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9 to 5
Friday. Got a call from my boss - "I'm feeling a bit sick, can you chair the meeting on Monday?"
"yeah OK" <heavy sigh> "what room is it in"
"Dunno, but they'll let you know when you get to Inverness"
Inverness - bastard!!!!!
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I get an email from Miss Chevious, one of my better hires at FUKD plc. She's got another job and invites me to the leaving do. The tone and content are sufficiently flirty to suggest that like Blonde Poppet she may be requiring 'breakfast'. However, unlike Blonde Poppet, Miss Chevious is not the sort to be placated with a bacon sarnie.
Further emails follow, as she tells me about the little three-way dream she's had about me (what is it with young women these days, I blame Channel 5). Reading this steamy prose is certainly preferable to the very dull teleconference I'm in at the time (good job I'm sitting at my desk). Until I get to the part where she reveals that this little ménage is starring me and Mr Motivator - "Ewwwwww" I exclaim into the speakerphone, which did rather startle the IT contractor who was droning on at the other end.....
I reply to Miss Chevious pointing out that since I'd spent three years at FUKD plc, at considerable detriment to my career, refusing to suck Mr Motivator's cock I was hardly going to start now.
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Office politics pt 2
One of my colleagues has been tasked with guiding a Division through compliance with some new legislation. The project is a complete train wreck, not helped by our new Head of Legal taking it upon himself to re-interpret the legislation to apply the spirit rather than the letter of the law.
The arguement's are going nowhere, so the Legal guy suggests my colleague hires some consultants to give a view - KPMG he suggests, they're the men for the job. So my colleague duly hires them, at great expense. But he is very disappointed to find that their over-priced advice is almost exactly the same as that from Legal. In fact it's almost verbatim.
A quick call to HR reveals our new Head of Legal joined us from, you guesssed it, KPMG. He's got my colleague to pay through the nose for a couple of his old mates to spin the same line. That's just cheeky.
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I'm driving up to some post-industrial Northern wasteland; on the night of the England Portugal match; so I'm driving too fast for the conditions in a rental car; which is way too skittish under braking; and has the kind of gearbox where you grab for fourth for an oncoming lefthander it snags; leaving you in neutral, sliding round on the wrong side of the road mouthing a small prayer to the gods of popular culture that any potential oncoming HGVs are parked up in the laybys watching the football.
The reason for the roadtrip is that our MD has decided that everyone in Head Office has to get out and meet the troops. We've all got to be at one with our colleagues in the branches. I'm even bearing gifts. Not by choice obviously, we've all been instructed to take chocolates (and it's not politic to be the miserable bastard turning up empty handed).
So there I am with my catering sized tub of Minature Heroes. The sub-Brentian sentiment of choice for managers everywhere - "hey, you haven't got a cat in hell's chance of getting a promotion or pay rise for the work you've put in, but have these small blobs of hydrogenated vegetable fat".
Being nice to people....for a whole day.......people like this middle-manager in a bad Next suit - "you see, what you support functions don't realise...."
mmmmm 'support functions' haven't heard that one since I left FUKD plc
He then proceeds to tell me what he <if miraculously unfettered by budgetary contraints; competitor reaction; the limits of consumer demand; and statutory regulations> would do to turn the company around....
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Out to dinner with my old boss from FUKD plc. He left a few months after I did to join Amalgamated Widgets. It seems the move has not been a great success. The MD and DMD at Widgets are a couple of brianiacs who ditched high flying consultancy jobs to have a play at running a company. They're giving my old boss a spanking on a regular basis because his numbers don't add up at the weekly trading meetings. He was never one for detail, and they're obviously taking great pleasure putting him through the mill.
Which is where the dinner, and the job offer comes in. Basically he wants to take me on (at admittedly a substantial package) to handle the detail with the MD while he gets on with the broad strokes. Mmmm crossing biros with a couple of bored accountants on a weekly basis - what fun.
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To catch up with goings on at FUKD plc I lunched with The Fatman. It seems my erstwhile protégé Undermanager has crossed paths with Mr Motivator once too often and suffered the consequences. Telling a vicious little psychopath like Mr Motivator to go fuck himself and getting away with it requires a lighter touch than Undermanager posses.
He's not been sacked of course. A deft reorganisation puts him directly reporting to his most despised co-worker.
Along with his excellent taste in women (Blonde Poppet was a longstanding object of his sweaty-palmed desires); you've got to hand it to Mr Motivator - when it comes to twisting the knife, there's an evil genius behind those cold dead eyes. An almost Room 101 ability to zero in on people's frailties.
However, in happier news, it seems that Mr Motivator himself may be due for a little reorganisation of his own. He doesn't know it yet, but his destiny awaits in (irony of ironies) Staff Development. I've asked to be kept informed of progress, so that the moment the announcement is made I can be the first to phone up and congratulate him on his 'promotion'.
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down with the kids
One of the disadvantages of spending time with Blonde Poppett is a tendency to pick up on the young persons vernacular. The use of which can sometimes give a less than professional impression in meetings:
Project Manager ".....which means we will make a saving of £2.75 million per month"
Me "kewl"
I sound like an IBM commercial.
It's only a matter of time before I start describing the quality of our customer experience as "pimpin" .........
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