President Dick Temper’s grim purge switches up a gear – 22 year old junior finance clerk latest to feel 'The Squeeze'

bum.news' Dish Kapitalz finds herself deeply affected by the procedure

Inflicting 'The Squeeze' on often innocent people may become the act by which President Dick Temper is best remembered. Aides, staffers, public servants, street sweepers – any of tens of thousands of governmental employees are now at risk of feeling the squeeze. Mere thought of even the briefest stint in the squeeze machine instils real fear. But that’s the idea, according to Temper himself, who'll be on hand later when junior finance clerk Lincey Clumbsy is put through Temper's latest squeeze machine, Squeeze Machine 2.

Thought of even the briefest stint in a squeeze machine instils real fear in victims

Squeeze Machine 2 - seen here in a stock photo

Until last month, Temper’s Squeeze Machine 1 took care of the squeezing business. But that wasn't enough. Temper wanted more. He says Squeeze Machine 2 offers ‘higher capacity throughflow’. This has only heightened fears, putting many more government employees on edge, paranoid they’ll be next. Then, last Tuesday, of all Tuesdays, Lincey Clumbsy, junior finance clerk, discovered she was next.

Junior Finance Clerk Lincey Clumbsy led from prison van - inset official DOD employee portrait   

'Miss Clumbsy represents all that’s incompetent and corrupt with the previous presidency' – President Temper

We're invited to witness the event. Press, media, TV crews, rich businessmen, influencers, supporters, all are bidden. 12 midday noon today Lincey Clumbsy will find herself inserted into the most powerful squeeze machine to so far grace eighteenth-century Andromeda Hall's marble-floored foyer.

Temper himself makes an appearance today. When he arrives, he sets out rationale for sending the a 22-year-old junior finance clerk through an inflatable, roller-based, high-pressure air machine. Her crime? ‘Overspending and ineffective financial policy decisions during the previous administration’s tenancy led to enormous, absolutely enormous losses, financial losses, all manner of losses, terrible losses. My job, undoing the horrible financial carnage, is so difficult, extremely difficult. Terribly nasty damage done to lots of departments, hundreds, thousands of departments, terrible damage. Awful damage done to the Department of Governance. Horrific harm done to the Department of Dimension Strategy. Near unrepairable destruction to the Offices of Misexpenditure. Much of it accomplished by people like Clumbsy. Miss Clumbsy here represents all that’s incompetent and corrupt with the previous presidency. A treacherous presidency. Unbelievable it was ever allowed.’

President Dick Temper - pictured here on the trail

With Clumbsy’s squeeze timetabled for noon, Squeeze Machine 2 begins inflation around 11 am. Electric generators hum. The ugly, out-of-place Squeeze Machine 2 rises frighteningly from the Andromeda Hall floor.

Clumbsy is among the younger employees squeezed this year. Youngest, official government hairdresser Hayley Long, turned nineteen days before the squeeze. Her crime, a less than flattering trim of the President’s hairpiece. There’ve been others. There’ll be more. Younger. Older. Wider. Thinner. More fearful. More innocent.

Lincey Clumbsy's story makes for troubling reading. She entered politics to fulfil a dream. The youngest of five, a hard life of hand-me-downs and living-up-to-expectations followed her birth over two decades ago. A birth that very nearly didn’t happen thanks to cutbacks common at the time. Subsequently studying to become a student, Lincey went on to study and excel at financial politics, landing herself her dream clerkship job in the government's powerful Department of Departments (DOD). There she maintained for herself, according to DOD’s human resources, a clean record. Until recently. Then, apparent evidence emerged allegedly pointing toward the previous administration’s financial misdealings. Including ‘misplaced decimal points and lost paperwork’ amid ‘a maelstrom of inefficient efficiency procedures’. Like many working for the Department of Departments during that period Clumbsy now feared she'd feel the squeeze. The evidence pointed at, among others, her boss. His actions, Clumbsy discovered, as his lowly paid assistant, she'd be held more than partly responsible.

[image related to feeling the squueeze – machine one?]

Soon came the online knock on her virtual office door. Clumbsy’s world immediately fell apart. Her partner left. Her car broke down. Her cat died. Brought before HR, she was greeted by the Department of Departments new Efficiency Director. He informed Clumbsy of the serious charges. She faced a full investigation relating to workplace incompetence and misconduct stretching back nearly five years. Despite her protestations of innocence, and of her still being at school much of that time, the investigation followed. Brief, fast-tracked. The new Efficiency Director’s new Efficiency Investigators were now investigating far more quickly and cost-effectively than ever. Thanks to their newly introduced efficiency tools, such as RIDE – their ‘rapid investigation decision efficiency’ framework – investigation verdicts were now outcomed in as little as under 24 hours.

Jelo Mokso – DOD's new Director of Efficiency, brought in to shake things up, and man responsible for Lincey Clumbsy's guilty verdict

An offer followed her guilty verdict. Admit culpability and the government would let Clumbsy resign and part-retain a portion of her pension. Oh, and she must voluntarily submit to feeling the squeeze. A non-negotiable condition, that. Against her own and her union lawyer’s better wishes, the embattled and bullied Clumbsy agreed. What choice, she said, did she have?

Today, 11:35. Squeeze Machine 2 has completed its usual pressurisation procedure. The disgraced DOD’s junior finance clerk isn't out quite yet, but Squeeze Machine 2 is ready to accept her into its engorged innards, which, along with its input and output rollers, will squeeze her. Hard.

With ten minutes to go, a volunteer medic arrives. Her resuscitation equipment ready, just in case. The crowd around me is now restless, crackling with a faint static-like sound.

12:02, precisely two minutes late, a pair of feel-the-squeeze guides (guides by name, guards by duty) bring in the visibly paling 22-year-old Clumbsy. She bears the fearful look of anyone about to feel the squeeze, to be loaded into a large, manmade machine designed to punish and humiliate. They lead her toward the imperious looking squeeze machine. Little is said. The crowd is quietened. All look on in muted silence.

With not so much as a wave, excluding her floppy body’s wave of terror (she almost faints, requires propping up) Lincey Clumbsy is jostled forward and into Squeeze Machine 2. She slows. Slumps. Falls forward onto Squeeze Machine 2's first rotating roller. It slows, catches, speeds up, sends her in ...

As many as five minutes may pass before she’ll exit. If she exits at all. We wait. If we were quiet before, we’re far, far quieter now.

Image of her going in

In the last ten months, a full 198 employees have felt the squeeze. Bar mental and physical humiliation, many of have fully survived. An additional number some say is north of 17,000 await feeling the squeeze. All things considered, a mammoth number. Has feeling the squeeze made a difference?

According to Temper, yes, indefatigably so. Figures issued by his own office provide what he calls concrete evidence. His office offers tabulated datasets (see table) providing, he says, further evidence.

	No of employees	Saving @ 1m per squeeze
Squeezed	198	198m
To be squeezed	17655	17655m
Total	17853m	17853m*

Calculated savings c/o Temper’s own office. Table c/o TOOT (The Office of Temper

*a licensing fee calculated at 22% per squeeze is payable for use of squeeze machines to DTM Industries (approx. 3.9b)

Costing a mere fifty thousand per squeeze, and with every feel-the-squeeze intervention supposedly netting a million in savings (from ‘future deterrent value forwardly and numerically extrapolated to future efficiency gains and their associated financial savings’) each squeeze offers a x20 ROI. Hardly to be sniffed at. One can see the allure. When the truth is so malleable a thing.

Across the foyer of Andromeda Hall’s marble floor, a floor steeped in history and, since installation of the squeeze machines, government detergent, silence still hangs. Five minutes have passed. Clumbsy has not reappeared. Squeeze Machine 2’s exit roller should have outputted her, its pink inflatable catch-mat should have caught her. Where is she? Six minutes. No sign. Seven minutes approach. The volunteer medic’s eyebrows twitch. Volunteer medics don’t expect to be needed. Still no sign on the clerk …

Whisper, chatter, inevitably begins. She's one of the one in a hundred unlucky ones? The machine has eaten her. Scrumpled her up inside? Will she come out? But, just as 2:09 ticks into view, Lincey Clumbsy reappears. The output roller momentarily speeds up, pops her on the catch mat, like morning mail. She tumbles forward. On all fours. Gasps. Seven minutes for us. How long for her?

Shakily she stands up. Face on, she at first appears to have faired well. When she turns to the side, clearly all is not what it seems. For once, the pictures speak for themselves, the pictures speak fuller facts than any Presidential words ever could.

Image clbumsy post squeeze/later image of cutout

[if used, have a gif, mouth, saying ‘he squeezed me. He squeezed me’ repeatedly