Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Spilling the beans..



The merger on 31st July seems to have affected the office in ways which I wouldn't have predicted, usually you have to wait for the marriage ceremony to discover you don't like your partner! It's been the elephant in the room, something nobody wants to talk about for fear of either being thought of as disloyal or in case you discover you are the only one who isn't 100% behind the idea - it's a bit late for that, the cabin doors have been closed and the engines are beginning to whine.

By a strange chain of events I found myself in the office with one other person, Magoo, and decided to take the bull by the horns and ask her exactly what she thought of the situation and how she felt about her own role and what she wanted to do going forward. Now if luck or opportunity had presented me with a different colleague then things would have been done and dusted within a quarter of an hour but Magoo is a 'life-coach' which if you are a cynical sod puts her somewhere between spoon benders and feng shui practitioners, once memorably described by the late Linda Smith as the ancient art of separating the gullible from their money.

I told, perhaps rather selfishly, Magoo about six months ago that I didn't want to engage in 'deep and meaningful' conversations with her because I felt I was being auditioned for one of her case studies and every word, nuance and aspect of my body language would be interpreted rather than casually observed - as in what I would call 'normal' conversations.  Anyway what had begun as a simple two part question, "How do you feel about the merger and are you confident in your ability to deal with it?"  developed into nearly two hours worth of mental meanderings, confessions, laughter, jokes and a general good time - all that was missing was the tears and the handing over of a wad of cash at the end - a good job we were both over our allotted hours for the week otherwise we would be in trouble.

We have completely opposite ideas of work, how we work, how the office works on many levels but on some we were pretty close to thinking the same thing. I didn't feel at all guilty afterwards in that normal Anglo-Saxon Protestant guilt trip way - or is that supposed to occur only after sex? We are still poles apart on the big subject of office socialising, something I have no intention of getting involved in again - I'm too old for pub crawls on a Friday night and too cynical for cheese and wine evenings listening to pan pipe versions of the Beatles whilst trying to avoid the only subject we have in common - work.

Incidentally the latest news on the merger is that apparently London doesn't know what each of us does, they just know details of how salary and length of employment. Nothing like being prepared is there, I can't help thinking that Carlos Tevez won't be turning up in Turin today and the Juventus manager saying, "So Carlos, are you happy to play in goal?"

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