Bullshit Bingo

Went out last night with an old friend I used to work with a few years ago. He is still at the office where we worked, and he said it was "bullshit bingo" that some of the people who are managing that office are allowed to run anything more than a tap. ( You would be staggered if I told you what the office was and what it does - or more precisely doesn't do - for a lot of people around the UK. )

I know dissing other people for the work they do is a pretty useless exercise, and I have seen diligence and genius in places I have worked over the years. But my manager at that particular office did literally nothing all day and every day. Sure he turned up five days a week, and wore matching shoes and a tie (actually he wore a blazer quite often too, which was kind of the beginning of the end for any respect I was ever going to generate for him), and he usually had a pen and some paper if we had a meeting. But that was about as productive and creative as it ever got/still gets in his working week.

The Chief Executive was even worse in a different way. She was supremely jealous about anyone showing her up for the freak that she was, lived exclusively on a diet of hot chocolate, and cried if anyone disagreed with her. Pol Pot-like, she had hand-written slogans posted all over her office, really oblique things like "Nothing Is Never" and "Change Can Come At The Wrong Time". Mind you when I was working for her, I was reduced to using Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies to try and figure out how to deal with her.

Early on in my time at this nut house I met a quiet, unassuming bloke with a dull job title and a tiny office next to the room where they kept all the computer hardware. I could never really get anyone to tell me exactly what this guy did all day, until it became apparent that he did everything. On the occasional days that he took leave (I don't think he ever took a day off sick), the whole office would come to a grinding halt. The press office would have no information to give out to journos, the finance department would have no figures, the human resources team would look even more pointless than usual, and the 100 or so other staff would wander the corridors sipping sweet coffee and asking when He was coming back in. But this guy never really got the recognition he deserved. We never did tell him how much we needed him. (There had been some vague attempt at getting this dude to have someone working for him who could duplicate his much-needed expertise, but the person who got this job couldn't take the strain and left to go and try his hand at working in pantomime.)

So what's my point? Offices suck? People are lazy? A lot of people never get the recognition they deserve? Bosses are usually nuts? Nothing very new in any of that. I am sure there are 50 self help books for each of these scenarios. Maybe I should read a few of them and move on, or maybe write one.

Incidentally, someone was asking me the other day if everything I wrote about in househusbandnot was true. I do exaggerate sometimes, but I did regularly use Eno's Oblique Strategies to run a large communications programme for a well known organisation and the guy really did go and work in pantomime.