The UN in the News...again

As an employee of this God-forsaken organization, I shouldn't really go on and blab about the scandal and the intrigue that goes on here, but given that it is on the front page of the NYT (a link to the article http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/04/international/04food.html?hp&ex=1107579600&en=ebf0c386611be17d&ei=5094&partner=homepage) and even made it to those other tabloidy NYC dailies, the Post and the Daily News, hey, it's not really a secret, is it?

I had to laugh at Mr. Annan saying that he had put his trust in these officials. NOBODY at the UN can be trusted, and other people, maybe in my own office, might put me on that list. However, I understand the feeling of meeting someone who you consider trustworthy, so you give them your confidence and come to really respect them, and then they stab you in the back or otherwise screw you hoping that you'll never find out the truth. It happens to the best of us, so Kofi, I'm with you, boss. But rest assured that the joke is on them and they will be duly punished at some point in their miserable lives. Like I always say, you get what you pay for, and that's true most everywhere else except for the UN, where those who sit on their fat asses and do nothing get the big bucks, and those who actually try to earn their keep get continually screwed. Makes me really, really wish that Kerry and Edwards could have come to the UN to give a seminar on what it means to give salary and promotions on the basis of merit, instead of allowing a guy that's washed dishes for 20 years to apply to be a Director of a Department and then get shortlisted to be interviewed for the position, just because he has 20 years work experience, and that puts him way ahead of a guy with two MBA's and one PhD on the way, because the latter candidate only has 5 years of work experience (no kidding, this really happens, and a similar thing is happening to me). I'm starting to think that it's not that certain people are just shirking their duties or playing ignorant where that's concerned. I just really think that that word "merit" is not in the UN vocabulary, and I say that because the system of non-merit based pay and promotion has made a home here, it is painfully engrained in everything that happens here, and is to blame for a lot of the problems the UN faces today, giving rise to the UN being called things like "irrelevant", so Bush wasn't completely off the mark when he said that.

And that is my tangent for the day. Fare thee well!