This could well have been the last time you would read my column. You see, recently I wrote to the editor complaining that my copy of Roget's Thesaurus was well and truly battered. I told him I was not to blame for an insufficient command of flowery adjectives to use in my writing. So, it was only fair that he should buy me a new one. Miffed by my editor's curt dismissal, I then threatened not to send him my weekly contribution by e-mail. Instead, I would write it by hand and mail it to him. He was so annoyed by my theatrics he dared me to do so and see me off his pages!

I wisely decided not to go down that road. I still fume, though. After all, there's nothing in my job description as a columnist that I have to consign my thoughts to that modern technological contraption that is the computer rather than writing them by hand on fine papyrus. There is nothing, either, which says that I should send it to the editor via e-mail. Why can't I use the good, old-fashioned postal system that everybody else is deserting?

Job descriptions are important. Mine tells me what the editor expects of me, no more no less. It protects me, or so I thought until the recent incident, from arbitrary impositions by the editor. He expects me to produce 1,000 words a week. If my fellow columnist, Kenneth Zammit Tabona, has a mental block one week and fails to come up with his own 1,000 words, the editor cannot force me to make up for that and give him 1,100 words. No, that would exert extreme psychological stress on me. I'm not paid for that, thank you.

Job descriptions used to be sacred. Not anymore, it seems. Not with my editor. Not with Enemalta, either. Last week, Enemalta's management showed the disdain in which it holds workers' rights when it arrogantly requested workers to continue communicating with each other via the phone. Quite rightly, the GWU stood up for the downtrodden workers. Their job description did not include a reference to workers communicating by phone, it said.

I have no hesitation in blaming Enemalta's management. It was they who drew up the job description. They did such a slipshod job that the job description does not even specify that employees should communicate with each other and with management, let alone how. This probably explains why the corporation is in such a mess. As to the how, the loophole gives the workers a lot of flexibility. My suggestion, purely gratis et amoris, is that they teach management a lesson: let them contact the Malta Pigeon Racing Club and borrow a couple of dozen homing pigeons to use for transmitting information and messages. After all, if pigeons could do the job during World War II, they could do so again today.

This reminds me of a similar incident a few years back when the Malta Union of Teachers instructed its members not to communicate the marks awarded to pupils to the Education Department. You see, the teachers' job description had specified that the staff had to mark the exam papers at the end of the term but not that these marks, being of some interest to the poor students, should be disclosed to the department. Again, the blame was the job description's.

A shoddy job description also enabled workers in Enemalta's aviation fuel section to stop filling in the forms that specify the quantity of fuel supplied to aircraft, the fuel's density, its temperature and conductivity. How could such an important task not be listed in the job description? If I were the manager drawing it up, I would make sure I wouldn't miss anything. I would compile a 300-page document that specifies in excruciating detail what each employee should do every single minute of his working day. Each employee would also have an abridged 20-page version to carry with him at all times. Perhaps, to cap it all, the working day could start with a collective Chinese-style session where the official in charge would repeat William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke's exhortation.

Of course, my systematic job description exercise would not be limited to the plodding workers, bless their souls. I would insist that the same painstaking detail be applied to the job descriptions of executives and ministers. All too often, these supposed captains of industry and politics shirk their duties and hide behind procedures to avoid difficult decisions or simply to bury their mistakes under copious reports blaming one and all, or failing that, force majeure - anything, in fact, but accepting they were to blame.

Have you noticed, by the way, that these spats about job descriptions occur mostly in the public sector or in state-owned enterprises? Have you ever read of an industrial dispute or a strike in some private enterprise because the parties concerned were not sure whether an employee should use a biro rather than a pencil or whether his coffee break should last five minutes one second rather than just five minutes? Of course not, employees and their representatives in private industry know they would be the first to pay for the time wasted or production lost while they bicker with employers about a job description. They're no fools; they know there is no deep-pocketed public purse to finance such silly shenanigans.

On the contrary, read what Ron Feeman, general manager of De La Rue, had to say about his employees last week: They are "loyal, flexible and committed". So much so that De La Rue is planning to spend another Lm1.5 million this year, upgrading its Malta plant in preference to plants in the Far East. So the La Rue's Malta employees have seen off that dreaded competition from Asia. The irony of it all was that the minister listening to Mr Feeman's eulogy about his employee's flexibility was none other than besieged Minister Austin Gatt. While Mr Feeman goes on and on about his "loyal and highly-motivated employees", Enemalta's job descriptions hang around Minister Gatt's neck like an albatross.

Did I say albatross? Now, that has sparked a stroke of genius. I think I'll have my sweet revenge on the editor after all. I will send in my next column hanging to the belly of an albatross. If he gets it late, he can blame my job description!