Workers who have gone the extra mile to frustrate and annoy other people are to be honoured at a special awards ceremony this week. They are the first winners of the RBC Care Less Excellence Awards, launched by Reading Borough Council earlier this year. Residents were asked to nominate council staff they felt had gone beyond the call of duty during their working day.

There were many deserving nominations: The street warden who fined someone throwing away an item of junk mail on his way to work; The traffic warden who managed to ticket a car from parking to ticket in less than 5 minutes and Anita Cacchioli for deleting an email asking her to make sure she deleted emails she didn't want to be seen. But there can only be two winners.

The individual award went to John Painter, for not bothering to actually read the content of complaints about the council before responding to them and repeating the response previously sent by the person being complained about.

The 'killjoy' award went to Reading Hexagon staff for enthusiastically enforcing the More Than My Job's Worth ban on selling drinks to anyone under-25 without ID even when there is absolutely no doubt about their age, throwing out crowd surfers and confiscating cameras even when the acts have asked people to send in their pictures of the gigs to their web sites.

The winners will receive their awards at a ceremony in the Mayor's Parlour where there will be lots of cakes and sticky buns.