Far be if for me to cast aspersions on the presence of the headquarters of Veterans Affairs Canada here in Charlottetown: DVA employs a lot of people, at comparably excellent wages, and if nothing else those people keep a whole gaggle of downtown coffee shops in business year-round. And I’m sure they do good by veterans as well.
As such, I’ve resisted the urge to poke fun at DVA employees who wear their identification name tags all over town as they drink aforementioned coffee, eat lunch and so on (it’s always seemed so “look at me, I’m important, I’m a Fed!” — perhaps it’s simply “I’m too lazy to take off my name tag”).
In any case, the fun-poking dam has burst with the posting of this sign on the back door of DVA headquarters on Kent Street:
Operation Zone?! I can understand “you must wear ID tag at all times.” But Operation Zone? Do they think they’re the CIA?
Comments
Is the French any better? Maybe these signs come from Ottawa.
…and if office procedures are national (which stands to reason), that might explain the overtones of “we’re a target,” at least if some such office somewhere contains or exists side-by-side with agencies conceivably worthy of attack or “infiltration.”
As a former student worker at DVA, I may be able to offer another point of view on the sea of DVA name tags around downtown Charlottetown.
In my experience it’s just not practical to remove your name tag when you leave the building. As soon as you re-enter the building you must have your ID in plain site for the guard or they will ask you to present it to them (aka. you can’t take it off and leave it at your desk before you go). Unless I uncomfortably put it into my pocket as soon as I leave the building… — is that a ID in your pocket or are you happy to see me? — then the logical place to leave it is around my neck.
It’s more a matter of common sense and practically then a “Exaggerated Sense of Self-Importance”.
Ah, I remember working there as a summer student in the mid-1990s — Dominion Building and Daniel J. MacDonald Building baby! — anyhoo, it was informal and no ID required. For frig’s sake, they just process pension statements, health claims, death notices, tombstone requests, complaints from our nation’s neglected vets and Canadian Forces personnel (in my humble opinion), AND they work in the most pretentious, overstuffed with middle management, “let’s waste tons of money on IT projects”, federal office in the country… Ever since DVA came to Ch’town in the early 1980s it has been nothing but poison for the old Island that I love and adore — back before we paved over suburbia (Lewis Pt. Park and Sherwood) to give all those CFA Ottawa-types their 2500 sq. ft. homes. I’m ashamed I even worked for DVA. It has been nothing but an evil on this island — similar to those bloody call centres that have been brought in here since Joe Ghiz was premier and he tried to compete with Frank McKenna…