Question: When is a bathroom paper towel not a paper towel?
Answer: When it is a toilet roll.
It’s funny that the most trivial things point up the nature of an institution.
The staff toilets (or rather toilet) have run out of paper towel. The school has run out of paper towel. The school has (allegedly) ordered paper towels. They have not arrived. For some time.
This morning I decided, during a free period, to bring things to some sort of crisis.
I went to the front desk of Administration/Reception (in itself virtually a capital offence in our school) and indicated that as there were no towels in the loo and as the school had none, I was prepared to go to a local shop and get some.
The panicked chaos which resulted from this innocuous offer was almost comical in its intensity as bewilderment, frustration and impotence characterised the responses of the ladies behind the counter.
A brief exchange with The Owner merely instituted a Catch-22 sequence of futility which, as the abstract noun suggests, achieved nothing.
So the lack of towel was compensated by a giant roll of toilet paper. A paper which disintegrates instantly when attempting to deal with residual water on the hands.
My offer ignored with embarrassed rapidity. My suggestion obviously something which threatened the whole ethos (and I use that word with qualification) of the school.
So no towels. And no prospect of towels.
I raised the point in a staff meeting and, while my concerns were recognised as valid, the mindless obstruction of the school was seen as an insuperable obstacle to a satisfactory solution.
If they are like this over something which is unthreatening and easily rectified what, the logic demands, will they be like with something of major importance.
The answer is obvious.
The course of action, less so.
Answer: When it is a toilet roll.
It’s funny that the most trivial things point up the nature of an institution.
The staff toilets (or rather toilet) have run out of paper towel. The school has run out of paper towel. The school has (allegedly) ordered paper towels. They have not arrived. For some time.
This morning I decided, during a free period, to bring things to some sort of crisis.
I went to the front desk of Administration/Reception (in itself virtually a capital offence in our school) and indicated that as there were no towels in the loo and as the school had none, I was prepared to go to a local shop and get some.
The panicked chaos which resulted from this innocuous offer was almost comical in its intensity as bewilderment, frustration and impotence characterised the responses of the ladies behind the counter.
A brief exchange with The Owner merely instituted a Catch-22 sequence of futility which, as the abstract noun suggests, achieved nothing.
So the lack of towel was compensated by a giant roll of toilet paper. A paper which disintegrates instantly when attempting to deal with residual water on the hands.
My offer ignored with embarrassed rapidity. My suggestion obviously something which threatened the whole ethos (and I use that word with qualification) of the school.
So no towels. And no prospect of towels.
I raised the point in a staff meeting and, while my concerns were recognised as valid, the mindless obstruction of the school was seen as an insuperable obstacle to a satisfactory solution.
If they are like this over something which is unthreatening and easily rectified what, the logic demands, will they be like with something of major importance.
The answer is obvious.
The course of action, less so.
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