I’ve kept mine discreetly hidden up to now but, in the spirit of Christmas, I have decided to expose them. For those of you wishing to climb the corporate ladder, I give you these offerings which go some way in explaining why I was firmly stuck, part-time, on the bottom rung.
Office Dos
Do acquaint yourself with the mute button on your phone, before referring to the caller as ‘a real pillock’ to the PA next to you.
Here’s a really useful tip in time for the party season where you may have a stash of booze to store before the evening kicks off. To avoid the attentions of the sales department, put the bottles in a box marked, prominently with felt pen, ‘Annual Reports’. You’re then guaranteed that no one will go near them.
Office Don'ts
Do not, after a night out celebrating your birthday at Le Gavroche, come into work the next morning with champagne still coursing through your veins. Losing one’s step on the vertiginous stairs, overlooked on all sides by glass in an open plan office and ending up flat on one’s face, is not a good look. Handing out, like some Marie Antoinette, last night’s petit fours, brought packed in a posh gold box, can, however, mitigate the situation.
Do not mix up e-mail addresses and send the highly confidential itinerary of one director’s forthcoming visit to Israel to the other director’s, equally confidential, life coach.
Do not, under direction from your director to locate an item left behind in a hotel in Bratislava, ring him at the airport shouting excitedly down the phone, ‘Steve, I’ve found your Canali trousers’, in an open plan office.
Do not, when your director wishes to tell you, confidentially, of an office scandal which he has to deal with, frighten him by pulling him into the post room (because you know the door code) when no other rooms are available, to emerge looking shifty and possibly give cause to gossip and an even greater scandal then the one he was telling you of.
Do not, out of pique, as you were not invited, schedule your director’s Christmas dinner with his managers in everyone’s diaries for February.
Here’s one I didn’t do.
The manufacturing company I worked for was awaiting a visit from Chairman to celebrate the fact that they were voted no 2 in Europe. A bright spark arranged the printing of a special message on balloons festooned around the office for the event. The company motto was –‘Ovonet- for those who do.’
The balloons appeared with these words emblazoned on them-
Ovonet
For those who do-
No 2!
Luckily, Chairman was from Korea.
Merry Christmas, Nadolig Llawen, Froehliche Weihnachten , 圣诞节快乐
Shèngdàn jié kuàilè to you all and thank you for reading!
