Z’s workplace union is trying a different tack. Management seems to have got wind of a few things lately that could only have been got from the union minutes. The workplace rep, W, who suspects hacking on the part of the management, has set a bear trap, seeding the minutes with fictitious nonsense. Sure enough, the fictitious nonsense appears on the SMT agenda. (How does W know this? Because the union is hacking the management, and has been for quite some time.)

Z is tasked with writing up the minutes by hand, photocopying them privately away from the workplace, and distributing them personally to each member, just before 5 p.m.

On the train home L reads the flu vaccine form properly. It just says that yes, it contains porcine gelatine, and yes we still recommend you allow your child to have it even if you are from a religion that doesn’t eat pork, and no, there isn’t a pork-free alternative available.

OK, she can see that it’s a problem, yes. All sorts of people have dietary issues – and why aren’t they developing a pork-free alternative? On the other hand, it’s not like anyone is allergic to pork. (Are they?) Not like nuts.

And in this world, we all need to make compromises. L makes them every day. And she does it without calling anyone a racist.

By the time L reaches Whyteleafe South she’s decided it’s something else for PREVENT.

Yes. V is clearly engaged in an ideology. OK, maybe not. But she’s being deliberately obstructive, isn’t she? Which shows, doesn’t it, that she’s developed Them and Us thinking? She might even have attitudes that justify offending – not to say that she would necessarily justify offending, but her attitudes might. Mm, yes. (L was raised a Catholic, and can be Jesuitical when she wants to be.) All of this requires a report.

M’s tennis coach is working his way up to asking her out. She thinks through the logistics of this one.

Fuck! L has looked up the Indian Mutiny. This is scary stuff. In the light of what L’s just read, V’s words are practically a threat.

*

The management is getting twitchy about the lack of union minutes. Normally they are done within a day or two of the meeting, on company time.

And then, as soon as they are circulated, management relaxes visibly. The intercept is obviously still working. But how?

W, the union leader, now suspects a management mole – probably one of the recent recruits. She calls a secret, off-site meeting of her lieutenants, who include Z. She is going to set another bear trap.