ihatetheoffice

Andrew the Arts-based trainer

2008-06-10T10:03:00.000-07:00

Not quite what he imagined after four years training to be the next Ian McKellan – but there are worse things than standing on a chair in your socks in a Trust House Forte conference room, encouraging your audience to Discover Their Inner Corporate Clown. Apparently.

With his biggest success a Domestos advert for Taiwan, Andrew took to arts-based training with evangelical fervour. After all, he could talk the back legs off a pantomime horse (he’d had enough experience at the Bedford Corn Exchange). Training, he claims, need never be boring again. Just terribly embarrassing.

Initially the response if encouraging – even to his breathy announcement that this is a safe, non-judgemental environment where risk-taking is encouraged. What is business anyway, his trainees gamefully reason, but a farce or tragedy with frequent opportunities for melodrama?
Andrew is going to take them on a Life-Changing Journey. Whether it’s Re-discovering the Internal Communications Vision or Exploring the Values of Corporate Play, it will Burrow Deep into the Heart of Everyone’s Workplace. Twenty-six customer-care supervisors and middle managers are asked to feel their partner’s life force.

Everything is a story, it seems, and Shakespeare wrote his plays to deal with issues of call centre communication and appraisal interviewing. Who can see Hamlet and not think of the MBA’er faced with the problem of re-branding his plc? Certainly no one except Andrew, which is why he now gets groups to role-play To Be Or Not To Be (Clarifying the Mission Statement), Hamlet and the gravedigger (Dealing With Difficult People in a Customer-Care Situation) and the final banquet scene (Corporate Hospitality: the Way Ahead).

Several hours later some people are considering applying for I’d Do Anything: the rest think about doing a runner but can’t find their shoes. They wonder if anything worse can happen. It can.

Because now Andrew announces that it’s time to explore Living With Corporate Uncertainty – Human Resources has hinted at some serious downsizing – with installations and human tableaux using bubble-wrap, newspaper and toilet rolls. This is the Blue Peter from hell. By the end of the afternoon their facilitator stands victorious amid a three-year-old’s mess fest and people in Marquis de Sade positions. He asks about their new perspectives and someone proudly waves their bubblewrap Mr Blobby.

What the point of the day is nobody knows, but, at least it keeps Andrew out of the community that little bit longer. And anyway there’s no point in screaming – on a traffic island near the M25 no one can hear you scream.

He likes to say ...
‘Hands up who’s in the Zone?’
‘You know you’d like to do a dance drama to Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats’
‘Ask your partner if you can feel her aura.’
‘Please don’t all sit at the back.’

How weird is your boss?

2008-05-08T01:26:00.000-07:00

Yes, bosses are power-crazy and quite frankly weird - anyone who thinks that not taking their proper holiday entitlement for fifteen years and who believes reading a book full of exclamation marks about synergy makes them a perfect manager, must be on a different planet. (Has anybody also noticed the way managers compete with each other to have an office that resembles a Travelodge room in which someone has recently died, so devoid are they of the personal and ugly adornments of the rest of us?)

We thought we’d get that one out of the way first. Because we wouldn’t like to be unfair - bosses after all come in a wide range of types. If yours isn’t one of those described below, count yourself lucky and get down on your knees and pray that tomorrow never comes.

(1) ‘Frankly only good at one thing, bless, even if it was just writing an ISO 90 benchmark specification’ boss

We all know them: once an actual human being and competent in their original field but now hopelessly over-promoted. From being a brilliant analyst of mouse urine or deviser of stationery requisition strategies, they’ve been ‘groomed’ for greater things requiring skills they will never possess and in the process may succeed in destroying advanced capitalism. Guess who gets to pick up the pieces?

(2) ‘The empowerer who wants to empower you to have all their nasty jobs as well as your own’ boss.

New Age Nigel or Nigella only have your best interests at heart of course. That’s why they like sending you on courses with poncy titles like ’Emotional Intelligence and the Internal Communications Problem.’ With any luck these will leave you in a state of general mental mushiness so that you won’t mind being facilitated (told what to do) or even consulted with (watched eating a croissant in a focus group). This boss has the best body language in the business and won’t bat an eyelid as they tell you about resource re-balancing (you’re sacked) - they’re not stupid.

(3) ‘The corporate clone who worries about using the wrong colour ring binder’ boss

When the last mission statement was being written, your boss was probably there dotting the I’s and wondering how many times you can say Excellence in a sentence. From performance targets to watering the spider plant everything has a corporate process and procedure and woe betide the employee who isn’t living the brand. Whatever new management plan is being propounded expect corporate clone to be in their first, even if (as is usual) it contradicts everything that went before. Many of us can’t decide if this model is seriously psychotic or very sad but after much careful thought agree that they’re probably both.

(4) ‘The “I’m sorry I’m wearing funny furry clothes and look like a 1978 Dr Who” creative’ boss

Creative bosses with all their Eureka moments and wow factors sound like a whiz to work for; isn’t this your chance to limber up your own lateral thinking and have a wonky haircut to match? In your dreams maybe, but the reality is that your boss will have more important things on their mind than (a) most of the day-to-day work; (b) your career prospects. Nice chance though to see if anybody really cares if you dress up as a six-foot budgie in the office every day.

(5) The ‘you don’t have to do a Darren Brown course to read my mind, but it probably helps’ boss

Mysterious. Enigmatic. Remote. You’re sure that they must know what’s going on; after all they have a glass-panelled office and you live in a chipboard cubicle with a box of last year’s Christmas decorations. It’s just that they might as well be on Alpha Centauri for all they ever communicate to you. All you can do is assume that you’re doing the right thing and hope the Star Fleet gets through eventually.

(6) ‘The lovechild of Atilla the Hun and Lady Macbeth’ boss

The one thing you will say for Mr or Mrs Mean is that at least you know exactly where you’re going with them. Usually to HR to ask for your P.45 at the very earliest opportunity.

Please Scuba In Your Own Think Tank

2008-04-23T04:17:00.001-07:00

Like many people I’ve had a number of careers and found myself the innocent target, and even the occasional purveyor, of management-speak. In book publishing, as it moved from gentlemanly to cutthroat, I sat in meetings where we talked of “vertical integration” and “brandwidth” without batting an eyelid. In further education everyone seemed to be pursuing an elusive “quality.” And, as a local authority manager, I was forever trying to work out who my “stakeholders” were.

For maximum effect, as every successful corporate bullshitter knows, the most effective jargon is abstract, latinate, and comes from the US. Acronyms are excellent for full impenetrability (try Swot, MMM and KVI for starters) while an arbitrary capital letter may even suggest divine origins.

Work has become the new religion and needs its magic phrases for the priesthood to bamboozle us. Ideally, these will be from a lexicon invented by the new faith’s gurus, mainly elderly right-wing Americans who seem to know the Way Ahead. Hence, most of us spend every working hour “pursuing excellence,” “making a difference” or ensuring some “continuous improvement,” while feeling that we must be missing something, given how meaningless these mantras are.

Another tier of jargon seems to emanate from US manager jocks who either borrow their sayings from sports or toilet stalls. Since the 1980s they’ve been making sure we “cover all our bases,” “punch above our weight” and appreciate the need for a “level playing field,” while also advising us not to “piss outside our circle.”

But why do we use so much jargon and should all perpetrators be taken out of the meeting room and quietly shot? Not quite. The next time you sit fuming next to someone who says “win-win situation” 15 times in a credit control catchup, try reflecting on the reasons why we end up speaking in corporate tongues.

One-upmanship must come pretty high up the list — nearly all of us have used the latest piece of jargon to impress a superior or interviewer. But this pales into insignificance beside the seasoned operator who uses constant corporate-speak and lets you know when an existing term has been superseded — “core competencies” are just so 2005. They know that using old jargon is professional suicide.

Equally, getting it right means joining an exclusive club that can help your career. Perhaps this is the real reason why more of us are finding romance with our colleagues (with the boss’s permission of course). Nobody outside our office has a clue what we’re actually talking about.

And then there are times when we use jargon because we can’t remember what we said before it existed. Just what is a “portfolio of skills”? It might only mean making all those unsuccessful career starts sound sexy on your resume, but sometimes it’s easier to go with the flow and just get on with the important business of not being “empowered” (taking on so many extra duties we don’t have time to notice our salary hasn’t gone up).

Some of the jargon tripping you up? You’re not alone. But unfortunately, nobody is prepared to break ranks and admit it. And so, you find yourself locked into using jargon because it would be too embarrassing to ask what zero-sum negotiations really means at this stage. If everyone else in the meeting is talking about being “in the loop” you’re hardly going to interrupt and say: “Hey, I think you mean those who use the same impenetrable jargon, and see themselves as cutting-edge.” We just let our managers carry on speaking to each other in advanced Klingon and hope they don’t notice us doodling.This may possibly leave you, the jargon intolerant person, in a state of some fear and loathing. In which case you may just need to develop a better sense of humor.

Hearing others earnestly talking about “the big picture” and “proactive, not reactive” should ideally lead to a serious fit of the giggles. You could even invent your own jargon and watch the MBAers making straight for their BlackBerries.

Alternatively, you could work in an environment where corporate jargon has yet to spoil the working day. Sand sweeping in Timbuktu anyone?

Don't wake me up, I'm in a meeting ...

2008-04-04T00:59:00.000-07:00

What is it about meetings that always brings out the worst in people? If we’re passive, we find they last longer than Murder She Wrote on UK Gold. If we’re dominant with bad listening skills, then it’s just another ego trip with a captive audience sharing one Wagon Wheel between them.

The problem is made worse because most of us think that all meetings are the same. We go in ridiculously unprepared with no idea whether to go into a slight doze or a deep coma. If nothing else, below should give you some ideas to sleep on - preferably in a meeing.

(1) The ‘I’ve been here so long it seems like a second home to me except I don’t normally go for late 80s office furniture’ meeting

A weak chairperson and a few individuals who’ve seen Michael Douglas in Wall Street and can’t wait for red braces to come back are all that’s needed here. Everyone talks at cross-purposes and listening to others is kept to a minimum - just as well considering the number of people in the early stages of rapid eye movement.

Giveaway Phrases:‘Now we’re all here, there’s something else I’d like to say.’‘I think we’re going to need another urgent meeting.’

(2) The ‘let’s get the boring bit out of the way so that we can get down to a tea party’ meeting

In theory this should be one your favourites, especially if a gleaming trolley is temptingly parked in front of everybody with full tea service and lots of comestibles. Unfortunately if you happen to be a woman, there’s every chance that you’ll have to be ‘mother’. Centuries of conditioning mean that male drive flags at the first sign of a steaming pot and fails completely at the merest hint of passing around napkins. Total paralysis sets in with pouring - which is regarded as the next best thing to cross-dressing in front of colleagues.

Giveaway Phrases: ‘So who’s going to be mother?’‘What you need is a good J-Cloth.’

(3) The ‘people I love you all. I want to empower you so that I can delegate all the boring responsibilities on to you’ meeting

Empowerment is a popular buzz word and what an ideal opportunity to thrust the fruits of lazy corporate thinking (sic) into your innocent lap. Basically your facilitator - it sounds friendlier than incompetent manager - will attempt to offload even more dull tasks on to yours truly under the guise that this is somehow liberating your spirit.

Giveaway Phrases: ‘Think of me as your facilitator and friend, not your boss.’‘It’s the only way ahead …’

(4) The ‘if 20 staff go on assertiveness training courses, what do you expect?’ meeting

Assertiveness is a vital skill in today’s business world but few of us can have foreseen what happens when a group of its expert practitioners are forced to make a collective decision in a meeting. As twenty people decide what they want, state it openly, listen carefully and get in touch with their individual needs as the new departmental milk rota is discussed, all you can do is keep quiet and hope no one asks for your opinion.

Giveaway Phrases: ‘No.’‘I think yours is a brilliant idea, but I don’t agree with it.’

(5) The ‘I think this shows what conscientious employees we are by not rushing home’ evening meeting

No one will wish to attend this unless they have been given a mobile phone for partners to continually ring in and ask when they’ll be home. The meeting then has to be temporarily abandoned each time as people mouth to each other that ‘it’s in the dog’ and think they’re being screamingly original.

Giveaway Phrases: ‘There doesn’t seem much point in going home.’‘Can I have half your Polo?’

If it's Tuesday, it must be Slough: the lows and further lows of sales conferences

2008-03-30T04:24:00.000-07:00

Days away from the coalface, snug in an all-expenses-paid hotel. It sounds like the ideal break from work. But too many of us have been caught out by the annual sales conference before and won’t be getting too excited.

Of course you do hear of colleagues whisked off to Teneriffe for a long weekend of sun, sea and a little light presentation over the Sangria. But for most of us the destinations are closer to home: usually a hotel in a place where you’d never dream of staying, with traffic islands next to motorways a firm favourite. Yes, Grays Thurrock, Slough and Croydon are all hot spots in the sales conference pantheon.

Essential hotel ingredients include a ‘Conference Special’ package (share a room with an emo fan from Distribution and bring your own UHT milk) with food that was freeze-dried in Taiwan in the Nineties. And this is probably the high point. Although the hotel claims to have extensive bar facilities, a sport complex and Jacuzzi, these are not for the likes of you.

You barely have time to check out how many miniature executive hair gels you can remove from your room, when the punishing schedule whisks you away to your first meeting. Your unconscious can’t understand why you are drawing people with bubble perms on a hotel blotter when you should be flat out in the sauna. Most people in the NormanTebbit Conference Room are either tense (they’ve got to do something) or asleep (they haven’t). Considerately, the hotel management provides Mint Imperials, which enable at least one person (probably you) to have a serious choking fit and wake up the somnolent.

The lights go down and there’s an audible yawn as sales figures appear and company forecasts appear on screen. Your MD then proceeds with the most ecstatic speech you are likely to hear this side of the Mount of Olives. Is this really the company you work for or is there some mistake?The VIPs are now escorted out - on one of any importance stays at a sales conference in Grays Thurrock longer than they can help it - the lights come on and the MD takes his jacket off. Then it begins. Employees are berated for their failings as if personally responsible for the state of the British economy. Reps are informed that if sales don’t improve they’ll be back in Toyotas.

Once this ritual is over a feeling of nausea overtakes you. It isn’t just the effect of having drunk 16 glasses of Perrier, but the thought that it’s your turn next. A sales conference isn’t worth its name if unsuitable introverted members of staff aren’t required to perform in front of everyone. Don’t cheer yourself up by thinking about dinner. In order to promote networking management will sit you between a sanitary engineer and someone who cleans the telephones and make sure there is no escape by banning alcohol.

But do expect exemplary politeness and restraint from colleagues as the evening proceeds. Everyone is so aware of the possible tacky implications of a sales conference on a traffic island in outer London that there must be no errant body language. People walk along the hotel’s corridors as if welded to the walls. Keys are fumbled with at record speed. No one says good night lest they be accused of sexual harassment. All you have to look forward to is a choice between Emmanuelle 38 or Lassie Comes Home on the TV.

At least this close to the M25 no one can hear you scream.

Training Daze

2008-03-10T02:27:00.000-07:00

Recent research has turned up the surprising fact that during the working week, one in 20 people may be found in a room with a person called Geoff or Pam, several hundred Magic Markers and an over-heated lap top. Love them or leave them (and many of us would) you can't ignore corporate training courses.

Of course there are probably excellent courses, but few of us seem to get them. What we do get is either a size-disadvantaged room in an 'executive' hotel or a training centre's Portakabin (usually for public sector employees as this makes them feel at home). And there is little point hanging around the hotel foyer examining displays of model vintage cars or John Grisham novels. You can't escape your fate. Geoff and Pam are waiting.

The first rule of training courses is that no-one should be called by their full name. If the course leaders lost their annoying suffixes years ago, why shouldn't you? But there is hardly time for a friendly 'hi!' from our team before the dreaded name badges are produced. Complete strangers are suddenly metamorphosed into chummy sounding Daves, Jans, Mikes and Sues.

Not that this is sufficient. You might be a Dave but what do the rest of the group really know about Dave's psyche? A warm-up exercise is therefore de-riguer. One current favourite is to ask members which vegetable or fruit they would most like to be identified with - and why. Soon unknown junior executives are nervously introducing themselves as Cox's Orange Pippins and beetroots. What years of British rectitude have kept at bay is destroyed in seconds as Cath from Chelmsford reveals she has definite banana tendencies.

All barriers safely down, people sit in a post-embarrassment situation wondering if anything worse can happen. It can and does.

Already, of course, some jargon has been introduced and more will follow. Your company or organisation has, after all, paid a considerable sum for you to be present here today. Participants and paymasters may as well feel they are getting something our of it, even if you're not. Most important, however, is that you feel intimidated. Experienced course-goers know to fall asleep during 'framesetting'. Newcomers are in a state of high anexiety, lest they are asked to reveal anything further about their real Desiree potato identity. Old timers know the day has been carefully arranged so that no-one can escape the brain-storming session to come.

The truly unlucky will be shanghaied into role playing games involving lying on the floor or revealing their dreams. If you find everybody apart from you is wearing shoes accept that you will soon have to stand on a chair and pretend you are a tree.

Recently I took part in a day-long role play that involved groups 'creating their own built environments' using, yes, sugar paper and cardboard and acting out 'silent tableaux' inside them. It was noticeable how we were split down the middle: those of us who didn't mind pretending we were four years old as long as we could sit in our 'houses' and read the Guardian, and those who did a runner. Quite what the point of the exercise was nobody knew but then, as somebody in my group said, at least it kept the facilitator out of the community a bit longer.

Surprisingly it's quite rare for course members to admit publicly to dissatisfaction. One must make do with strained expressions, the merest flicker of dissent. We assume instead that our intransigence is a personal failing. And who wants to admit to being anti-social, incapable of working in groups and lacking in team spirit? For Geoff and Pam the future looks rosy, as more of us have multiple careers and there are even more training courses. There's not a lot we can do about it. Apart from brainstorming our feelings about it on sugar paper.

Because You're Worth It

2008-03-05T05:18:00.000-08:00

When did you last read a novel that properly described your real working world? Of course you could say when did you last want to read a novel about the fear, loathing and black comedy of the weekly grind. But when most of us spend too much of our waking (and non-waking) life at the corporate coalface, it’s odd that so few novels ever truly hit the spot.

Of course by ‘real working world’ I think we mean the kind of jobs most of us have that we’d prefer not to talk about outside our cubicle. If you’ve ever sat next to a knowledge manager at a dinner party you’ll know the problem. It’s interesting that when novelists deign to dip their toes into our murky world they always seem to make a bee-line for the glam or semi-glam occupation. Thus we had Bridget Jones as a TV researcher, a recent Marion Keyes heroine was a wedding organiser, while Jenny Turner’s The Brain Storm was set in a broadsheet newspaper office and Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End takes place in an ad agency.

It’s interesting that the first two characters are semi-peripatetic (ie don’t have to sit with dribbling colleagues in too many evening meetings) while the others probably have more autonomy than the rest of us. It has to be said that Turner and Ferris would claim to be offering a more serious examination of workplace culture. But while The Brain Storm certainly has its iconic office moments reading Then We Came to the End is quite like being stuck in an office on an endless Tuesday afternoon and thinking for this you had essay crises at university.

Perhaps The Office TV series has just raised the bar so high that no one can possibly come near it. Or perhaps the workplace is just too depressing or complex for most contemporary writers to deal with. It’s also probably the case that many writers just don’t have that kind of ‘hey, I’m going to be spending forty years of my life wondering what a quality circle is in a size-restricted work space surrounded by people who watch Bargain Hunt’ experience of most of us.

It’s hardly surprising then how often writers get things wrong when they dip their toes into our naff world. Tim Lott, for example, referred to ‘typing pools’ in a recent book and we all know these went out with Lucky Strikes. Rachel Cusk’s drippy temp in The Temporary wouldn’t have lasted a minute in a real office. Editors, who’ve probably gone straight from college into the media and publishing, often don’t get it either. An editor at Metro just couldn’t believe such a thing as a learning log existed. As someone who had to fill one in for an entire year to satisfy an obsessive line manager I had to assure her they unfortunately did.

The Great American Novel. The Richard and Judy Novel. Sorry, some of us are still waiting for the Great Have You Stolen My Stapler Novel.

Talk Talk

2008-02-29T03:26:00.000-08:00

It’s all very well for companies to malign those of us hanging around in office kitchens as malingerers and office gossips. But the truth of the matter is that most of us have no choice: how else are we going to find out in plenty of time that our company is moving to a brownfield site in Slovakia or that the girl buying our leaving present was last seen fingering rayon kilts in Marks & Spencer?

There’s no question that so-called official channels of communication just aren’t working for us ...

· Internal Communications Team
Er, their idea of effective communication is editing a staff newspaper that makes the North Korean Information Department seem a fountain of truth in comparison. We all know that any internal communications strategy is basically to inform staff how caring, unique and deeply wonderful your company is. The hope is that if this is repeated enough times it will stick somewhere, even if it is mainly in people’s gullets.

· The Intranet
Ditto, only with fewer exclamation marks.

· The Consultant’s Report
Sorry, they earn a lot more than you, can afford Ozwald Boateng suits and make recommendations that colleagues have been talking about for years in the office kitchen, but no one could be bothered to ask them.

· Team Meeting
With most people concerned about who’s been secretly stealing their banana-flavoured Complan from the office fridge there isn’t a lot of time for much else. But when this mainly consists of new management initiatives ranging from Giving Birth Under the IT Help Desk and Work Life Strategies: Getting Married in the Atrium to Managing Your Personal Development Because Frankly No One Else is Going To, it may be a blessing in disguise.

· Your Boss
How can you seriously trust someone who wants to empower you (they feel sorry for you not being stressed enough), delegate (there’s no one else they’d rather give their lousy jobs to) and facilitate (making it easy for all their work to go straight in your direction)?

· The Men in Black and Your P.45
Obviously too late.

But everyone knows that for a really juicy piece of news most of us can rely on the Chief Executive’s PA (knows who’s had sex on blotters in the boardroom) or the receptionist (can describe the Fatal Attraction moment in detail with frequent action replays). At least there’s something to get us into the office on Monday mornings.

What is it about the public sector and meetings?

2008-02-19T10:50:00.000-08:00

Managing Change. Change Management. Change Innovation. During my brief sojourn in the public sector we were always being encouraged to do this. In fact hardly a day went by when a perky file headed with lots of capital letters wasn’t being delivered that would transform us all into corporate team players. Except nothing much ever changed and all senior management’s missives ever did was to move a lot of anxious and slightly autistic people up to a new level of existential anxiety.

As part of the programme our Chief Executive let us know that we were all having too many meetings. Instructions went around insisting we ask ourselves if our meeting was really necessary and if it was might we try, for example, standing up and finishing off any malingerers with some deep vein thrombosis. This was all very well in theory but in practice it was the stuff of nightmare to public sector workers. Without setting up and attending meetings what exactly was our purpose on earth? What else were we supposed to do? It didn’t take long for the anti-meeting mission to find itself lost in the deep landfills of unimportant looking paperwork. We weren’t stupid. We weren’t talking ourselves out of a job.

My colleagues knew that their purpose in life was to say something at the beginning of a meeting even if it was just their name and then earn the right to a Mars Bar-fuelled glutinous snooze. As for the impertinent suggestion that they could ever do without meetings, this could only come from twenty-three year-old consultants in Prada suits.

If there ever was a vacuum it could be quickly abhorred by endless meetings about Health and Safety, fire drill procedures and an investigation into who put purple tinsel up covering the architect’s nineteen seventies hessian statement. In fact it would be entirely possible for a public service worker to spend their entire lives having meetings about policies and procedures and never actually have to do any proper work. It’s not really surprising that we remained suspicious of anyone from outside the sector telling us what we should be doing. Because if they did, er, we could always have a meeting about it.

Send in the Clones

2008-02-12T04:55:00.000-08:00

How spooky is it when you find your department rapidly filling up with clones – of your boss? It’s all very well expecting us to imitate their body language during the interview but we didn’t know we needed the identical DNA before we got the job.

Bosses all know that teams are meant to be a ‘diversity of skills and personality types’ (er, you don’t want everyone crying behind their work station at the same time as there aren’t enough toilet rolls to go round). Except many managers don’t feel capable of making these subtle distinctions. They’d much rather employ staff with the same psychopathic tendencies as themselves. After all with the long hours culture wouldn’t you rather share evening meetings with someone like yourself who's quite happy to practise urinary retention and share half a Wagon Wheel?

In one recent job my line manager saw it as her mission to clone herself lest a tragic accident made her incapable of holding any of her eighty-six ring binders. Admittedly no one quite shared her dress sense, although a tendency to look as if you were attending a wedding reception circa 1987 was slowly becoming de-rigeur. But when it came to being perfectly humourless and to facing off colleagues with meaningless processes and procedures she must have felt great pride in her recruits. And many of them, I slowly became aware, had developed a penchant for cat calendars and soft toy kittens and would often be found together enjoying the latest cat diary. Needless to say those of us not of a feline inclination were glad to feel ostracised and soon found ourselves working elsewhere.

On the other hand I once worked with a colleague I had a great deal – too much – in common with. We would spend whole afternoons rapping about films and literature rather than devising ad campaigns for Southern Gas. It wasn’t good for either of us and he was sacked shortly afterwards.
Just another lose-lose corporate situation. Though, quite honestly, are any of us still counting?

Do You Really Want to Work from Home Part 3?

2008-02-03T04:20:00.000-08:00

Umbilical Cord

It's exhausting being the repository of all your ex-colleagues' hopes, fears and dreams - don't even get them started on your dreadful pension situation - and keeping up the required level of perkiness. But don't worry, many of them will have a chance to experience your exciting new lifestyle firsthand at the next takeoever.

Vision

It's funny, you might have acquired a cottage in Suffolk, a vegetable plot and a bad broadband connection so that no one can get at you, but they still find ways of suggesting that you should be attending Investors in People networking sessions until you're sixty-five. Don't listen to them.

Workaholic

See how your work-rate will soar, without interruptions. Can you actually be 'over-productive' and are you getting paid for it?

'X' Files, The

Reserved for all the boring administration you'll keep putting off.

Yuletide

A lonely time for the home-aloner - even the dreaded office Christmas party takes on a Pickwickensian glamour. All you can do is display the card from the dog shampooist and hope he doesn't want to 'touch base' in the New Year.

Zing

The highs and lows are like nothing you'll ever experience working 9-to-5. But will you ever really want to go back to five-hour 'brainstorming' (sic) sessions called 'Making the Most of Meeting Situations' - only to decide that 'communication is the key to success'? Think about it carefully.

Would You Really Prefer Working From Home?

2008-01-31T00:36:00.001-08:00

New Age

Working from home is hyped as the New Age working routine: no carbon miles, saving companies' money, etc - actually it just gives a new lease of life to Jehovah's Witnesses and Bettaware reps who want to be your friend.

Online

You have a PC and fax that has funny turns, but it's automatically assumed you'll be bristling with technology - you'll feel marginalized because you can't even have a proper systems breakdown.

Phone

In the office you know when someone is 'in a meeting', but when you call from your home office you'll always seem to ring people at the wrong moment. Of course, they can ring you anytime, but saying 'sorry, I'm just dealing with the cat's litter tray' doesn't have quite that same ring of self-importance.

Quest

Even if your small business is deeply unsuccessful, you must still look on it as a Journey of Self-Transformation - although your bank manager may find it difficult to see this as a reason for extending your loan.

Real Office

Always try to pretend that you've got one and that there's not really a giant Cabbage Patch doll staring at you from the spare bed.

Small Businessman's Club (sic)

Not always what you'd expect - not if you don't happen to be a dog shampooist, burglar alarm salesman or a trainee aromatherapist, that is.

Training

Look back with yearning at all those useless training courses you attended. But just think of all the extra time you'll be able to spend, yes, overworking.

Would You Really Prefer Working from Home?

2008-01-14T06:49:00.000-08:00

Appearance

Well, just look at you: slopping around in your jeans doing a little light emailing. That's what you think: it'll soon dawn on you that, unless you're power-dressed and wearing enough cologne to damage the ozone layer, no-one will take you seriously. Not even you.

Bedroom

Do you really want to spend a lifetime suffering from Mrs Rochester's Syndrome - padding around a bedroom, sorry, office, in your slippers?

Cats

Cats, once happy to grub around outside, will now meow plaintively and claw at your window, like Cathy in Wuthering Heights. Passers-by make comments about the RSPCA.

Dogs

Also disturbed by your new daylight appearances.

Enigmas

Working virtually means you won't know your clients' favourite colours/ personal relationships/ lucky Lottery numbers/ glove compartment contents. You'll wonder what picture they have of you - then again, perhaps you'd rather not know.

Front door

Whatever you do, don't open it - it'll be a can't-believe-his-luck Mormon or if you're very lucky the Bettaware person who wants to be your best friend.

Gossip

Deprived of office gossip, be warned: you may find yourself becoming abnormally interested in your partner's boring work colleagues - a pathetic gossip junkie's secondhand fix.

Home

In a real office everyone is supposed to work with a common aim - at home, when you emerge grim-faced from your 'office', you'll find others grazing semi-comatose in front of Murder She Wrote and asking you where the chocolate spread is.

Instant nostalgia

All-of-a-sudden irritating colleagues will appear pleasantly-eccentric; overreaching management just a victim of the system. You'd really give this up just to get on first names with your Avon representative?

Jealousy

You will feel that every client on the phone automatically knows you're sitting on a hideous, purple quilt that looks like something worn by Abba's Agnetha in 1977. This can induce 'real office' envy very quickly.

Keyboard

If you're not slumped in front of one for twelve hours a day - a prime candidate for RSI - then you must be the new part-timer.

Lonely

If you finally solve your people problem you'll have to face up to the next one: solitary confinement. But don't worry - the cat will try to cheer you up by meowing down the chimney with full Dolby sound effects.

Motivation

At 'proper work' (as you'll have to think of it) you could always read the company's mission statement if you were desperate for a laugh. Now you'll stare at the pile of red bills, have another cup of coffee and, to raise your self-esteem, remember that you were once commended in a cycling proficiency test.

The Corporate Bullshit Detector: L

2008-01-04T10:29:00.000-08:00

Leadership skills - Better write yours down for the boss - you won't be around forever.

Leading-edge - Your company is probably leading-edge in the same way that London Underground is a transport system or Victoria Beckham is a singer. Best not to inquire too much, really.

Leave it up to the man on the coalface - Probably a woman, but a mere detail, honestly.

Let's put that in the lift and see which floor is stops at - Probably yours.

Life-cycle assessment - Is there any real reason for your company and its systems, products or services to exist? Don't answer that.

Low-hanging fruit - Easy pickings for your company that even it might get right for once.

Corporate art: weird or just oxymoronic?

2008-01-02T12:22:00.000-08:00

Corporate art always seems a bit weird and oxymoronic. Did the artist really sit down with the brief to produce something that matched beige and wouldn’t put people off their BlackBerrying? Or was it just a bit of luck that they had something lying around that didn’t involve any body fluids? Or is it just seen as another expensive outlay that may, like the rest of us, one day be worth the investment?

But, whatever the reason, most of us are unlikely to have a Rothko hanging outside our office, like David Rockefeller, whose White Center was recently sold for $72.8 million. At best we’re more likely to be given inoffensive (we all know we’re talking a Monet print here with enlarged lily). At worst we’ll sit in the same meeting room for years and wonder what kind of mind could produce a grotesque leather clock with drooping handles, a view of the Essex countryside with wonky steeple and a Breton woman in costume on melamine? And, no, we’re not talking post-modern, post-ironic Hoxton gallery here.

Only such is the noxious effect of yet another four hour ‘speed’ meeting that perhaps we’d hate it even if it was a Picasso. Sad, but true.

Win a Great Getaways holiday break www.ihatetheoffice.co.uk

The Corporate Bullshit Detector: J - K

2007-12-18T01:38:00.000-08:00

Japanese-style management - The collapse of the Japanese economy has rather put the mockers on this one. If you've still got a Japanese management system in your company, start considering hari-kari.

Job-depth - Check the size of your job description. If it only runs to a single page, then think 'flexible work force.'

Job share - Both of you should be extremely grateful that your company is willing to let you do what is virtually a full-time job each for just half the pay.

Job-specific competencies - Surprisingly, some jobs require you to actually know something - don't worry, in your case Facebook (sex life mapped out for the next five years) or art therapy (exchanging doodles during a meeting) will be quite sufficient.

Joint implementation - Both partners agree to actually do the same thing together at the same time. Don't they make it look like hard work? Sometimes you wonder if you've missed something.

Just in time - Supply-on-demand system for maximum efficiency, which includes periods of inactivity; sort of what you are expected to do all of the time, except without the inactivity.

Key - Players, objectives, actions, visions, outcomes. What is it about this adjective that makes everything very important, self-important or just plain ridiculous? Urgent key guidance needed immediately please.

Knowledge economy - Fewer and fewer of us are making widgets and, instead, are supposed to be exhaustively producing ideas and concepts in the form of symbolic knowledge. Just in case we ever wanted an excuse for an emergency lie-down.

Know where all the bodies are buried? - Oh, dear, should you report this?

The Office Christmas Survival Guide

2007-12-14T01:53:00.000-08:00

Office life can be challenging at the best of times, what with the ever-present threat of being 'consolidated' (i.e. sacked), negotiating the minefield of political correctness, and the strain of keeping the boss ignorant of what really goes on from nine-to-five - not to mention the loud girl in accounts whose coarse laughter becomes more grating by the day. But the run-up to Christmas brings its own peculiar hurdles to overcome before the holiday finally arrives.

The Christmas Lunch
The atmosphere varies from convivial to decline and fall of the Roman Empire, as everyone eventually gives up trying to look dignified in a paper hat and plastic moustache. But it's the one time of year when you and your colleagues can be sure of working towards a common goal, i.e. getting sufficiently drunk not to care about the loss of decorum.

How to survive: Accept the inevitable by adopting the sense of humour and table manners of a four-year-old. This is no time to play party pooper and rush back to the office in a fit of moral indignation to 'get on with some work'.

The Christmas Party
Previous parties will have left you wondering if (a) a drunken clinch that lasts 20 seconds can form the basis of a sexual harrassment claim, (b) the pokey room with all the broken PCs is used at any other time of the year, and (c) direct eye contact will ever be resumed again in your department.

How to survive: Behave as if your mother’s watching you. Better the terminal boredom of your colleagues’ small talk about how busy Boots is than discovering your drunken photocopier activities have become the number one screen saver across a large part of the developed world.

Christmas Cards
Should you only give them to people who gave them to you last year (assuming you can remember)? Should you leave them on people's desks, or send them to their home addresses? What can you do if half-a-dozen cards land on you desk on Christmas Eve, when it's too late to go out and buy any to return? (This assumes a level of popularity unusual in offices, unless you are the boss.)

How to survive: E-mail everyone with a seasonal greeting saying that you aren't sending cards this year as you don’t want to add to global warming.

The Chairman's Visit
It's difficult to know which side feels more awkward when the boss pops in for his annual minimal-contact staff-bonding exercise to thank you for all for your hard work, and explain why his bonus sack is empty this year (again).

How to survive: Pray that it takes place before the Christmas lunch (see above). The last thing you want is to greet your leader wearing a set of flashing reindeer antlers on your head - it will only mark you out for the next redundancy round.

Office Decorations
Happily, one person knows where the office decorations are kept. Sadly, they haven't been updated since 1974, so are now both extremely tatty and a fire hazard.

How to survive: In their current state, the decorations are literally a matter of life and death, and only the terminally disaffected would actually want to see their office go up in smoke. Time for someone to raid petty cash for some new twinkling lights. And don't worry about how naff they look; remember that the office at Christmas is a taste-free zone, and must always be so.

Secret Santa
In theory a cute idea. Everyone is given a spending limit to buy a 'secret' present for another member of staff, who never discovers the identity of the giver. In practice, it sustains the entire market in fur-trimmed, purple knickers and dubiously-shaped sex toys.

How to survive: Smile bravely and conveniently 'forget' the offending gift on the bus back home. Do not try to drop it in the charity box at the local church.

The Last Day
A forlorn attempt to evoke the Christmas spirit involves standing around on mince pie-encrusted carpet tiles drinking sherry. This, of course, is for the few stragglers who haven't managed to turn what should be two days off work into an unofficial three-week holiday.

How to survive: With any luck, you will be allowed home at lunchtime. Until then, feign interest in everyone else’s Christmas plans, which generally consist of transporting difficult relatives from one front room to an identical front room on the other side of the country. Happy Christmas

That's No Way to Say Good-Bye: The Leaving Party Countdown Cont

2007-12-10T00:55:00.000-08:00

1pm Think of the lunchtime drinks as but the rehearsal of what is to come - it's certainly uncanny how a mixture of Tikka curry, lager and crisps down your expensive suit appear just like vomit! Expect to see all of your colleagues and maybe some you've never seen in your life before. They're not stupid. They know that you're paying.

4pm It's sad, but still no-one will admit to a leaving party. You leave it to your own extraordinary powers of deduction as a 1970s' disco unit appears from nowhere and prophylactic balloons (rhubarb crumble) are stuck on the walls. You spot a Robert Dyas bag being furtively passed around your department. Have they bought you a mop head?

5pm Inevitably, that moment you've been dreading since your first dental appointment looms. 'Party! Party!' screams a committee memeber, letting off the six party poppers your collection warranted. You do your best to look surprised and get ready for the revenge of the imprisoned upon the free. Soon everyone in the company has boogied-on down. After-all, who wouldn't want to be included in this marvellous opportunity to stop working and witness your long, drawn-out embarrassment?

Then the Tarzanogram arrives, in your case early, because he's got more lucrative work ahead of him and is already looking at his watch non-surreptitiously. If you're a man you'll ideally do your best to lose consciousness immediately; if you're a woman you'll try to be post-feminist and say that you're glad men are now allowed to humiliate themselves in public and now they know how women feel. But, in the event, you'll probably just scream, have a silly look on your face and get baby oil all over his fun fur.

Now's the cue for your director to say how much you'll be missed, make you feel guilty for spoiling his holiday planner and give your the card and present. It's important to look surprised and shocked, as if all you ever expected to receive was your P.45.

You tell them what a wonderful workplace it's been (that's why you're leaving), what a super surprise all this is (you always wear your best clothes to work), how amusing all the messages in the card are (ranging from the vulgar to the obscene) and what a lot of friends you have made (most of those here are freeloaders). Hold up your Best of Joan Collins Gift Set (yes, chosen by the Poundstretcher shopper) and find yourself lost for words.

Break down. This will come quite naturally.

The Corporate Bullshit Detector: H - I

2007-12-07T01:42:00.000-08:00

H

Homeworking - Very holistic, but have you lost your work status and pension plan just to be on first-name terms with the local Bettaware representative?

Hot desking - Used by those who are too important to be in the office very often - or so unimportant that it doesn't really matter. You know who you are.

I

Increments - The minimalist office seems to have encouraged minimalist salary increases. Ask for a magnifying glass so that you can see yours more clearly.

In the loop - Those who use the same impenetrable jargon, and see themselves as cutting-edge and belonging to a secret society of true believers. And/ or would have been burnt at the stake in times past.

Investors in People - Lots of silver plaques explaining that your employer is as caring as it can get without actually treating you to an Aveda body spa weekend or paying you more.

ISO 9000 - If you are not involved with this benchmarking system, you'll have no idea what it is. Even if you are, you'll probably have the same problem.

That's No Way to Say Good-Bye: The Leaving Party Countdown Part 1

2007-12-04T01:12:00.000-08:00

You've had the job offer that's too good to be true. And, let's be honest, no-one goes through psychometric testing and expensive interview outfits just for fun. Or do they? Because, wait a minute, you're beginning to have second thoughts. Be honest - you just can't face the horrors of the last day and the dreaded Office Leaving Party. In order to survive, we need to know exactly what to expect - and how to behave - with the most thought-out strategy since the D- Day invasions. This guide is for anyone who finds it difficult to break down when presented with a Spiderman bubble-bath holder.

9am A doleful demeanour is essential on your last day. Not that this should be difficult knowing what you've got to face. Winsomely smirking members of the 'Party! Party!' committee (no one knows the number of plastic beakers and boxes of Kettle Chips you're supposed not to have seen) pretend to have an earnest conversation about paper clips. But the phrases 'edible thong' and 'front seat' percolate in your direction. Mentally re-adjust your alcohol consumption by a factor of ten when you hear their plans for you and the baby oil.

10am Your desk might look like a safety-zone but you soon discover how wrong you are. Colleagues like to prefigure every conversation with comments, veiled and indirect, about your departure, as if there still might be time to warn you of the perils of eating in a different Pret a Manger. You should think of all those illegal dental appointments and try to look guilty. Last-day diplomacy dictates that you should walk around the office blindfolded. Don't be surprised to see at least half the staff in the lavatory signing your three-foot-high day-glo padded card. For your sanity's sake deliberately fail to notice PAs trying to hide bulding envelopes in their bags.

11am It's important to make time to give your replacement an idea of the duties they can expect. Whether you wish to itemise your boss's predilection for giant tubs of Vaseline or the colleague whose breath always smells like the inside of an acquarium is up to you. Spider plant envy creeps in: if only you could be a half-dead plant of indeterminate age, there would be no need for any of this.

12 noon You accidentally hear about mysterious shooping expeditions to Lidls and grow sad: does your revered personal style really count for nothing? Is this all you mean to them? Disappointingly, no sign even of a Marks & Spencer bag, so you won't even be able to take anything back. Who cares if a colleague obsessed with Poundstretcher specials seems to be having the final say in what is purchased. Breathe deeply ...

The Corporate Bullshit Detector: G

2007-11-28T01:16:00.000-08:00

Game plan - Everybody is supposed to have one for the next five years with in-built career reviews and life-training. Or else just needs to remember to buy more lottery tickets.

Gap in the market - Sinclair C5 car, Tom Jones doing hip-hop, retro pussy-bow blouses. Tell your boss that some gaps in the market are meant to be.

Grass roots - The depressing people who buy your products or services. Every head office insists it's in touch with theirs, and someone once remembers running a focus group in Chelmsford.

Group culture - Sharing the same aims and objectives - chiefly going home occasionally if at all possible

Please Scuba In Your Own Think Tank

2007-11-26T01:05:00.000-08:00

Gap analysis ... customer offer vision ... paradigm shifts ... thought leadership ... Today a meeting isn’t a meeting without a thick sludge of corporate jargon to separate the high flyers from the rest of us. Love them or loathe them (and most of us do) we can’t escape the growing avalanche of bizarre words and phrases entering the workplace.

Like many people I’ve had a number of careers and found myself the innocent target, and even the occasional purveyor, of management-speak. In book publishing, as it moved from gentlemanly to cutthroat, I sat in meetings where we talked of “vertical integration” and “brandwidth” without batting an eyelid. In further education everyone seemed to be pursuing an elusive “quality.” And, as a local authority manager, I was forever trying to work out who my “stakeholders” were.

For maximum effect, as every successful corporate bullshitter knows, the most effective jargon is abstract, latinate, and comes from the US. Acronyms are excellent for full impenetrability (try Swot, MMM and KVI for starters) while an arbitrary capital letter may even suggest divine origins.
Work has become the new religion and needs its magic phrases for the priesthood to bamboozle us. Ideally, these will be from a lexicon invented by the new faith’s gurus, mainly elderly right-wing Americans who seem to know the Way Ahead. Hence, most of us spend every working hour “pursuing excellence,” “making a difference” or ensuring some “continuous improvement,” while feeling that we must be missing something, given how meaningless these mantras are.

Another tier of jargon seems to emanate from US manager jocks who either borrow their sayings from sports or toilet stalls. Since the 1980s they’ve been making sure we “cover all our bases,” “punch above our weight” and appreciate the need for a “level playing field,” while also advising us not to “piss outside our circle.”

But why do we use so much jargon and should all perpetrators be taken out of the meeting room and quietly shot? Not quite. The next time you sit fuming next to someone who says “win-win situation” 15 times in a credit control catchup, try reflecting on the reasons why we end up speaking in corporate tongues.

One-upmanship must come pretty high up the list — nearly all of us have used the latest piece of jargon to impress a superior or interviewer. But this pales into insignificance beside the seasoned operator who uses constant corporate-speak and lets you know when an existing term has been superseded — “core competencies” are just so 2005. They know that using old jargon is professional suicide.

Equally, getting it right means joining an exclusive club that can help your career. Perhaps this is the real reason why more of us are finding romance with our colleagues (with the boss’s permission of course). Nobody outside our office has a clue what we’re actually talking about.
And then there are times when we use jargon because we can’t remember what we said before it existed. Just what is a “portfolio of skills”? It might only mean making all those unsuccessful career starts sound sexy on your resume, but sometimes it’s easier to go with the flow and just get on with the important business of not being “empowered” (taking on so many extra duties we don’t have time to notice our salary hasn’t gone up).

Some of the jargon tripping you up? You’re not alone. But unfortunately, nobody is prepared to break ranks and admit it. And so, you find yourself locked into using jargon because it would be too embarrassing to ask what zero-sum negotiations really means at this stage. If everyone else in the meeting is talking about being “in the loop” you’re hardly going to interrupt and say: “Hey, I think you mean those who use the same impenetrable jargon, and see themselves as cutting-edge.” We just let our managers carry on speaking to each other in advanced Klingon and hope they don’t notice us doodling.

This may possibly leave you, the jargon intolerant person, in a state of some fear and loathing. In which case you may just need to develop a better sense of humor. Hearing others earnestly talking about “the big picture” and “proactive, not reactive” should ideally lead to a serious fit of the giggles. You could even invent your own jargon and watch the MBAers making straight for their BlackBerries.

Alternatively, you could work in an environment where corporate jargon has yet to spoil the working day. Sand sweeping in Timbuktu anyone?

Training Daze: Part 3

2007-11-23T01:28:00.000-08:00

Whether you're doing assertiveness training, 'learning to say no in middle management', or finding out how to prioritise tasks, it'll be hard to avoid a brainstorming session. Time stands still as you're encouraged to indulge in an endless stream-of-consciousness. Who would have thought 20 adults could spend six hours on 'Making the Most of Meeting Situations' - and then decide the most important thing is to communicate?

The uninitiated might feel flattered initially at the Einsteinian connotations of the exercise but soon come to realise the profound truth of the term 'a pool of ignorance'. That is your brain, that is, up there on the screen. The over-enthusiastic ask if they can possibly keep their sugar paper (the use of two or more Magic Markers is always a dead giveaway). Other people's 'ideas' are collected up for future recycling.

The truly unlucky will be shanghaied into role playing games involving lying on the floor or revealing their dreams. If you find everybody apart from you is wearing shoes accept that you will soon have to stand on a chair and pretend you are a tree.

Recently I took part in a day-long role play that involved groups 'creating their own built environments' using, yes, sugar paper and cardboard and acting out 'silent tableaux' inside them. It was noticeable how we were split down the middle: those of us who didn't mind pretending we were four years old as long as we could sit in our 'houses' and read the Guardian, and those who did a runner. Quite what the point of the exercise was nobody knew but then, as somebody in my group said, at least it kept the facilitator out of the community a bit longer.

Surprisingly it's quite rare for course members to admit publicly to dissatisfaction. One must make do with strained expressions, the merest flicker of dissent. We assume instead that our intransigence is a personal failing. And who wants to admit to being anti-social, incapable of working in groups and lacking in team spirit? For Geoff and Pam the future looks rosy, as more of us have multiple careers and there are even more training courses. There's not a lot we can do about it. Apart from brainstorming our feelings about it on sugar paper.

The Corporate Bullshit Detector: F

2007-11-18T01:47:00.000-08:00

Facilitator - If you're on a training course called 'Find Your Inner Child in Spreadsheet Management', your trainer will like to call themselves a facilitator. This way they won't have to take any personal responsibility for the gibberish and boredom you will face over the next eight hours.

Fast-tracker - Someone who won't stay long enough to know where the emergency tea bags are kept.

Focused - Person who likes to boast that they're actually able to concentrate on one thing at a time. A bit sad when you really think about it.

Training Daze: Part 2

2007-11-18T01:37:00.000-08:00

Once Geoff or Pam have explained how to break out of your huddled group at the other side of the room, you are finally ready for business. Your trainer (who may prefer to call themselves a facilitator so that they can't be blamed for what is to happen) will spend some time 'framesetting' ie explaining what comes next. It little matters that you have already been sent course details. Given your new mental age, how can you possibly be expected to remember?

And if at this stage you are not also over-provided with felt-tips, sugar paper, Pritt Sticks and other nursery stationery, complain loudly.

Already, of course, some jargon has been introduced and more will follow. Your company or organisation has, after all, paid a considerable sum for you to be present here today. Participants and paymasters may as well feel they are getting something our of it, even if you're not. Most important, however, is that you feel intimidated. Experienced course-goers know to fall asleep during 'framesetting'. Newcomers are in a state of high anexiety, lest they are asked to reveal anything further about their real Desiree potato identity. Old timers know the day has been carefully arranged so that no-one can escape the brain-storming session to come ...