Plods and Paperwork
Was at a not-so-secret Oxonian airfield that doesn't operate wide-bodies (fnar fnar!) and was sent pdq out to the desert in the wake of 9/11. I was also preparing to take up an interesting post overseas working with the USDOD, so had left my DV forms with the SNCO Plod (with a silly surname) to forward to the DVA in York. Four months later I returned to find the forms were still siting in his in-tray. When I enquired as to why, he replied that my signatures had lapsed (a 3 month life) and therefore he could not send them off. When I sugested that it was not beyond the wit of man to have explained to DVA why the signatures had lapsed (ie I was personally fighting Saddam or UBL or whoever), he replied in a somewhat supercilious manner 'that it was not his job to do so'. I reminded him that he was a SNCO but a f£%kwit (by the way, I am not conflating the two); the delay caused enormous grief for me in my new appointment with some otherwise affable American civil servants. It also necessitated DVA dispatching one of their IOs to my overseas location to carry out the interview.
Oh, he complained about my 'tone' and I had to proffer an appology. And to think that my career was hung up by a guy that probably didn't have an O level...