Monday thoughts

Monday morning and I am faced with this chart.

I contemplate whether to delete the word localism and insert 'suicide?'
The drilling and banging contiues, my mood worsens.

What did I do with my weekend? lethargy, apathy and dissappointment spring to mind.

Some random thoughts:

Multi-tasking should be embraced in the workplace. For example, it should not be considered rude to polish your shoes whilst in a meeting about industry developments.

Is a cinema a good location for a lecture / speach? The stench of pop corn and an overwhelming desire to holds hands with whoever is sitting next to you suggests not.

All office hover-ers should be made to stand in an empty room for half and hour a week. You know, people who think they are important enough to but into any conversation by hovering behind your seat. It is simply rude. To even the score half and hour of hover-ers time should be wasted in this futile gesture.

Blackberry desposit boxes shou be installed by the door of each room in the building. It is most infuriating when people in their own office are scrolling around on the little twit-machines. Gotta get that important update about a BA flight sale from Travel Zoo. Or perhaps it is Tesco, informing you that you can get double Clubcard points and Kleenex tissue this week.

Happy Monday

ES

A nice cup of tea?

Hot hot Drinks
Hot hot Drinks,
one ha' penny,
two ha' penny,
Hot hot Drinks

If you have no daughters,
give them to your sons,
one ha' penny,
two ha' penny,
Hot hot Drinks

A little bit of a tenuous link to a childhood nursery rhyme favourite, but this executive is in a vocal mood today. After 12 days straight of being in the company of colleagues, I am singing along to the beat of the hammer and the whine of the drill in reception (all whilst thinking` TFIF over and over again).

My Friday treat will not be a pint of ale, a pasty from the bakery, or a mid morning donut oh no.
It will be an in depth analysis of the types of ‘hot drinks’ indulgers in the office.

Tea is the most popular drink in the world in terms of consumption. Its consumption equals all other manufactured drinks in the world — including coffee, chocolate, soft drinks, and alcohol — put together

English bulldog – Proud of being truly addicted to tea. Will drink 8-12 cups of Breakfast tea every day. Bulldogs are the kind of people that start to shake and rattle during a 1 hour car journey as they haven’t got their tea fix. Likely to drink strong ‘builders tea’ and refer to it as a ‘brew’. Favourite biscuit – Plain digestive.

Tea slaves – the poor souls who job it is most often to do the tea round. However hard they try, they will forget someone’s preference (I WANTED 3 SUGARS!). There kettle skills will never be good enough for their demanding colleagues. Likely to settle down in a quiet corner with a weak milky brew. Favourite biscuit, Malted Milk.

The nay-sayers – People who don’t like hot drinks. Shunned from society, these bitter individuals will do anything to spoil a party and try and decrease others’ enjoyment of a relaxing cuppa. They drink water (because it is the most ironic drink to enjoy) and are overly smug that they have no caffeine addiction. When in a bar, they are likely to order a stupid cocktail that no one else has heard of, just to prove they know what it is. Favourite biscuit, Choco Leibniz

Coffee addicts – DO NOT speak to these people before they reach the bottom of their second cup of Kenco. They will not be able to communicate properly and may end up striking you as you are preventing them from drinking more coffee. Any brown, caffeine injected liquid will do. 6-9 per day. Favourite biscuit, hob knob

Fruit tea brigade (FTB) – Fruit tea has to have one weird ingredient. The FTB can’t enjoy Lemon, Raspberry or Blackcurrant without one of the following. Ginseng, Ecanasia, Ginger, Persimmon, Elderberry, Jojoba, Aloe Vera, Liquorice or Crab apple. They like to mix it up, and have a sweet tooth. Favourite biscuit, pink wafer

Posh ambitions – These guys love to try other types of tea. It is like every cup of earl grey or Darjeeling pushes them up the social ladder by one rung. Always take pleasure in saying that special teas are much more refreshing than normal ones. Favourite biscuit, rich tea

Mental Oriental – Green tea, Mint tea, Jasmine tea, or any other oriental infusion is sipped carefully by these drinkers. They will wax lyrical about anti-oxidants and the healing powers of herbal. Some believe tea to be the missing link in modern medicine. Favourite biscuit, none (they are full of poly-unsaturates)

The Starbucks Elite – Likely to spend £50 a month or more on coffee. It is seen as an essential part of the morning routine. Come 11 a.m. this merry band of spend-a-holic have to run out and flash the cash, even if there is good quality coffee available inside. It’s like a personal relationship between the coffee corporation and the bean junkies. Favourite biscuit, the little cinnamon / amoretto ones that come with takeout coffee.

Cadgers - only have a hot drink when offered to them – ‘Oooh, go on then, if you’re twisting my arm I’ll have one’. I’m not twisting your arm scavver, I’m being polite and making tea for others, you should try it sometime. Favourite biscuit, Penguins / TimTams

So Which ‘hot drinker’ are you?
Note the lack of normal (drink 4 cups of normal strength tea and sometimes make it for others). Normal is boring, and boring isn’t cool. Normal doesn’t exist in the world of Executive Summary.

I hope you enjoyed this little storm in a teacup , I’ll see you on the other side.

ES

Bonus factoid: Since 2007, Turkey has overtaken Britain as the number 1 per capita consumer of tea, drinking over 2kg per person per year. Come on Britain, let’s win back our crown.

Dipping into your pocket

As a fully paid up member of the 9-5 brigade, Executives regularly have to dip into their pockets for one thing or another.

It was recently revealed that over 1/3 of the world gives to charity (it wouldn’t work if 100% gave to charity right?). So us overweight office dwellers should certainly not moan about giving to those less fortunate than ourselves. This article, the latest in a series of office based rants (I’ve got another four queued up and waiting to go), was prompted by another email letting everyone know that it’s a casual day tomorrow (for the expense of £2 Stirling).

Ahhh, the casual day. Like a non-uniform day at school where girls get up at 6 a.m. to break out the glad rags. The boys go one of two ways – ‘relaxed’ smart casj with chinos and check shirt, or filthy hoody and just to show they don’t care. Perhaps a full analysis of this is Friday phenomenon is best saved for another post.

It is more that all of these small payments add up. Having done a quick calculation, I estimate that 2% of this executive’s net salary goes into the following ‘Office taxes’

Casual days – donation to charity
Office birthday presents
Emergency charity donation appeals
Buying cakes on my own birthday
Card and presents for co-workers new babies
Sponsorship of colleagues doing marathons, walkathons or any other type of ‘othons
Leaving present donations
Treats for colleagues on your own work anniversary

All of this makes it nigh on impossible to collect donations if you are doing something for charity.

It hardly seems fair that from all this, you get a £20 HMV voucher on your birthday and a pen and card from Clinton's when you leave.
I’m off to the cash machine, I’ll see you tomorrow.

ES

Office disruption update

So you spend all weekend with your work colleagues, drag your tired ass to the office on Monday morning and find this:

Monday morning

Office refurb
que the weeping
no one sleeping

Cold, cramped dark grey space
MDF stench and a two day
h
a
n
g
o
v
e
r

Bang BANG,
HAMMER hammer,
drill d.r.iIILLLLL
Random                                   SMASH!

Hand me the ibuprofen,
hand me my Luger

Two days of fun for six weeks of pain

Team lunches

Team outings to London’s chain eateries provide plenty of dead air and space for behavioural observation. Sometimes they are for sad occasions (team members leaving) and sometimes are enforced birthday ‘treats’, yet these banquets are rarely regal, inpromtu, or kind on the wallet.

First off is the choice of venue. When Soho boasts over 100 varied, good quality and reasonably priced independent restaurants I struggle to see why office parties end up in:

Pizza Express
Zizi
Wagamamamamamas
Strada
GBK
Nandos
Etc (this isn't a cool new restaurant, I am incuating that chain restaurants are similar and blend into each other).

These places aren’t actually too bad, we all have to use them, just why pick them every time? Executives are not known for their cultured palates or love of cordon blue cuisine, but it does pain me when everyone professes to loving such mediocre fair.

‘I love Wagas, the katsu curry is my favourite thing to eat ever’
‘Pizza express is the absolute best, their doughballs are soooooo nice’

n.b. The fact that Pizza Express can get away with selling half cooked balls of flour for £3.95 a pop is perhaps the most devilishly brilliant crime in history. Someone should call 999, because the British public just got robbed.

When entering the restaurant (whether it has been booked or not), there is always a scrabble for seats.

‘I want to sit next to the cool kids’
'You and me buddy!'

Nobody wants to get stuck with the senior managers and have to talk about work, so embarrassing gaps between place setting start to appear.

These restaurants are set up for larger office parties, but this executive can’t help but feel that when a bunch of 15 giggling suits walk into a place cooing over the menu, it kind of ruins the ambiance for tourist couples and hungry families.

Conversation around the table is usually as bland an inoffensive as the décor in the restaurant. It usually goes something like this:

Office drone A: “what did you order?”
Office drone B: “Generic food A. I like Generic Food A. What about you?”
Office drone A: “I ordered genetic food A too! We must be twins or something!”
Office drone B “No. I only chose Generic food A as it is usually passable in this sterile canteen environment”
. . . . . . .
Office drone A: “How is your food? Mine’s great”
Office drone B: “My food is of acceptable standard, although I wish the price of it were slightly lower."

To be fair much of the conversation can be made much more interesting with the addition of alcoholic beverages. Unfortunately, said liquid refreshment will double your bill and make it even harder to avoid falling into a deep sleep at your desk come 4 p.m.

The winner of 'most excruciating part of the team lunch meal' goes to paying the bill. First of all, no one has cash. I’m guilty of this myself, but it can be frustrating when ten people who need to get back to the office are left entering their PIN details one at a time.

Added to this, there’s always a voucher. A quick internet search reveals how badly chain eateries have been hit by the recession as there are a host of BOGOFs and 50% offs. Colleagues always end up in an embarrassing scrabble for crumpled bits of paper, before the final bill comes back more complicated than ever, and with a smaller than hoped for discount attached.

I think I’ll leave Martin Lewis of Money Saving Expert to enjoy low quality curries at 50% off. Imagine what a riot it would be working in his office! You would probably have to collect firewood to boil the kettle and bring in your own toilet paper.

Shine on Martin.

ES

Bad ads corner

 Are friends at Ark-H are back with another classic. Actually this is not too bad. The fruit-based imagery is ruined by the fact that the blackberries should be plural and they are as big as the Apple! Also, Apple and Blackberry are a well know combination in the desert world, but this as ad is trying to say that Ark-H can deliver either technology, not that they go well together.

If I wanted to go to 'experts in digital printing' I don't think these 8 charming dogs would convince me. Firstly, the printing looks crap, it looks like they have daubed one of the poor mutts in children's paint. Secondly, what does that prove? 'We are such experts, we can print on 3D objects . . . like dalmations'. They haven't even used the Dalmatians trademark spots anywhere in the concept (you could have 7 without spots, and one with). The mind boggles

A couple of bonus entries from the world of Accountancy this week. I'm branching out. Next stop consumer ads (that you might actually see in your lifetime).

                           

Not a great scan, but this is brilliantly terrible. How can you try and use a confused.com humorous concept for 'Symbiant tracker' (whatever the fuck that is)? The logo looks like Auto Trader, the guy looks like a douchebag and 'audit action tracking' is not driving me mad. It is horribly laid out, way way way way too much copy, different fonts and colours, horrible blue border. And why is the Top line of text aligned left? I can't believe someone was paid to make this monstrosity

                                

10 pin bowling is not a game of chance, it is a game of skill. It is also a fun game that people enjoy, whilst they do not enjoy difficult software decisions. Perhaps a roulette wheel would have been better.

If anyone has any suggestions of other industry mags with bad ads which are missing out on my poison tongue, let me know!

ES