Company Rewards

Seriously – could you patronise me any more?

A free T-shirt, a CD holder, some jelly beans, a nylon football shirt, a bottle of Bacardi Breezer, a calculator – just some of the dazzling gifts used to ‘incentivise’ me as an employee.

A pension, sick-pay, a holiday entitlement, overtime rates, job-security, an annual bonus – just some of the things I am not entitled to as a non-contract agency employee of five years’ standing.

‘We’, ‘together’, ‘all of us’, ‘team’, ‘pulling in the same direction’ – just some of the words and phrases that make me scream ‘fuck off’ at my PC upon receiving a ‘motivational’ e-mail at work.

Talking to Car Mechanics

It’s not that I’m ashamed or that I think that I should actually know something about engines. It’s just that it makes conversation so uncomfortable.

I can usually keep up for a short while. I make an appropriate ‘oof’ sort of sound when I can discern bad news, such as when something has ‘gone’

‘The dymanator’s gone’, he says.
‘Oof’, I reply.

Sometimes I will add the question, ‘big job?’ The answer to which I can never comprehend. Mechanics tend to think that the question relates to mechanical difficulty as opposed to duration. If it takes over twenty minutes then, to me, it constitutes a big job. To a mechanic, it’s not a big job unless it’s complicated. I don’t have to do the work, so that’s of no consequence to me.

The answer to ‘[is it a] big job?’ should, in my mind, be either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It never is. It’s usually a barrage of jargon, involving ‘trimpling’ things and ‘quadrinating’. The best I can do is nod, look serious and hope that he doesn’t test me on anything he’s just said.

Ordinarily there is a lengthy list of car flaws that the mechanic will reel off to me. This is where it gets really tricky. In an ordinary conversation that I comprehend, I can react naturally. As I have no idea what’s going on in this situation, I react inaccurately and I am also unable to make any verbal contribution whatsoever. The conversation is out of my hands and it is full of potential pitfalls.

So as not to seem like a strange automaton, I usually progress through a series of reactions. At first I adopt a serious facial expression and acknowledge each engine defect with a low ‘okay’. After a few repetitions this starts to sound strange and perhaps even threatening. To lighten the mood I move onto a series of reactions which I like to call, ‘isn’t it funny how we non-mechanics let our ancient cars get in this condition’.

The purpose of these reactions is to indicate to the mechanic that the situation is beyond serious. The car is in such a terrible state of disrepair that you have to laugh, don’t you? Unfortunately, this is ludicrously inappropriate. The mechanic will be totally baffled as you laugh hysterically at each costly fault in your car. I really don’t know why I do this.

Finally, I try and just guess how serious each fault is and react accordingly. By this point the social pressure has got to me and I’m so demented that I can’t comprehend even the most straightforward sentence. I will look back on the conversation later and wonder quite how I reacted with a roll of the eyes and heartfelt ‘oh my God’ when the mechanic told me that I needed more screenwash.

Destiny's Child's 'Independent Women'

It’s the sentiments that get me: That they’re so independent and they don’t rely on men. Nothing wrong with that, but they’re kind of bullish about it.

For the majority of the song they go on about how they have bought all of their own stuff. They bought their own jewellery, cars, houses, shoes, cat food, toilet paper, frozen peas, writing paper, pints of mild, pipes, slippers, trilbies and monocles. Well, big deal. I’m glad you bought all your own stuff and didn’t steal it or have it bought for you, but is it worth – literally – making a song and dance about it? It’s not, is it?

Western society has moved beyond lauding women for actually earning money and buying things. I, for one, expect women to earn money. I don’t try and stone them in the streets for getting above their stations. I don’t write to family members to tell tales of this strange new creature: The woman with a salary.

Members of Destiny’s Child, we know that you’re all millionaires. Don’t rub our faces in it through song and pretend you’re celebrating female freedom. Besides, it was the theme tune to Charlie’s Angels. The apostrophe indicates the possessive – one guy who ‘possesses’ or ‘owns’ three women. Disgraceful.

Corporate VIPs

The amount of times I have asked someone: “Who’s that”, only to get the response: “You don’t know who that is? He’s only your Chief Executive”, or something similar. Why should I know that’s who he is? He’s not on telly or anything.

These people come to visit occasionally and for some reason they can’t see us working properly. Rather we have to impersonate mannequins representing ourselves doing our jobs. It is very important that we not do anything, but look far more like we are doing something than if we were actually doing it. Are you following this?

If I were working, there would be work paraphernalia around where I work. If we have a visitor, the sight of the tools of industry would cause their eyes to combust, so I have to keep them tucked away in drawers. As a result of this, I can’t actually do anything, but that’s okay, because my primary focus when fielding a guest is to be totally in awe of them for their ability to drive a grey car and to create empty slogans with which to aurally beat their workers.

I should probably try and engage the dignitary in conversation (albeit briefly) utilising part of the company motto: “So, how are we doing in terms of new geographies?” ‘New geographies’ is quite genuine, by the way – studying the Earth’s surface is passé. We’re going to revolutionise it in some unspecified way.

So our leader is given a guided tour of the building during which they will have the impression that everyone is happy and everything is fine. No matter that most of the staff are bitter because the apparent ‘belt-tightening’ that pertained to salaries did not apply to the purchase of hundreds of luminous pink chairs to match the branding. Far better to spend a fortune on surface gloss to give the appearance of a happy successful workplace than to spend the same amount of money on creating a genuinely happy and successful workplace.

What I hate most is the blind assumption that you will want to impress this visitor. What are the consequences? Will our great leader not speak to me any more? Will I not get a promotion? These things will never happen anyway. Will the efficiency of the company be damaged? It will if I spend all my time polishing monitors and hiding coffee mugs rather than working. And what do I care if productivity is damaged? I might miss out on the e-mail from further up the hierarchy saying: “Well done everyone” at the end of the year. As rewards go, it’s right up there with the death of a beloved pet.

Under-filled Sandwiches

You can tell a lot about a person by how they make a sandwich, like whether they should live or die.

You know the situation: It’s the morning. You have to go to work and there’s a choice to be made. Either make some lunch to take with you or have and extra five minutes in bed. You go with the extra five minutes and boy, do you regret it later.

Lunchtime comes around and I head to my local sandwich shop, already annoyed that for some reason all of their sandwiches are four-fifths-sized. Really I want to buy two of these minuscule sandwiches, but they are always priced in the assumption of one sandwich per person. I’m not a fat bastard, but I don’t eat the same amount as an eighteen year-old girl. There is another option though and I’m going to take it. The baguette.

Three people work in this fictional sandwich shop (it’s not fictional really). One member of staff is generous with fillings, one is about average and one is downright mean. It’s almost like a modern parable. I am in the queue and I am trying to manipulate it so that I don’t get Mrs Rationing. It looks like she will be serving me if the three of them continue to produce sandwiches at their current rates, so I go and pretend to peruse the fridge for a second before rejoining the queue. It’s okay now. I’m going to avoid her.

Suddenly, one of the customers remembers three more things that he has to buy for a friend and delays Mr Average-Filling. I’m landed with Mrs Rationing. I place my order for an egg mayonnaise and salad baguette.

Rather than cutting me a third of a baguette, Mrs Rationing first allocates me a quarter. She then takes one spoonful of egg mayonnaise from a bowl and smears it along the baguette, willing it to the edges of the bread. It’s clear to everyone that a second spoonful is required, but no – eggs are a priceless commodity in a sandwich shop. They don’t throw half a tub of egg mayonnaise away at the end of every day or anything. With such a generous thickness of filling already, there’s no real room for salad, so two slices of tomato and a piece of lettuce should do the trick. One slice of tomato at each end of the bread – how can she look at that and think it’s acceptable?

“£2.50, please”.

I am the proud owner of one quarter of a forty pence baguette and it has cost me a mere £2.50. I bite into the sandwich and can literally taste nothing. It is the most crushing disappointment imaginable. A fellow customer gives me a look that says: ‘You poor bastard’. Maybe he will help me make Mrs Rationing into a sandwich.

People Who Return Mystery Phone Calls

What possesses them? They dial the number to find out if anyone has phoned while they were out. They don’t recognise the number. They call it.

Where I work there is a switchboard system and unfortunately all outbound calls appear to come from the same number – my number. I am forever answering the phone to people who start a conversation: “Hello. You phoned me”.

I respond in any number of ways. Sometimes I just say ‘no’ and leave it at that. They usually start shouting that I did call them almost immediately. Sometimes I point out that they have phoned me, rather than my phoning them. This never seems to make sense to them. Again they usually just start shouting about how I did call them.

Even when I persuade the caller that it was not me who has called them, they still can’t let it lie. They accept that I don’t know who called them, but they think they can work it out from what little information they have. They ask why they were called. Bearing in mind that I don’t know who they are or who called them, I tell them that I don’t know. They ask who my company are. I tell them. They’ve never heard of us and still they won’t hang up. What do they think is going on? That we’re that mystery company who phone people at random and hand out diamond encrusted space-ships if they call us back? They are always concerned that it might be ‘something important’. I work for this company. I can assure them that whatever it is can wait until the next ice age, but they are so thirsty for human contact that they will remain on the line to be abused by someone who clearly hates them. Me.

You may think that my antagonistic attitude exacerbates these situations, but it doesn’t. I have experimented and the end result is always the same. If you are nice, they think you can help and it merely prolongs the irritation.