I’m not quite sure what I’d do if I worked for Atos, frankly. Resign and find another job, probably. But hey, people have to pay the bills so who are we to judge, it’s a recession and there ain’t many jobs out there. And seeing as they’ve earned £3bn from the current government, three times as much as they ever used to, they’re minted. I mean, it’s a growing company!

Shame it’s a French company, though. Whoops, bit of xenophobia for you, there.

But that’s OK isn’t it. Well, a little bit of discrimination is fine because that’s what Atos employees have been practising on Facebook (allegedly). Computer Weekly (via Kicking the Cat) reported that two Atos employees are being investigated for calling disabled people “parasites” and “down and outs” on Facebook.

Jolly japes!

Now here’s something they probably haven’t realised about this thing called social media – it’s social. You might as well say it to peoples’ faces, although I believe that’s going out of fashion. So if you’re employed by Castle Greyskull itself, a company who have been revealed as sadistic at best, sending sick people back to work when they can’t actually work and making them die, well you keep a low profile.

– Hey, where do you work?

– Oh, I, erm, I work for a healthcare company…

– Really, that sounds interesting. What do you do?

– I, erm, I, erm, I just do paperwork, really – wow, did you see that pigeon? It was a really fat pigeon – let’s talk about something else, shall we?

Instead of…

– Hey, what do you do?

– I work for Atos, they basically send some down-and-out parasites back to work and kill them.

– You’re a cunt.

– Yes. Yes, I am.

Investigated on Facebook, eh? I wonder how that investigation goes… it must take, like, forever to go online and SEE the words in front of your eyes. Carry out an investigation won’t you. Jesus, if it’s Atos carrying out the investigation, what’s the likelihood they don’t even know how to turn the computer on?

So anyway, this from the Guardian:

Ministers have been impressed with Atos’s performance – the company was the first IT firm to sign a new “memorandum of understanding” after the Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, redesigned Labour contracts he considered too favourable to the private sector. In a vote of confidence in the company this month, Atos won government contracts worth £400m to test whether disabled people should continue receiving disability living allowance benefits. The Cabinet Office said all contracts were “based on the best value for money for taxpayers and are subject to strict scrutiny”.

Yes, you read that right. Ministers have been impressed with Atos’s performance. They even awarded them more money. And let’s not pretend that Labour (apart from Tom Greatrex at the moment) are much cop either, they started this whole shitfest.

And here’s the real message from the story. While we, the public, consider Atos’s performance to benot very fucking good at all, even causing death in many, many instances, the government considers it so good that they give themeven more money. That’s because the government is looking at the whole Atos situation from a different angle. In business, it’s called “the wanker angle”. Forgive me for going technical, but I saw this in the dictionary:

The Wanker Angle (n): a point of view that ignores all negative consequences in search of financial gain

So, if you work for Atos, and you have a Facebook account – close it. And start searching for a job. Because if you do work for Atos and you’re not job-hunting, then you’re a down-and-out parasite.

The Daily Shame