idea is half-baked. "But if only a tiny, intractable minority are complaining how can the continued employment of all these people be justified?" Napier says this in a louder voice than is perhaps necessary and gestures towards the rest of the office, where several faces emerge, ferret-like, from their cubicles.
"I think, Napier, that perhaps we should fix an appointment to discuss this further."
"Okay," he says, retrieving a half-eaten apple and Fanny Hill from his desk drawer, "I'll wait to hear from you."

He's still waiting. We heard that Natasha, who likes to be called Tash, transferred sideways into Purchasing. Our department is being rebranded as Customer Care. Napier believes that this demonstrates the power of The Memo in action.