News from the Ministry of Everything

This is a continuation of my uncle diary from here.

The spring is coming and Ministry of Everything is  active as a beehive. Here is a sampling of the  latest developments.

Oververk

I have described the concept of verk here and, what can I say,
it took the Ministry of Everything by the storm. It boosted morale and
productivity and gave a glimpse of untapped potential. More
changes were coming at a rapid pace, and the newest Party directive
finally equates verk with work, and more importantly creates
incentives for oververk. What is oververk?  Well, it is a truly
transformational phenomenon that captures the concept of overtime -
when a comrade works beyond his or her tour of duty, and simul-verk --
when a comrade does several  things at the same time. Simul-verk is
adding a much sought after multiplier when one hour of simul-verk
counts as two or possibly more hours of plain verk. Unlike
simul-verk,  for some reason, simul-work is somewhat controversial and
while many comrades try to develop the necessary skills for it, others take
ritalin to medicate themselves against it. One theory posits that
simul-work is aggressively suppressed  in early childhood because
intimidated teachers cannot keep up with simul-working children.

Within weeks of the introduction of oververk  a new breed of employee
emerged, a Constant. This is a comrade who verks constantly for  24
hours a day. Double Constants soon followed, and a Triple Constant was
rumored to make a brief and ghostly appearance in the Ministry.

A tremendous amount of wealth is created by verk and oververk and the
Party in its wisdom allowed employees to donate all of their
additional pay back to the Ministry of Everything. Since verk is a
reward in itself, all readily agreed and the sagging budget of the
Ministry was propped up by this windfall. It is expected that the future
growth of Ministry of Everything will be financed entirely by the oververk
of its employees and the embarrassing drag on societal resources
will slowly diminish.

Demise of Belphegor

Our beloved Party keeps good track of comrades' work habits and
until last year it was in the hands of a comrade who everybody
called Belphegor, after a  demon who helps people make discoveries.
Belphegor sat at the entrance to our building, mostly dozing, and
thanks to his photographic memory he recorded the comings and goings of
all employees. It was not uncommon that he would murmur "Short day at
work, comrade?" or something equally ominous, and he was always right.
Numerous rumors credited Belphegor with having a transformative
effect on the clients of the Ministry of Everything, while others
snickered about his on-the-job alcohol consumption. Overall,
Belphegor's phenomenal skill set and lack of interest in looking for a
better use for it was responsible for his popularity and put him on
par with many of the Ministry's visitors.

Belphegor was doing excellent job keeping track of work, and he was
coping well with the accounting for verk, which he did by tracking not
only the time that employees spent at work but also time they
were absent. But there was no way he could deal with oververk. He
feebly pleaded for his job, but one day he was gone and in his place
we got a thick ledger where we were supposed to record our own activity
time. The ledger had a space for initials and  columns for work, verk,
oververk and its multiplier. Suddenly the scheme become more
complicated, but soon the comrades discovered that  the entries can be
written weeks in advance  Some  took it in stride and were happy to
part with the somewhat intimidating Belphegor, but others are less
certain. In the history of the Party every purge is preceded by a
thaw, and the ledger, which according to rumors is burned when it fills
up, is too good to be true. Others argue that this is just a sign of
catching up with capitalists. In the last phase of this rotting
system, work time need not be accounted for, as low wages and
the prospect of unemployment are compelling exploited masses to work
non-stop at full capacity. Apparently, for completely different
reasons obviously, a similar phenomenon could be  present at the dawn
of communism.

Continued here.