Innovation
Friday - Office party after-effects
Friday 11/4/2003The inner child is silent this morning, due to the adult indignities of the night before. One of our new management's more dubious decisions has been to hold a quarterly state of the nation meeting, where the whole company (recently swelled by us buying another) is treated to presentations on where the business is going and why.
Friday 11/4/2003
The inner child is silent this morning, due to the adult indignities of the night before. One of our new management's more dubious decisions has been to hold a quarterly state of the nation meeting, where the whole company (recently swelled by us buying another) is treated to presentations on where the business is going and why. I'm all for corporate communications, even though my one-man campaign to stamp out management jargon is not proving successful. We had nine 'going forwards' in just under an hour, or roughly one every six minutes: obviously I'll have to consider naming and shaming next. Even so, this isn't the dubious part of the decision -- what can go badly wrong is the "let's all go to the pub afterwards" aspect. Now, these aren't the days of dot-com legend any more. We, like everyone else in this business, have had to put the corporate yacht on hold for a while. But it has to be said the post-PowerPoint party on Thursday night was more than enthusiastically enjoyed. I was going to recount some of the less reprehensible acts, but there weren't many of those. It's been a long time since I've seen senior management prove their authority through drinking competitions (strawpedoes -- just say go), or what 50 shots of glutinous cocktails look like on one plate. And as for the co-worker who invited me to a fetish club -- somewhere, pictures exist of the last time I went in for That Sort Of Thing, and the inadvisability they demonstrate cannot be overstressed (unlike the leather straps). There was dancing of a sort banned in the lower twenty states of the USA, there was an excess of chicken drumsticks coated obscenely in barbeque sauce, and there was one recently married and very respectable bod who had to explain on her mobile from the floor of a tube train heading in the wrong direction why she was going to Woodford instead of back home to hubby in outer South-West London. It seems that London cabbies are under no obligation to take someone who is incapable of standing unaided. Did you know that? I didn't know that. And this is during an uncertain economy. What happens when we once again scale the pinnacles of high profits? I don't know and frankly I'm scared to guess. But you can be sure I'll let you know when I do. Nurse... Click here to see more of Rupert's diaries.
The inner child is silent this morning, due to the adult indignities of the night before. One of our new management's more dubious decisions has been to hold a quarterly state of the nation meeting, where the whole company (recently swelled by us buying another) is treated to presentations on where the business is going and why. I'm all for corporate communications, even though my one-man campaign to stamp out management jargon is not proving successful. We had nine 'going forwards' in just under an hour, or roughly one every six minutes: obviously I'll have to consider naming and shaming next. Even so, this isn't the dubious part of the decision -- what can go badly wrong is the "let's all go to the pub afterwards" aspect. Now, these aren't the days of dot-com legend any more. We, like everyone else in this business, have had to put the corporate yacht on hold for a while. But it has to be said the post-PowerPoint party on Thursday night was more than enthusiastically enjoyed. I was going to recount some of the less reprehensible acts, but there weren't many of those. It's been a long time since I've seen senior management prove their authority through drinking competitions (strawpedoes -- just say go), or what 50 shots of glutinous cocktails look like on one plate. And as for the co-worker who invited me to a fetish club -- somewhere, pictures exist of the last time I went in for That Sort Of Thing, and the inadvisability they demonstrate cannot be overstressed (unlike the leather straps). There was dancing of a sort banned in the lower twenty states of the USA, there was an excess of chicken drumsticks coated obscenely in barbeque sauce, and there was one recently married and very respectable bod who had to explain on her mobile from the floor of a tube train heading in the wrong direction why she was going to Woodford instead of back home to hubby in outer South-West London. It seems that London cabbies are under no obligation to take someone who is incapable of standing unaided. Did you know that? I didn't know that. And this is during an uncertain economy. What happens when we once again scale the pinnacles of high profits? I don't know and frankly I'm scared to guess. But you can be sure I'll let you know when I do. Nurse... Click here to see more of Rupert's diaries.