Sh*t Bureaucrats Say

The “Sh*t Bureaucrats Say” video, which stars an adorable little girl as she fires off one-liners and acronyms over her BlackBerry, was posted on March 25 and has already generated more than 18,000 views.

OTTAWA — With two austerity budgets on the way, Ottawa bureaucrats are feeling the pressure this week. But a group of public servants is hoping to lighten the mood with a YouTube video that pokes fun at bureaucratic slang.

The “Sh*t Bureaucrats Say” video, which stars an adorable little girl as she fires off one-liners and acronyms over her BlackBerry, was posted on March 25 and has already generated more than 41,000 views.

“Let’s revise our mandate!” the girl says in part of the video, as she stands holding up a long pointer in front of a wall showing a powerpoint presentation.

“This is the wrong form,” she says later, her head just poking over the top of a desk. “You’re not supposed to staple that,” she says at another point.

Towards the end she reels off a series of acronyms — DND (Department of National Defence), GOC (Government of Canada) and ATIP (Access to Information and Privacy) — well-known among federal bureaucrats.

The video was created by six federal public sector employees from Ottawa, who declined to reveal their identities. The group said they were reluctant to revive the popular meme but the idea seemed “too funny not to try.”

The video’s intent is to give bureaucrats a laugh and relieve some of the stress of budget week, according to the creators.

“We love our jobs. We produced the video because we couldn’t help but laugh at ourselves when we stopped to think about the language that we use over the course of a regular workday,” they said in an email to the Citizen. The project took them only a couple of hours to shoot and put together.

Since its release, the video has been circulating on Twitter and has been picked up by websites like ipolitics.ca and govloop.com, a U.S. social networking site for public sector professionals.

The video has generated about 40 comments on YouTube, which mostly praise its accuracy. In reference to the star of the video, one viewer wrote “I think this girl is my boss!”

YouTube viewers are also commenting with suggestions for more phrases that can be used in sequels to the video. Among those was one poster, who wrote “please make a whole series to keep us smiling — Lord knows the work itself doesn’t!”

The group still has extra footage but they haven’t decided yet whether to turn it into a followup video.

“We certainly think we’ve made our point.”

“We’re very happy to see that the reaction from our fellow public servants and the broader public has been extremely positive.”

mionova@ottawacitizen.com

Twitter:@mionova
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