Dear Dave

  What kind of bear are you?

Dear Dave,

I've been to plenty of seminars and discussion groups about understanding personality type. They're the kind of thing that are always used to pad out the slot before lunch on team-building courses. Many's the time I've been stuck with a whole load of Shapers as they've enthusiastically envisaged a future of cooperation while the Completer/Finisher in me has just wanted them all to agree to stop talking and head for the canteen. I've also sat by quietly as a bunch of extroverts have argued on how to bring out the best in the introverts around them. On one occasion, in order to encourage my repressed spontaneity, I even had to report the team's conclusions while bouncing on a trampoline.

The one personality trait that always seems to surface, however, is my low tolerance for discussion groups. I can't stand them.

Thankfully, I think I may have found the solution to avoiding them in future. Having presented all my children with the opportunity to visit the Build-A-Bear Workshop, I've discovered a whole new way to assess personalities in a creative and visual manner.

Lewis, being the calm and gentle type, built a laid-back frog wearing a dressing gown:


*Picture removed due to a seven-year-old bursting into tears because he was adamant that his frog didn't want to be famous. :-(

Rather than having an afternoon at the shops with Sarah, Fraser decided he'd prefer to stay at home with me, spend twenty minutes building a snowman and then the rest of the time playing the Wii. Unfortunately, due to a lack of sculpting practice, combined with snow that refused to stick together, it didn't all go entirely to plan. The snowman came out looking pre-melted:



Top marks for effort, though, and at least I won't have to try to eBay it in a few years' time.

Unlike Marie's creation:



Note the sparkly butterfly wings on the costume. She wanted roller skates as well but they weren't compatible with the high heels.

All in all, it's possible to learn an awful lot about my kids from what they made. I think this is a pretty conclusive proof of concept - every office worker in the land should have a self-built bear on their desk, then their colleagues would know exactly what to expect and what sort of person they were dealing with.

I must mention my findings to Useless Dad for the next management training course he runs. I could be onto something special here...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS EdgeOfTheOtherworld.com is back today.

Labels: children, corporate madness

 
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9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 1 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Transferable skills

Dear Dave,

Useless Dad didn't waste time. "Do you have a suit?" he asked as soon as I opened the door.

"Er... Yes." I'd only just got the kids off to school and I was looking forward to settling down with a cup of coffee to check my email before getting on with chores. Having Steve turn up in a panic certainly hadn't been part of my plan for the morning.

"A smart suit?"

"It's not full of holes, if that's what you mean, and it's so old it's probably back in fashion."

"That will have to do," he said with a touch of desperation. "Do you want a job for the day? I can't find anyone else. You're not still tied up fixing computers at that private school are you?"

"No. The headmaster got a management consultancy firm like yours in over the summer to cut costs. They told him I'd got enough machines working already and I wasn't needed any more."

Steve nodded in quiet appreciation. "Sound business practice, of course." Then he remembered to be sympathetic. "But... er, unfortunate for you, I imagine."

"Not really. I could do with the break. Besides, with no regular maintenance and constant abuse by hundreds of teenage boys, their whole network will be coughing up diodes by February. They'll have to hire me back, on twice as many hours." I shrugged. "I suspect I won't be available unless they up my pay."

"Ah, I see..."

I doubted he did but I decided not to press the matter. "So what's this job then?"

"My colleague, Geoff, was called away to an unscheduled meeting with an important client and an early tee time. Unfortunately, we're due to be visiting a different client in half an hour. They're expecting two of us. I need someone to stand in."

"You want me to be a management consultant?"

"Yes."

I raised an eyebrow. "And the only qualification I need is a smart suit?"

"I'll do the smiling and talking. You take notes and look serious."

"I guess I can do that," I muttered, rubbing my forehead. I had a nasty feeling I was about to agree to something I was going to regret. "I presume you're going to pay me."

Steve blinked, as if this was a possibility he hadn't considered. "Well, I suppose we could..."

I sighed. "I'll go get changed."

* * *

The biggest part of the job seemed to be carrying things. I had a laptop, a briefcase, an armful of glossy brochures, a clipboard and, against my better judgement, Steve's overcoat. I struggled out of the lift on the top floor of the office building and stumbled after Steve as he strode off to shake hands with anyone he could find who looked important.

We were working for RSFI, a relatively small financial institution, in the centre of town. They're not that large but they've been around forever and their offices are an old-fashioned mess of wood-panelled corridors and thick carpet. The whole place was claustrophobic and overly warm. I felt uncomfortable in any number of different ways.

We were shown into a plush conference room complete with chandeliers and a polished mahogany table laid out with tea, coffee and posh chocolate biscuits. There were even doilies and silver teaspoons.

Steve had got ahead of me as I lumbered along trying not to drop anything and he was already chatting away to three middle-aged men in extremely smart suits. They looked very important indeed. Before I could put the stuff down, he signalled me over without pausing in his introductory spiel.

"...and then we'll take a look at the numbers and break it down into bottom-line savings. I'll be giving you an overview of some possibilities for increased productivity and suggesting areas for further investigation."

The men murmured in approval and then one of them said, "Everything's set up for the training and analysis session downstairs."

"Good," said Steve, nodding and smiling, despite clearly being confused by this remark. "Very good."

"It's due to start at ten," said the man, turning to me. "With the speed the lift has been going recently, I imagine you'll want to head down there straight away. Wouldn't want to be late. Time is money, after all." The man chortled as if this statement was somehow amusing and the two other men chortled along with him. He held out his hand. I tried my best to shake it but ended up giving him a brochure instead.

While I joined in the polite laughter, Steve pulled his appointment book from his jacket pocket and hurriedly scanned it. He jabbed a finger at a scribbled entry and his toadying grin became momentarily less fulsome. He went slightly grey. "Ah..." he murmured.

"Ah?" I queried.

"I... Er... Why didn't you mention that RSFI had booked some training this morning, Ed?"

There were so many truthful (yet inappropriate) answers to that question that I found myself momentarily at a loss for words. "Well..." I began.

"Let me take some of that stuff," said Steve hurriedly, grabbing his coat and the rest of the brochures, "so you can get down there and really BUILD A TEAM, then get them to BRAIN-STORM about improving EFFICIENCY." Just in case I hadn't quite picked up on the words he'd said twice as loud as the others, he beamed at me theatrically and attempted a wink.

I paused to consider my options and actually saw the sweat break out on his brow.

"How about I stay here and discuss organisation and preparedness with senior management over coffee while you lead the workshop?" I handed him the laptop.

It was Steve's turn to pause but then he chuckled and slapped me on the back. "Good one," he said. "You almost had me there." He chuckled some more and returned his attention to the three men, motioning at me in mock exasperation. They joined in the chuckling.

While I was still processing all the creepy merriment, Steve gave me back the laptop. "You'll be needing this. It's got the presentation on, after all." He took the briefcase, opened it and pulled out a document folder. "Don't forget the workshop notes."

* * *

The meeting room was unpleasant. Although there were windows, they were below street level, looking out onto three feet of patio and then a stone wall. Grey light and traffic noise filtered down from above, mixed with the steady patter of rain. Tables and chairs were scattered about in something approximating rows that faced a wall with a long stretch of whiteboard. I found a switch and sent ceiling panels flickering loudly into life, harshly illuminating the stark decor and threadbare carpet tiles.

About twenty people were sitting waiting for me. Over half were lounging around looking bored in a slightly unkempt fashion while joking with each other and idly attempting to get reception on their iPhones. The rest were desperately catching up on paperwork. The two groups were neatly (and somewhat pointedly) divided on opposite sides of the room. The first consisted entirely of men, the other was mostly women.

I introduced myself and then made a show of hooking up the laptop to the projector as I tried to work out what on Earth I was going to do for the rest of the morning. Needless to say, I wasn't hugely thrilled with the situation Steve had landed me in. Truth be told, however, I was more annoyed with myself than with him. I should have seen it coming.

Taking a deep breath, I attempted to calm my nerves. I didn't have a great deal to lose. I was never going to see these people again and it wasn't as if I could get sacked. Worst case scenario, I had a couple of hours of embarrassment ahead of me.

I booted up PowerPoint.

How bad could it be?

* * *

Very bad.

The slides were unintelligible. A few were written in words I didn't understand, the rest were incomplete notes. I skimmed through them as best I could, trying to sound confident as I spouted gobbledigook. It didn't work. The eyes of my audience rapidly glazed over. A few surreptitiously returned to their forms and iPhones.

At last something came up which looked familiar. The letters:

S
M
A
R
T

were written down the side of a page. Relief welled up inside me. I knew this! It was an acronym to help recall the essential criteria for setting objectives. All objectives should be... er... Something, Momething, Achievable and, er... Oh, drat...

I decided to throw it open to the floor. "Does anyone know the most important attributes of successful objectives?"

"They should be achievable," said a bald guy with a bushy beard, looking up from his phone.

"And they shouldn't change the moment you've achieved them," chipped in one of his colleagues, who was much younger and wearing a hideous green tie with a purple shirt.

The first guy snorted. "That counts as not being achievable."

"No, it doesn't."

"If you can't tick it off as an achieved objective even if you've achieved it, then surely it's unachievable by definition."

Green-tie-man became rather animated. "The objective has still been achieved even if the list of objectives has changed. You're confusing your local and global objectives."

"Well," said beardy bloke, rolling his eyes, "if you hadn't defined them with the same name..."

"I didn't do any such thing. I..."

I coughed loudly until they stopped arguing. "I take it you guys work in IT?"

They and their friends nodded. The younger one looked a bit sheepish.

"Great," I said. "How about you Google 'SMART objectives' on your phones?"

There was much shaking of beards. "Can't get a signal."

"OK. Objectives..." I was forced to improvise. "They shouldn't be STUPID. Moving on..."

* * *

The presentation was supposed to take an hour but I ran out of things to say in ten minutes. I attempted to buy some time to look over the workshop material by suggesting everyone go and get themselves a coffee.

Nobody moved.

"If you're paying for it," said green-tie-man, clearly emboldened by his previous contribution.

"What?"

He clarified. "We have to pay for it and it's awful."

"That's scandalous. I..." My voice trailed off as I realised that there was nothing in the workshop folder but a used envelope. I flipped it over in panic. On the back were scrawled three questions:

• What works?


• What doesn't work?


• How could things be done better?

I turned the envelope over again and then checked inside.

It was empty. I had three questions to last me until lunch-time and there was no coffee.

"Right," I said, doing my best to look professional and cheery. "You'll need to split up into small groups. Time for a discussion."

* * *

"This is getting a little heated. Perhaps it's time to step back a minute and..."

No one listened to me. Green-tie-man was toe-to-toe with one of the women from the other group (who I'd learnt were all involved with administration and human resources). "I put in my expenses claim six weeks ago," he snarled as his comrades whistled and jeered in support. "I still don't have the money!"

The admin lady was older, taller, better dressed and more fragrant. She looked over her glasses at him. "It's not my fault that unusual items have to be signed off by two heads of department."

"A light bulb is not an unusual item."

"It is when you buy it yourself," snapped the woman, cheered on by her colleagues. "Instead of requesting one from maintenance."

"My office doesn't have windows - I need a daylight bulb. I had one before."

She threw her arms up in the air. "I know that but I don't have authority to authorise repeat procurements." They were almost shouting at each other.

"You should have chased it up."

"It's not my job to badger your boss." She started pointing her finger around for emphasis.

He retaliated with another accusing digit. "It is your job to get expenses paid promptly."

The confrontation was heading towards a scuffle even before one of the other admin staff piped up with, "If your team ever got round to installing the new accounts software, it would do the chasing up automatically."

Beardy bloke leapt to his feet. "So that's what this is about!"

Suddenly it was a free-for-all. Everyone was pointing and shouting.

"We've installed it twice already."

"You didn't get it right."

"We did exactly what you said you wanted."

"We..."

"ENOUGH!" I glared at them in a manner that comes naturally after spending several months working in a school full of teenage boys who don't respect electronic equipment. "Sit down and be quiet."

I waited until they were all seated again and then spoke firmly but quietly. "We clearly have a real problem here and something has to be done." I paused to let this sink in, giving them all a chance to reflect on their behaviour. A few averted their gaze in shame as I looked them in the eye.

Then I pulled a face and wretched, pointing to the cup in my hand. "I went to the vending machine. This coffee is atrocious. Seriously, people, we have to do something about this. I want solutions and I want them now. OK... Go..."

* * *

As a team building exercise, launching a daring raid on the executive canteen turned out be pretty effective. The admin staff used the system to distract, obfuscate and requisition. The techies hacked into the security cameras and did most of the actual creeping around. Within half an hour, we had some cafetieres, a couple of teapots, a supply of Earl Grey, assorted china crockery and a selection of chocolate biscuits. Thanks to wild over-enthusiasm, we also had a catering-sized box of condiment sachets, a laser printer, two armchairs, a roast chicken and three potted shrubs. More than that, sensing free food, a dozen extra people from Customer Relations had shown up to join us.

Everyone was mingling nicely.

"Are you sure we're going to get away with this?" asked green-tie-man with his mouth full. "What happens if management finds out?"

"It's OK," I said. "I'll let them know about it when I report back and I'll tell them I made you do it as part of the course. It's my problem, not yours."

The admin lady he'd been fighting with earlier sipped her tea and smiled. "Do you do this all the time?"

"Er..." I decided to come clean. "I'm just filling in for today."

"Oh..." The jovial mood in the room evaporated. Everyone looked worried. They'd all assumed my confidence came from getting away with similar things before and they hadn't yet grasped the bullet-proof nature of my position.

"Look at this as an opportunity," I reassured them. "If you have something you want the executives to hear, I don't mind saying it to them. Doesn't bother me if they don't like it. I'm gone by this afternoon anyway."

This calmed them all a little but then green-tie-man blew it. "What do you normally do?" he asked.

"I'm actually a housedad."

Admin lady's brow furrowed. "So you don't know anything about cooperation and productivity?"

"I wouldn't say that. What are the problems you have to deal with most often?"

"My manager doesn't listen. He ignores me and then does the opposite of what I say."

I nodded. "Does he talk gibberish and think he knows everything?"

"Yes."

"Funnily enough," I said, offering her another biscuit, "I might just have a few tips to help you get by..."

* * *

"How did it go?" asked Steve when I returned to the conference room. His startled look gave the impression he'd forgotten about me. He'd been deep in conversation with the same three men from earlier.

"Very well."

"Excellent would you like a cup of coffee and a..." He turned in his seat and reached for the plate of biscuits but it wasn't there. "Oh. That's strange."

"I'm fine. Here's my report." I slid my clipboard across the table to the man in the smartest suit.

The man chuckled. "Have you found us plenty of cost-cutting measures."

"I certainly have. I can save you thousands of pounds a year."

"Good. Good."

"Yes, all you need to do is replace the vending machines with better quality ones, make them free and hire two more people to work in Human Resources."

Steve choked on his drink. He flapped a bit in agitation but he was too busy dealing with the hot coffee coming out his nose to interrupt me.

"In return for the refreshments, the IT staff have agreed to spend less time dejectedly surfing the internet and more time making everyone else's lives easier. With extra people, admin staff will have the chance to find the most cost-effective solutions to problems. They'll also get to queries faster, reducing lost productivity throughout the company resulting from follow-up queries and general grumpiness. In addition, both teams are going to try harder to explain what they mean to each other, in an effort to minimise effort wasted due to misunderstandings."

The three men looked at each. They weren't chuckling anymore.

"Oh, and I need you to sign off on this." I slid another sheet of paper over. "It's a retrospective request form for a chicken..."

* * *

"You're speaking to me again then?" I said before covering the mouth-piece to shout upstairs. "Hey, children! I'm on the phone. Less thumping!" The thundering of rampaging elephants coming from Fraser's bedroom lessened to a minor degree.

Steve cut to the chase. "How's your golf?"

"Couldn't hit the broadside of a barn I was standing in. Why?"

"After consulting the workforce, the board at RSFI have decided to go with your recommendations," he said, pleased but baffled. "The Head of Personnel was wondering about talking through implementation with you over eighteen holes."

I contemplated this and wandered back into the kitchen to stir the kids' pasta. "Are you going to pay me?"

"To play golf?"

"To politely state the obvious while losing badly in the cold."

There was the distinct sound of reluctant swallowing at the other end of the line. "I suppose we could..."

"Great," I said. "Count me in." Then I covered the mouth-piece again and yelled, "Tea-time!"

Steve just managed to arrange the details and hang up before I was surrounded by my lovely herd of rampaging elephants. I served them their tea and listened to them all talk at once. Then Fraser switched on the telly and they ate their food quietly while watching Newsround. Our kitchen seemed even warmer and cosier than ever, and I gave each of them a hug.

They all complained but I didn't care.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: corporate madness, Useless Dad

 
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10:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  The blame game

Dear Dave,

Hurrah! Almost a year to the day after we first noticed damp rising up the walls, the damage from next door's burst pipe has been satisfactorily repaired. The tradesmen involved even turned up when they said they would. Admittedly, these were the kind of guys who saw through floorboards rather than lift them but, hey, there's no Gu-DONK noise whenever anyone walks along the hall any more. I'm no longer reminded of the whole flood/ant/mouse/broken heating/insurance/bankrupt contractor/redecorating disaster every time someone visits the downstairs toilet. This has to be a good news.

What a palaver it's been, though. Barely anything has gone right without three false starts, fifteen phone calls and me tearing out my hair.

It's been immensely frustrating. (The top of my head is also very chilly.)

The mistakes I could have handled. I don't mind people getting stuff wrong - I frequently make mistakes myself, after all. It's the way those mistakes were dealt with that was the real cause of my stress.

It's not like I ask for much when everything goes pear-shaped. I don't require a heartfelt apology, for instance. All I want is an acknowledgement that things are not as they should be and then I want the problem fixed swiftly and without me having to phone back every couple of days to find out why nothing has happened yet. I don't want detailed explanations and excuses of how it wasn't the fault of the person I happen to be speaking to at the time. ('A supervisor needs to sign off on this but we haven't had an assessment from the contractors yet in order to move the claim forward. My colleague emailed the plumbers last week but there's been a giant space wasp attack on the local BT exchange and so someone will phone you back in a few days.') I certainly don't want to be blamed myself. ('It's not our fault that your towel rail isn't heating up. We only ripped out the heart of your heating system and put it back in a different order. We never touched the towel rail. Are you sure it was working before?')

Nope, I want a quick 'sorry' and the issue sorted. If I wanted explanations, denial and blame, I'd have children...

Oh, hang on...

As I walked into the lounge the other day, Lewis shrieked, "Fraser stood on the box for Sonic and the Secret Rings!"

"Was the game disc in the box?" I asked calmly.

"No." said Lewis. "Marie was playing with it."

"What!?" I said, much less calmly. "How did Marie...?" I entered room further, narrowly avoiding standing on the box which was still lying in the middle of the carpet, but tripping over an enormous pile of sofa cushions.

"Lewis put those there," said Fraser as I picked myself up off the floor.

Marie was scowling in annoyance, her head hung and her fists clenched by her side. "You made me grumpy, Daddy," she said, somehow believing I was angry with her. "I'm good. Boys are being bad!"

It was clearly time for some detailed questioning. Cue dramatic music, spotlights on each of us and audience applause:

Me: Good evening and welcome to Who Did What? the quiz show where ordinary families get to squabble and bicker over the blame for minor mishaps. First up is Fraser. Fraser is seven, he likes Nintendo and Harry Potter, and if he could have anything he wanted, it would be a real, live Pikachu. Say, 'Hello,' Fraser!

Fraser: It wasn't my fault. Lewis left...

Me: Hold on, I haven't introduced the other contestants yet. Next is Lewis. He's six. He likes Sonic the Hedgehog, hoarding soft toys and saying random, often made up words, very loudly at inappropriate times. Say, 'Hello,' Lewis!

Lewis: Flubberwuck!

Me: Precisely and, moving swiftly on before he starts trying to rhyme that, we have the lovely Marie. She's three. She likes pink.

Marie (dressed entirely in pink with pink nail varnish, pink hair clips and sparkly, pink jewellery): No, I don't. I like yellow.

Me: She also likes being awkward.

Marie: You made me grumpy again, Daddy!

Me: Uh-huh, live with it. Now it's time to play Who Did What? (Cue more music and a close up on Fraser.) OK, Fraser, we'll start with an easy one. Did you step on the box?

Fraser: Lewis left it lying around. (There is a very loud Bee-BAH noise.)

Me: I'm sorry. That's not one of the two possible answers we were looking for to that yes-or-no question. Would you like to try again? Did you step on the box?

Fraser: Maybe. (Bee-BAH!) Er... I don't remember. (Bee-BAH!) Twenty-seven? (BEE-BAAAH!)

Me : I'm afraid none of those answers is correct. I'm going to have to throw the question open. First one to buzz... (There is a tense pause and then a deafening farting noise.) Lewis! Did Fraser step on the box?

Lewis: Yes, he did. (There is a DING!)

Me: Ten points to Lewis. Fraser, I'm afraid Lewis has incriminated you. Would you like to fight back by answering a harder question or would you prefer to use one of your three lifelines and Shop-a-Sibling?

Fraser: Lewis changed the games in the Wii. He shouldn't have left the box on the floor. (DING!)

Me: You've chosen to use one of your lifelines. You receive ten points and Lewis gets the question. Lewis, why did you leave the box on the floor?

Lewis: Marie distracted me. She took one of the cushions that I'd piled up to make my comfy seat. (Bee-BAH!)

Fraser: He had all of them. He wasn't letting her have any. (Bee-BAH!)

Me: I'm afraid you should still have finished putting the game away, Lewis. You lose ten points. Fraser, you lose five for interruption.

Fraser: Awwwwww! That's not f... (Bee-BAH!)

Me: And another five for arguing.

Fraser: But I was only... (BEE-BAH!)

Me: And five more.

Fraser (clamping his mouth shut): ...

Me: OK, now, moving on to Round 2. (More music and close up on Marie. The spotlight glints off the DVD she is trying to balance on her head.) I'll have that, young lady. Where did you get it from?

Marie (covering her eyes with her hands and throwing herself down on the sofa but whacking her arm on the frame because all the cushions are on the floor): I hurt my elbow. (There are tears and a Bee-BAH!)

Me (showing the disc to her): These aren't for playing with.

Marie: I'm really sorry, Daddy. (More tears.)

Me: That's OK. It shouldn't have been left out anyway. Would you like to split the blame 50/50?

Marie: I need the toilet! (Bee-BAH!)

Fraser (going red): ...

Me: You can hold it in another few minutes. That goes for you, too, Fraser.

Fraser (looking like he's about to explode): !!!

Me: It appears this was mostly your fault, Lewis.

Lewis: Sorry. (DING!)

Me: Good. Now, for bonus points, put the disc away properly and the cushions back where they normally go.

Lewis (getting on with it): OK. (DING!)

Marie: I'm really, really, really sorry, Daddy.

Me: What for?

Marie: For spilling my milk last night. (Bee-BAH!)

Me: I'm afraid being sorry for something entirely unrelated doesn't...

Fraser (exploding): I didn't stand on the box! I was dancing around the cushions, waving a pointed stick, and one of my feet went on a corner of the box. I didn't stand on it. I hopped on it! (BEE-BAH!)

Me: And on that note, it's time for us to take a break... Stay tuned for Fraser being sent to his room, Marie apologising for apologising too much and Lewis getting away with everything.

Lewis: Clobberdock!

Me: Apart from that.

Marie: I go to toilet now?

Me: Yep. And then we'll return for another exciting round of... Who... Did... What?! (Cue music, applause and a swift exit to the bathroom.)

It nearly always plays out the same. I don't really care who did what or who's to blame, as long as the mess gets cleared up and there's some chance it won't happen again. Fraser, however, passes the buck and Marie has a worrying tendency to keep saying sorry for days, long after the matter has been closed. Neither of them has a great desire to actually put things right or learn from their mistakes. Lewis, meanwhile, says sorry, does whatever I tell him to in order to put things right and then gets on with his life. He accepts responsibility but doesn't become weighed down by guilt.

This usually goes well for him.

I could learn a few things from him myself. Better yet, I could hire him out as a business consultant. I know some insurers who could really do with his help...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children (vol.3), corporate madness, flood

 
Thoughts? Responses? Got a funny story about your children? Add your comment here.


10:00 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Nobody expects the Spanish I/O error

Dear Dave,

Some things didn't really change when I became a housedad. Bringing up kids is very like running an IT project - for some reason, I'm always behind schedule.

With IT projects, the difficulty is that there are always unexpected snags. Typical issues range from a logical inconsistency in the specification (i.e. you've been asked to do the impossible) to a discovery that the highly paid contractor brought in to handle the tough stuff was bluffing all along and has spent six months playing Minesweeper. If you're really unlucky, the project will simply open up a vortex in the very fabric of nature that sucks in time and money and dumps them out beyond the galactic rim. (That's never good).

Obviously, it's possible to figure some leeway into the production timetable but, if you don't know what the problem is going to be, it's difficult to know how much time to allow for solving it. Maybe it will only require someone nipping to Curry's for a cable. Maybe it will send the whole project back to the drawing board. Who knows? Probably best to allow twice as long as you're really hoping, though.

Of course, putting vast amounts of blank space in the schedule 'just in case' gives a bad impression, so it doesn't usually happen. Then, halfway through the project, someone leaves the team or the customer suddenly needs the product in a hurry and management has to cut corners in order to get the job done. The easiest thing to do is remove from the schedule the time and manpower set aside for contingencies. Voila! The whole project is back on track... as long as nothing goes wrong. Management may argue that this is the kind of emergency that all the padding in the schedule was for, but the truth is that these are management problems that should have had padding of their very own. In reality, what's gone is all the time required to cope when it turns out that the software you've bought in from another company doesn't do all the things the salesman said it would, doesn't work at all or has manuals that are written entirely in Danish (apart from the bits in Braille).

Somehow, management is surprised when the project over-runs...

Maybe it's an unwinnable battle. If, by some quirk of fate, a project did ever come in early, the customers would simply start trying to think of 'little' bits to add on. These would almost certainly involve starting again from scratch and the project would end up over-running anyway.

Similarly, with children, being late can be inevitable. If, on a good day, it takes ten minutes to get everyone's shoes on and get them out of the house for school, there are going to be other days where it takes twenty. Setting aside twenty minutes is asking for trouble, though. You don't want to be waiting outside the school for ten minutes in the rain. Equally, you don't want to be hanging around at home for ten minutes - the kids will complain loudly about being bored, take their shoes off again and then lose them. They will arrive very late for school, wearing their slippers. Yep, leaving too much time for a task can make you later than leaving too little. You'd be better off allowing fifteen minutes on a regular basis and simply accepting the fact that you're going to be five minutes late on any day that one of the children gets distracted and tips his milk into his ear rather than his mouth.

That said, with a little knowledge and planning, it's possible to avoid being horrendously late all the time. Bearing this in mind, here are a few tasks that I've found unexpectedly hard in the past. You've probably encountered most of them yourself already but they may not have seemed like that big a deal. Please remember, however, that the time taken to solve these issues is proportional to the square of the number of children you have. Thus, now you have two, you need to allow four times as much space in the schedule for:

• Getting them to wear appropriate clothing. I tell my kids that it’s raining and they’ll need to put their raincoats on.
  
  Without looking out a window, they say, ‘No, it’s not.’
  
  I argue for a bit, they don’t put their raincoats on and we step out of the door. They immediately start screaming that it’s raining and run around in a panic like they’re the Wicked Witch of the West and someone’s just dumped a bucket of water on them.
  
  I say, ‘It’s almost stopped. You’ll be fine.’
  
  They argue for a bit and demand their raincoats. Eventually, I give up and they go in and put their raincoats on.
  
  The rain stops, the sun comes out and they complain it’s too hot in their raincoats.
  
  They refuse to take them off.
  
  When we eventually arrive at our destination, people wonder why we’re wet, late and sweaty. I just shake my head and sigh…
• Getting them to do stuff for themselves. Marie kicks up a huge fuss about drying her own hands. She's currently lying on the hall floor yelling for help because a small part of her lower arm is still wet. She's actually holding the towel in her other hand but wants me to go through and combine the towel and arm with some gentle rubbing action. Suffice to say, she'll be yelling a while longer - probably for several minutes after the water has evaporated of its own accord.
• Getting gloves on a toddler. Their fingers go everywhere apart from the right place.
• Getting them to stop doing stuff for themselves. Of course, if we're in a big hurry and I pro-actively decide to dry Marie's hands for her, she'll absolutely insist on doing it on her own... Really... really... slowly...
• Going to the shops to buy milk. Between getting them dressed, toileted (including the washing and drying of hands) and actually persuading them to leave the house, going to buy milk can take longer to organise than a trip to Paris without children.
• Going to Paris with children. Like going to buy milk but with added luggage.
• Keeping gloves on a toddler. It doesn't matter that it's freezing and you've just spent five minutes getting the things on, the kid wants to see her fingers...
• Feeding them five portions of fruit and veg a day. It's not so much getting them to eat it, it's supplying it:
  
  
  Why I have to go to the shops so often: 5 family members x 5 portions per day x 2 days = 50 portions. We also require around 8 pints of milk and a loaf and a half of bread. Hang on a minute while I just nip to Tesco again...
• Cheering up a toddler whose hands are cold. If you can just get them to calm down for a minute, you might be able to get those gloves back on. (Briefly).
• Working out when they're ill. When my kids were small, it was easy to tell how ill they were from the number and amount of toxic substances oozing out of them. These days there's usually less to go on. They'll complain of aches and pains, cough a couple of times and then sneeze. Questioning them uncovers that they've been feeling 'not that great' for 'a bit'. Taking their temperature reveals that one ear has a mild fever and the other is dead. (Repeated attempts cause the symptoms to swap randomly between ears. Shaking the electronic thermometer produces a rattling sound).
  
  Since I've now spent nearly eight years clearing up toxic substances despite having had various strains of plague myself, I'm low on sympathy for minor cases of the snuffles. Still, I don't want them going rapidly downhill the second they leave the house. I can do without being summoned to school halfway through the morning to explain why I sent in my highly contagious child. (Teachers are scary).
  
  Coming to a decision always takes forever.
• Explaining the difference between live-action TV drama, cartoons, documentary footage, the news, CGI and real life. As for theatre, well: 'Yes, those are real people pretending to be the real people who normally pretend to be the pretend people in Lazy Town but if that one falls off the ladder it will really hurt. And, yes, it is just a story, but vegetables really are good for you.'
• Avoiding drowning in Fimbles. Soft toys. Everywhere. Stuck now. Can't... make... it... to... the... door...
• Being understanding. This takes a surprising amount of effort. What I really want to say is, 'I told you you'd get cold hands.'

There we go. Hopefully, with this knowledge, you should be able to leave enough time (but not too much) to achieve most goals. I wouldn't count on it, though. The kids are bound to find some new way to slow you down.

At least you can take consolation from the fact that you're not in charge of the software for the government's ID card scheme. I hear that's created a vortex that's spitting stuff out. They're having to deal with giant space spiders, unicorns and sudden downpours of odd socks.

Whatever happens, we're never going to be as late as them.

Probably.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children (vol.3), corporate madness, IT, sickness

 
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10:30 AM - Permanent Link - 6 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Aiming for consistency

Dear Dave,

I normally have to tell the kids to do something three times before they even acknowledge I've spoken. The next time they'll argue. The time after that they'll do something very similar to what I asked but different in some vital respect.

For instance, the other day, I was endlessly telling Marie to pay attention as she scooted along the pavement ahead of me. She just wouldn't, though. She kept veering all over the place as one thing after another went by and distracted her. "Look where you're going!" I shouted finally.

"I am!" she shouted back. She even looked right round over her shoulder to make sure I heard.

Strangely, she seemed surprised when, a moment later, she found herself sprawled on her back in a tree planter. A giant, bright blue tree planter that was visible from the other end of the street. She lay there, forlornly waggling her arms and legs, and said, "Daddy! I fell off my scooter!"

"Really?" I said, pulling her out. "Were you looking where you were going?"

"Yes!"

"Even when you were looking at me?"

She put on her sad face, where her top lip disappears behind her lower one, and she mournfully shook her head.

"That was silly," I said.

She nodded. "I'll look where I'm going tomorrow."

"How about right now?" I asked.

She just grinned and scooted off again. Grr...

Ho, well, it's not like the first occasion one of the kids hasn't paid attention to me. They're used to it; I'm used it; we get by. Until I'm ill, of course, or tired or fed up. Then I want them to listen to me first time and they're just not used to that. Unfortunately, rather than acknowledging how patient I am with them normally and giving me a little understanding, they burst into tears or go off on a huge strop. This is maddening but children are like that and there's no real hope they'll grow out of it - adults are like that, too:

Back in the day, when I worked for LBO, everyone in the company was sent on a Customer Focus course. Most of it was totally obvious - things like smile, sound happy, do what you'll say you'll do, and don't have too much to drink on a Friday lunchtime and then go back to the office and delete accounts at random.

There were a few interesting points, though. One of them was that giving a customer better service than they might normally expect is liable to ultimately backfire. This sounds crazy but it's true. Imagine you take your car in for its regular service. It's a slow day at the garage so they decide to give it valet treatment, at no extra charge, to say thank you for your custom. Chances are, you'd be pretty pleased to have all the crushed breadsticks, raisins and footprints removed from the backseat. All well and good... until next time. You take your car in for a service, get it back and the fingerfood debris it still welded to the upholstery. You're secretly disappointed. You haven't been promised any cleaning and you haven't paid for it but, you know, it would have been nice. This sticks in your mind. The following year, you hunt around and discover that a garage on the other side of town will clean your car as part of its service and it's only a little more expensive than your normal garage. You go there. Essentially, the first place has lost your custom thanks to going the extra mile.

All this was brought to mind recently because I seem to be dogged currently by companies desperate to annoy me by doing me a 'favour'. (Stand back, I'm about to rant...)

First off, as always, is Nintendo Europe. Their PR has been a bit shonky for a long time but has improved dramatically of late, no doubt thanks to the marketing department getting a share of the huge mountain of cash from DS and Wii sales. Their loyalty scheme has been infuriating me for years, though. With every Nintendo game I buy, I get a scratchcard which reveals a code which I can enter online to receive 250 star points. I can then trade these star points for gifts. Unfortunately, these gifts consist mainly of PC screensavers and mobile phone ringtones. Occasionally, an actual physical game is offered for something in the region of FIVE THOUSAND STARS. These games are usually rubbish and always run out of stock immediately. What's the point? As a family, we've collected 12,000 stars over the course of five years and haven't traded a single one in yet. Every so often, I go to Nintendo's website in the hope that there'll be something good but there never is.

What makes it particularly galling, however, is that about three years ago, they ran an entirely separate promotion where purchasing a single game from an approved list was rewarded with a special Legend of Zelda collector's disc with no end of decent stuff on it. I bought something for thirty quid and got an extra freebie worth about twenty. With the whole stars thing, I've spent... hang on, let me get a calculator... er, divide by 250, multiply by... yeah, er... Right, I've spent... !!!!!!!!!!!

That includes lots of Christmas and birthday presents (both the boys' and mine) but... !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For that level of expenditure and all the faffing with scratchcards and codes, I expect more from a reward scheme than ringtones. Nintendo could argue that they're under no obligation to give me anything and I should be pleased with whatever free stuff I get but, well, that would just annoy me even further which, you have to imagine, isn't the purpose of their PR department.

Then again...

A year ago, they promised to make the reward scheme good. They promised that it would be possible to trade star points for Wii points which can be used to buy downloads of old games on the Wii. (Normally you have to buy Wii points with good, old-fashioned cash).

That was a year ago.

There's a possibility that it might actually become reality this week but, even after all this wait, there's still no hint of conversion rates or anything. Who knows what I might be entitled to? Their previous generosity has made me hopeful. It has made me think that Nintendo loves me.

Unfortunately, they probably don't really.

My 12,000 stars will, in all likelihood, only get me half way to a copy of Frogger. Even if I get quite a lot more, however, I'm still liable to feel disappointed.

Moving on... In the past, LOVEFiLM have offered a free extra rental to say sorry for all kinds of things, from system hiccups, to seasonal delays, to postal strikes. This was very pleasant, particularly as many of the problems have been totally outside their control. I didn't get anything after the last strike, though. Also, they included a free sample of Nivea handcream with one of my discs recently, which meant it didn't fit through the letterbox and I had to go to the sorting office to collect it. I only got a fairly minimal apology when I emailed them. Again, I'm disappointed.

Meanwhile, GameStation has introduced a loyalty card. There are instant prizes available when I buy something, but each transaction also gives me an entry in the monthly lottery. The first month, the grand prize was an Xbox 360 Elite. That would be worth winning. Last month, the grand prize was a lifesize promotional mannequin of Mark Ecko. What on Earth would I do with that? How would I get it home on the bus? Where would I put it? Would anyone be prepared to pay the postage if I eBayed it?

I'd have to turn it into a coat stand or stick it outside and hang birdfeeders from it.

And, forever more, I would look at it and be annoyed that it wasn't an Xbox 360 Elite.

I had to actively avoid GameStation in November just to make sure I didn't win. Not the greatest loyalty scheme ever. I wonder what tat they'll be trying to clear out of the stock room this month?

OK, rant over. I had a point about children I was trying to make. Or was it adults? Maybe it was both. Er...

Anyway, it was about consistency. Nintendo, LOVEFiLM and GameStation are generally pretty excellent but they've just got a slagging, while the hopeless, bumbling company that handles my house insurance has escaped unscathed. This is because my insurance company have long since stopped disappointing me. Frankly, I'm delighted when they get anything right. The other three, however, normally manage a level of customer service that I can only dream of providing in my daily interaction with the kids. Do I remember that? Do I heck. I'm irritated the moment their standards slip.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to encourage mediocrity here. Good service is important - I would happily point people towards LOVEFiLM but I wouldn't recommend my insurers to anyone. It's just worth bearing in mind that consistently decent service is often better than OK service that is occasionally excellent. People like consistency.

Kids like consistency. How many tantrums do I cause by poorly managing the kids' expectations? Some days I have plenty of energy and feel generous, other days I'm tired and feel... somewhat less than generous. Often, I think of these as good and bad days. I hate flying off the handle when I'd normally give them another couple of chances. Really, however, I store up just as much trouble for myself by letting them off the hook when I've laid down an ultimatum. A few 'good' days in a row and the kids start to think I'll put up with anything.

There are times when I need the kids to listen to me urgently, however - such as when they're crossing the road or, for example, when one of them's about to scoot into a giant, blue tree planter. They have no way of knowing which those times are and which times it doesn't matter so much if it takes six attempts for them to engage their ears.

I need to be more consistent with both my firmness and my patience.

Getting them to respond appropriately first time, every time, is a bit much to hope for, though. I should probably aim for third time. It's not excellent but it's decent. It's also sustainable. Hopefully, it'll lead to less arguing and fewer tantrums (both from the children and from me).

Might even keep Marie out of the compost in future. You never know...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children (vol.3), corporate madness

 
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9:00 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  When years turn into decades

Dear Dave,

OK, Sony are getting really desperate to sell me a PlayStation 3 now. They know I'm absolutely their target demographic and they're trying their hardest. A price cut on my birthday, though? That's below the belt. Pretty soon they're going to start ringing me up at three in the morning to find out why I haven't bought one yet. Unfortunately for them, after three children, I've already been driven mad. A little bit of sleep deprivation isn't going to make me mistake GAME for the trouser department of John Lewis next time I head to the shops. (Well, not again, anyway). Still, a price cut... on my birthday... Can't say I'm not tempted.

Yep, the birthday season remains upon us. Marie had hers, then Sarah and now it's my turn. (Thanks for the parcel of pig entrails and the CD of train noises, by the way. I'm sending you some out-of-date yogurt and a dead squirrel for Christmas).


Nobody escapes the birthday hat...

I have reached another milestone. I have indisputably moved from my early-thirties to my mid-thirties. I have also, it seems, reached an age where mere years are no longer long enough to efficiently mark the passage of time - I'm beginning to work in chunks of decade.

I guess it's a logical progression. When each of the kids was born, I spent the first day counting their age in hours. Then, for the next fortnight, I counted their age in days and, after that, it was weeks and even half weeks until they were two or three months. Months turned into years around about the time they reached two but they were seldom just two, they were two-and-a-quarter or two-and-a-half or 'nearly three'. I still do this kind of thing with Fraser's age sometimes and he's nearly seven-and-a-half. (See what I mean). I imagine it will peter out once they're nine or ten. Then it will be simple, whole-numbers of years for evermore as far as I'm concerned. No more faffing about. In later life, Marie will introduce her fiance and the first thing out of my mouth will probably be something like, 'She's thirty-seven. We thought she was never going to move out.'

It's just payback, really. I've lost track of the occasions on which my children have told random strangers in a lift or on the bus how old I am. I'm looking forward to following Fraser around on a Saturday night when he's a teenager and telling all the bar staff exactly how old he is while I sup happily on my own beer.

Yep, there will come a time when I find the kids' ages nice and simple but I suspect that's when they will start to get a bit cagey about the whole thing. From my own experience, just because my parents have been happy to blurt out my age to all and sundry for years, doesn't mean I always have. There was a brief period in adolescence where I tried to pretend I was older than I was and then, after a relatively brief period of youthful maturity, I passed twenty-seven or twenty-eight and things began to get vague. I wasn't twenty-nine, I was 'in my late-twenties'. I'm guessing that, once I'm much past forty, things will start moving in decades. It's only when I'm up to around ninety-six and going for a high score that I'll start telling people my age again. ("I'll be a hundred and eight this October. It's all down to fresh air, hard work and marmalade. 'Course the key thing is where to put the marmalade but I'm not telling you my secret, laddie.")

Oh, what the heck, I'll come clean. I'm thirty-four.

I haven't had an urge to buy a motorbike yet. Three years ago, I did purchase a whole stack of games with little plastic figures on eBay, though. It was down to a desire to regain my lost teenage years by rediscovering the hobby which helped lose them in the first place. I only managed to paint a couple of ratmen, however, before Marie's insatiable desire to stay awake became apparent and my amount of free time plummeted. One day...

This time, obviously, the thing to buy myself to keep the gaping void of middle-age at bay is a PlayStation 3 but, also obviously, I still don't need one and they're still too expensive. Even the price cut won't work. My local independent games retailer actually had an equally good deal in the window a couple of weeks ago. I very nearly bought one. Sure, I can play all the games I want to play on my Xbox 360 but a PS3 was tempting as a Blu-Ray player (you know, just in case our old telly mysteriously breaks and we have to get a sparkling new HD one) and there are bound to be some decent PS3-exclusive games soon.

As I said, I almost bought one but then I went into town and looked in the big retailers. I ended up in the basement of HMV. There was plenty of shelfspace for the 360 and all the Wiis were sold out again but the PS3 was shunted to the back, next to where the room had been divided off with opaque plastic sheeting, presumably to allow some remodelling to be done. There was a vast PS3 display stuck up the corner, complete with HD telly and comfy seats but no one was paying the blindest bit of notice apart from two men in suits who were eyeing the situation with exasperation. They looked important and I quickly recognised them from one of my previous letters. Pretending to browse magazines, I listened in on their conversation.

Sony Europe Exec: The free games and extra controller don't seem to be working.

Sony Marketing Bod (watching a tumbleweed roll past): The games are getting pretty cheap second-hand now and maybe we shouldn't have let on we've got new controllers with added rumble coming out after Christmas.

Exec: Pah! Who cares about rumble anyway? That's so last-generation.

Bod: Yeah, but only until after Christmas. Then it's the next big thing again.

Exec: It is?

Bod: That's what you said last week.

Exec: Right, yes, of course. I've been saying all kinds of things
lately; I'm beginning to lose track. Have I changed my mind on the importance of backwards compatibility yet?

Bod: No... I... Er, what do you mean 'yet'?

Exec: What? Did I say that out loud? Oh, sorry. I was busy thinking we should make the console more affordable.

Bod: A second price cut in just over six months? That's insane. We'll annoy our loyal customers who bought one at the initial price and make everyone else think we're desperate and... (He trails off as an HMV employee emerges through the plastic sheeting, accompanied by a few flurries of snow. There is a brief glimpse beyond. No building work is visible but the icy expanse of Narnia stretches away into the distance, trees and hills covered in more snow. Except they aren't hills. They're huge piles of PS3s. Mr Tumnus' hooves poke out from under the nearest one).

Exec: It's not a price cut and neither was the previous price cut. If you remember, we merely added value to the package by including extra content and, as you've already made clear, the worth of that extra content has been slowly decreasing over time. This has, in effect, meant the price of the console itself has been steadily rising for the last few months. How many other consoles can claim that? Even the Wii hasn't got more expensive and look how popular that is. I think the time has come, however, to reverse the trend, throw down the gauntlet to our competitors and make a minor adjustment to the RRP.

Bod (recovering as the plastic falls back into place): What level of 'adjustment' were you thinking?

Exec: £125.

Bod: What!? After six months! The early adopters will lynch us. And it's not even economically viable anyway.

Exec: We'll bring in a new model that's cheaper to produce.

Bod: How's it suddenly going to be cheaper to produce?

Exec: We'll leave bits out. We could start with the glove compartment and a couple of the coin holders.

Bod: You mean the multi-card reader bay and the USB slots.

Exec: Ah, same difference, it's not like anyone is using them. How about a third of the hard-drive and backwards compatibility as well? The ability to play PS2 games isn't so important now there'll be sixty-five games out for the PS3 by Christmas.

Bod (looking at his feet): Yeah, but one of those is Pirates of the Caribbean and another is Untold Legends.

Exec: The important thing here is choice, not quality.

Bod (his voice rising as he suddenly realises that the floor is made of PS3s): OK, OK, so we sell this 40GB model for £300. What about the current 60GB model?

Exec: Let's say £350 with a couple of games.

Bod: Only £50 more for two games and extra features? That means the new model will look both over-priced and under-equipped. Meanwhile, the price cut will look confused and panicked rather than dramatic and attractive.

Exec: But don't you see? It's not a price cut. If we cease production of the 60GB model, it's a specification downgrade coupled with a stock clearance. There's nothing desperate or confused about it. The product is £125 cheaper and the price hasn't been cut at all.

Bod: I, er... I'm not sure... That's not offering quality or choice. I... Hang on. You just changed your mind on the importance of backwards compatibility.

Exec: Took you a moment to notice, didn't it?

Bod: Very smooth. This might work. Still doesn't have rumble, though. (They start to leave).

Exec: That's such last-generation technology.

Bod: Until after Christmas.

Exec: Yes, yes, of course, after Christmas... but we'll have the 120GB Freeview model with built-in camera and etch-a-sketch to worry about then.

Bod: What?

Exec: Oh, don't worry. (He puts his arm around the other man's shoulders as they disappear behind the curtain). I've been assured that that one will definitely be able to make toast...

After that, I gazed at the display a little longer but I wasn't exactly reassured about spending all my pocket money for the year on what's still very much an extravagance. Fortunately, this meant my resolve was already reinforced when the official announcement came out. I will just have to come to terms with my encroaching decrepitude without retail therapy. I will continue to resist.

What to do to celebrate my birthday, though? A meal? Some cake? Or a session juggling hammers next to the telly?

Hmm... Maybe I should give my credit card to the children to look after for the rest of the day...

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: children (vol.2), computer games, corporate madness, PS3

 
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10:30 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Mice, yaks, tradesmen and a shovel

Dear Dave,

If there's one thing I hate about this job, then it's dealing with tradesmen. Honestly, I'd rather clean up vomit.

Erm, not that I'm making a direct comparison here. You know, like they both smell bad and leave a mess on your carpet. All I mean is that both things are on my list of normal duties and, if you arranged the list by ordered of preference, then dealing with tradesmen is at the bottom. Thus, there are any number of things I'd rather do, from making packed-lunches to standing outside school in the rain to watching the same episode of the Tweenies over and over again until their irritating voices buzz constantly inside my head and I feel the urge to take a large magnet to their animatronics while rubbing chewing gum into their fur. Heck, I'd probably even rather buy clothes than deal with tradesmen.

Considering I only have one pair of shoes and I still regularly wear a shirt I bought when I was at secondary school, that's saying something.

The problem is, I'm just no good at it. I can't seem to get them to turn up on the day they've promised, persuade them to do the work exactly as I want or inspire them to ever entirely finish the job to my satisfaction. Any tradesman I've found who I have managed to bend to my will has gone bust before I need their services again. (That or been replaced by their Porsche driving offspring who do a job that's not quite as good for twice as much money). Coordinating repairs to the flood damage from next door has gone particularly badly because it's my insurers who are paying for the work to be done so I have absolutely no hold over the company doing the work at all. If I have a complaint, I phone the insurers. After three days of trying, I get through to the person in charge of my case. He emails the plumbers. The plumbers don't reply. My radiators remain upside down. I have to go murder some Tweenies to vent my frustration and then I phone the insurers again. The cycle continues...

Things are finally progressing, however, albeit slowly. The other morning, a decorator was busily re-painting a ceiling on the top floor (the damage was on the ground floor of our three storey house) while refusing to touch up the skirting board on the first flight of stairs (mere inches from where a big patch of plaster had had to be replaced). Meanwhile, a plumber was happily removing parts of the central heating (again) but wasn't really committing to a definite timeframe for putting them back. He was also fairly reticent on whether they'd be the right way up.

Hey, at least something was happening, which made a change.

The doorbell rang in the midst of the chaos. It was Steve, Sarah's manager, and I was taken by surprise. We hadn't arranged to meet up and get the kids together. He didn't even have his kids with him. He was dressed for work but, obviously, he wasn't at work. He was neither being Useless Dad nor Clueless Manager and, thus, he was dangerously out of context. I stood and gaped at him.

"Is this a good time?" he said.

"Erm..." I had two tradesmen in the house, Marie was having a strop and I had a live mouse in my hands. I couldn't help feeling that this was stretching the definition of 'a good time.' As if to emphasise the point, there was a clang behind me, the sound of liquid escaping under pressure and muttered swearing. There was an almost desperate, pleading look in Steve's eyes, however. "Erm..." I repeated.

"Good God, what's that?" said Steve, suddenly noticing what I was carrying.

"It's a mouse." It was crouched under a glass bowl which I was pressing down on a thin sheet of cardboard. "I caught it."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Well, when I catch spiders like this, I normally chuck them out the window. They're less squishy, though. Want to take it home for your cat?"

"Not really."

"Thought not. That leaves three options: let it go to die a lingering death from the poison it's almost certainly eaten, leave it under the bowl and watch it die a lingering death from the poison it's almost certainly eaten, or hit it over the head with a shovel."

"The first two don't sound that good."

"Shovel it is, then." I stepped out on the driveway, put my impromptu trap down and fetched a heavy digging implement. "Right, you lift the bowl and I'll whack it."

"That's a very big shovel for a very small mouse," said Steve, not entirely sure.

"It's the only shovel I have," I replied, losing it slightly. "They don't sell them in sets like they do with knives - you know, big shovel for allotments, medium shovel for flowerbeds, little shovel for window boxes and miniature shovel for mouse whacking. I have one shovel for all eventualities. What do you want me to do? Brain it with a teaspoon?"

"This isn't a very good time, is it?"

"No, it's not. Now lift the bowl so I can put Mickey out of his misery."

"All right." He very gingerly lifted the bowl. The mouse didn't move. "Are you sure it isn't dead alr..." He jumped back as I swung the shovel down with a thunk. "OK, it's really dead now."

I peered at it closely. "Yep, it's definitely not going to re-route its internal circuitry to its secondary power source and relentlessly hunt us down through a metal-pressing factory."

Steve looked at me blankly.

"Er, never mind," I said. I scooped the mouse into a plastic bag and binned it. Ridding the house of at least one rodent had eased some of my frustration. I felt able to deal with tradesmen once more. It had even been something of a bonding experience with Steve. "Sorry I was a bit short with you just now - it's been a difficult week. Want to come in for a coffee?"

"If you're sure...?"

"It'll be fine. Just try not to trip over the remains of the heating."

I led him through to the kitchen. The boys were at school but Marie was face down on the floor, screaming, because I'd mixed her yogurt in with her Rice Crispies for her. I'd then tried to make things better by offering to eat the Crispies myself and get her fresh ingredients but no - she wanted the same Crispies and yogurt, not similar ones. She wanted me to miraculously unmix them, solely in order for her to mix them herself. Strangely, I'd refused. She'd been crying for an hour. I guess she's just reached that stage... I motioned for Steve to ignore her and take a seat at the table. I washed my hands two or three times and then made refreshments.

"Now, what can I do for you?" I said to Steve, plonking his coffee down in front of him.

He looked uncertainly at Marie. "Is she all right?"

"She'll get over it." I picked up her bowl and offered it to Steve. "Would you like some Rice Crispies and yogurt?"

"No!" Marie screamed. "They mine! They mine! He not eat them!"

"Well, you'd better eat them quickly then, Marie, before he does."

"OK!" She leapt up from the floor and hurried to her seat in a panic, brushing her hair out of her face as she went. She snatched her bowl from my hand and hugged it close. "My Crispies... Mine."

I put on her favourite Scooby Doo episode with the sound down low and turned back to Steve. "Yeah, so what can I do for you?"

"Scott's been re-assigned," he said, dejectedly.

I was taken by surprise again. Being Steve's manager, Scott was pretty senior and so there weren't many opportunities for lateral movement in the org chart. Also, having met him a couple of times, I couldn't imagine which division of LBO would actually want him. "Where have they re-assigned him to? Pensions? Life Assurance?"

"Ulan Bator."

"Oohh..." I sucked in air between my teeth. "Do they play rugby in Mongolia? He can't be happy."

"They called him in, late yesterday, and told him to pack his suitcase. Didn't give him a chance to appeal. They said that, after careful consideration, he was the best man to explore new business opportunities in an expanding financial market that required hard-nosed negotiation and the ability to wrestle a yak. They didn't even give him time to tell anyone. He's on the plane already and I only found out because his replacement wants to see me."

My worst fears were calmed. For an awful few seconds, I thought he was going to say that he'd been promoted to fill Scott's parking space. No wonder he was upset - being Scott's favourite sycophantic minion had all but assured Steve's immunity to the job cuts and restructuring. "Who's his replacement then?"

"Morag Chandler. She's an awful woman. She's not even from the Communications Division. She's from IT! She got called in at the last minute a couple of weeks ago to arbitrate at one of the redundancy consultations, argued with everything Scott said and suddenly thinks she can do better. I'd heard she'd gone to the board to complain but I can't believe they even listened to her. It was only by chance she was at the meeting and now she's in charge. I don't understand it."

"Mmmm, yeah," I said, chewing my lip. I was slightly miffed that he didn't remember that it was my wife's redundancy consultation that Morag had attended. He seemed to have forgotten that he'd put her job forward for the chop and that, thanks to him, her career still hung in the balance. I resisted pointing out my lack of sympathy, however, since it might have accidentally emerged that I was more than a little responsible for Morag entering his life. "Any idea what she wants to talk to you about? I mean, presumably she just wants you to get her up to speed on everything that's happening in your department."

"Most of my network access has stopped working and my company credit card just got refused."

"Ah."

"What am I going to do?"

"I, erm..." Something about the situation began to trouble me. "Does Deborah know?"

"No, I haven't told anyone yet. I don't know what to do."

My suspicion was confirmed. Somewhere between helping him change a nappy and inviting him round to play Wii Sports, I'd been promoted to close friend. I was possibly his only friend outside of work and of the network of business contacts he had attained playing golf and squash. If he lost his job, those other friends might disappear and there was no way that Deborah was going to let him mooch around their flat. I might become his only friend, full stop, and he was bound to turn up at my house every day to do his mooching, probably with his kids along so I could 'help' take care of them.

After a couple of years of wishing a 'career readjustment' on him, I unexpectedly found myself not so sure. I knew it would be pleasant for Sarah to get a manager with more of a clue and that that would have trickle-down pleasantness effects for me but...

I sighed. Maybe I was jumping too far ahead. Maybe he wasn't going to lose his job. Maybe...

I offered him a consoling chocolate digestive. For the first time, I took in how abnormally crumpled and defeated he appeared. In his mind, there was no maybe. He had the look of a doomed man and, suddenly, I couldn't help thinking that he'd stolen it from me. I knew I was going to have to start buying biscuits in double quantities.

"It's not so bad," I said. "I hear Deborah's interior design work is really getting going again."

He shook his head. "There's plenty of interest but she doesn't have the time."

"But if she didn't have to look after the children..."

"Once you've taken into account the cost of childcare, she wouldn't make enough for us to live on. Do you know how much nurseries cost?"

"Well, erm, if you did happen to, er, not be working, you could look after Ophelia and Josquin."

"Me? But..." Fear crossed his face. "All the time?"

"Yeah."

"But wouldn't they need fed and..." He seemed to ponder what else children might require but came up blank. "...things."

"Yep, they'd definitely need fed and, erm, 'things', but you could do that."

"I don't have the..." He indicated his chest. "...things."

"Ophelia's nearly four. Those things are no longer a feeding requirement. Fresh fruit, cheese sandwiches and sausages should keep her going, though. You could probably manage that."

"Every day?"

"You might want to vary the menu on occasion but I'm sure you could manage every day, yes. You can make cheese sandwiches, right?"

He was staring into space. "Deborah normally makes my sandwiches."

I decided to lay off on my housedad evangelism. He didn't appear ready to consider the future carefully. He just needed a little reassurance. "I tell you what - go into work and chat to Morag and find out what the score really is. Maybe there's been a misunderstanding or there's some kind of challenging new opportunity waiting to develop your career that she hasn't told you about. You never know. If the worst comes to the worst, though, you can polish up your CV and start phoning round your contacts. There's a long way to go yet."

He didn't seem to hear me. "Maybe..." he muttered and then looked at his watch. "Is that the time? I've got to get to work to see Morag. Maybe I can convince her to let me help Scott in Ulan Bator. I could learn to wrestle yaks."

"Sure you can," I said and handed him his coat. "It's getting the yak into the spandex that's the tricky part."

He definitely wasn't listening. "Yes," he said, slightly vacantly. "Yes, there's a long way to go yet..." I showed him to the door.

"Are you going to be all right?" I asked, somewhat concerned. He really wasn't all there.

"Mmmm? Yes, I'll be fine. Everything's going to be fine."

"OK. Well, take care. Bye."

He'd already wandered off down the drive in a daze. I watched him along the street for a while, just to make sure he didn't walk into a lamp post or anything, and then I went back to the kitchen.

Marie had cheered up. "I eat all my Crispies. I have dessert now!"

"You don't get dessert at breakfast," I said.

"Awwww," she whined. "I want chocolate biscuit." She pointed at the open packet on the table. "You eat nine."

"I had more like three."

"You eat nine!" She folded her arms and hung her head stubbornly. Another tantrum seemed on the cards.

"Whatever," I said. She had a fair comment in there somewhere and teaching her to count using chocolate biscuits wasn't a route I wanted to follow. I relented. "Would you like one?"

"Yes!" She snatched it from me and grinned. "Thanks!"

I had another myself and we settled down to watch some Scooby Doo. The plumber broke a couple more things and left. The decorator went off to buy a paper and sit in his van doing sudoku while he worked up an appetite for lunch. I was past caring.

Half an hour later, I discovered Steve had left his briefcase behind. On checking, however, I found that it contained nothing but a couple of pens and his sandwiches. Either that was all he normally had in his briefcase or he had left home with it out of habit despite knowing his fate. Both options were slightly depressing.

While I was cheering myself up by eating the sandwiches, Sarah phoned. Steve had been made redundant. On the plus side (or, from Sarah's perspective, on the other plus side) she'd been promoted to take his place. (Technically, of course, this meant Steve was being summarily fired rather being made redundant but they'd offered him a settlement to go quietly). A pay rise, added benefits and the freedom to do the job properly - Sarah was ecstatic. I wasn't quite as enthusiastic as she'd expected so I had to explain about Steve's visit. She did her best to understand but, to be honest, her heart wasn't in it. Can't say I blame her - his management had made her life a misery on occasion.

We agreed to meet up for lunch to talk it over and celebrate.

As I gathered up coats and tried to get my head back on straight, I noticed that the painter had touched up the woodwork in the end. Oddly, this felt like the best news I'd had all day. My spirits immediately lifted. In some small way, I'd got a tradesman to do what I wanted. Even if Steve did start turning up every morning, at least the house was nearly fixed. I could cope.

I put Marie's shoes on her and we set off along the street. Sarah's promotion finally sank in - more money, more holiday and a happy wife. That had to be good. There were all kinds of possibilities...

Pretty soon, I was so busy dreaming of big tellies, I walked into a lamp post.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: corporate madness, flood, mice, Useless Dad

 
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  The List

Dear Dave,

Any news yet? I take it Squiggly has decided to stay put for a while longer. How overdue does she/he have to be before the midwives break out the dynamite? I seem to remember that Fraser was nine days late and, the more time dragged on, the less likely it seemed that he would ever be born. It was crazy but life went into limbo as we waited impatiently for him to do the only sensible thing and come out quietly with his legs up. He wasn't having any of it, however. When he finally deigned to appear, he was facing the wrong way and had to be dragged out by the head. (A pattern of life we seem to repeat in some form on an almost daily basis).

Marie was even more awkward. She was determined to stick her toes out first just to test the temperature. Nothing would persuade her otherwise and she had to be yanked out through the emergency exit. Stubborn drama queen? My little girl? Never...

Lewis, at least, turned up on time and without much palaver. If anything, he was a little too laid-back and easy-going. He might have been born even more smoothly if he'd bothered to fight his way out of his protective bubble. But no. He wanted to be born in his own private water-bed. He likes his comfort, that one.

Anyway, good luck and best wishes to Liz. Remember to make the midwives do whatever she wants and try your best to get her whatever she asks for (unless it's sharp and pointy and she wants you to stand close by).

Things are sort of going OK here. Sarah had her redundancy 'hearing' at LBO yesterday - the one where she had to explain to the two managers who fired her why they were wrong. This was, obviously, never going to go well but we were pinning our hopes on the third member of the Inquisition who was supposed to be an impartial manager from another department. No one told Sarah who it was going to be until the day, however. She phoned me straight away when she found out. It was Gerald, my old boss from when I worked in the IT department. This was not good news.

"What do you know about him?" Sarah asked.

I grimaced, glad that she couldn't see my face. "Dinosaurs find him old-fashioned and he can't really see the point of women."

"Oh..."

"Yeah, I'm sure they'd have pensioned him off years ago if he hadn't rigged up half the code so that only he knows how it works. Not that even he really knows, half the time."

"I need you to be more encouraging here," she said.

"Sorry..." I didn't know what else to say.

There was a silence punctuated by swamp sounds. "What's that squelching noise in the background?" asked Sarah.

"Marie." I glanced over from my seat at the kitchen table to where the girl was stomping around in slime, her trouser legs rolled up as high as they would go. "I've got her doing foot painting."

"Is that wise?" said Sarah, somewhat agitated by this news.

"Almost certainly not, but she's really getting into it. I think we're going to need some more pink paint."

"I like pink!" shouted Marie, gleefully, and jumped up and down.

I wiped a fleck of paint from my glasses. Then I had an idea. "Yeah, er, what would happen if, for some reason, Gerald couldn't make it?"

"I don't know. It might say in the formal notification they sent me..." There was a rustle of paper as she searched around. "Yes, it has a get-out clause. 'If the named arbiter cannot attend the consultation meeting, then his or her deputy will attend as replacement. In this eventuality, all duties relating to the meeting will henceforth transfer to the replacement.' Which, I presume, means it's up to the deputy to make decisions and do the paperwork. Do you think Gerald will want to delegate?"

"Nope, he wouldn't dream of passing up the chance to look official and exert some power. Who's his deputy, though?"

"I'll check the org chart..." There was another pause. "Looks like someone called Morag Chandler."

This was much more promising. "She'd be good. She's fair, doesn't tolerate nonsense and bites the heads off fools. She'll be more than up for a fight with Steve and Scott. You want her."

"And how am I supposed to arrange that?" asked Sarah.

"Leave it to me," I said.

This didn't come across in the manly and reassuring way I'd hoped. "What? What are you going to do?" Sarah sounded anxious.

"Woh, calm down," I said. "I just think I can get Rob to keep Gerald out of the way for a few hours, that's all. I'm not going to turn up and send the kids in with water balloons and dung bombs."

"Are you sure?"

"Well, not unless they actually fire you, anyway. Keep on with your preparation for the meeting and I'll see what I can do. Speak to you later. Love you."

"Love you, too. Just don't do anything silly, OK?"

"OK. Bye."

I hung up and then immediately phoned Rob, my friend who still works in the IT department at LBO.

"I need you to do me a favour," I said, once we'd exchanged pleasantries.

"Sure. What is it?"

"I need you to distract Gerald for the rest of the day. I need you to use the List."

"You what?" he spluttered but then lowered his voice. "Why?"

I explained about the hearing whilst trying to keep Marie on the paper and away from the clean laundry.

"I don't know," muttered Rob, when I was done. "There's not much still on there. It's been eight years and I've had a few close scrapes since you left. What if something happens and I..."

"Come on. You must be able to do something. I gave you the List in the first place."

"It's not like you wrote it," he said.

"Well, I added to it. Have you added anything to it? Look, I really need your help. What do I have to do here? You want me to lose to you at Mario Kart or something?"

"Not really. I tell you what, you could be best man at my wedding. How about that?"

I sighed. "I'd rather just sit next to the buffet and get mildly drunk while enjoying not having the kids around, if that's all right?" A terrible thought crossed my mind. "You're not inviting the kids, are you?"

"I might do, at this rate," he said, sounding peeved. "Aren't you supposed to say, 'Congratulations'?"

"Oh, yeah, sorry. Congratulations! Now, about the List..."

"Only if you agree to wear a kilt and stand at the front holding the rings."

"I have to wear a kilt!? Have you seen my knees?"

"Hang on a minute while I pencil your children onto the guest list."

"OK, OK, I'll do it," I said, caving in. "I can't believe you're holding me to ransom over this. I am so giving you crystal sherry glasses as a gift."

"That's OK. You're getting novelty cuff links as a thank you present."

"Cheers... Now, the List!?"

The List takes the form of a battered and yellowed notebook and has had a mythical status within the technical division of LBO since back in a time when making an automatic calculation involved turning a crank handle. It has been passed secretly down through generations of prospectless techies, hidden from management and any that show aspirations to be promoted to the dark side. Sometimes it has disappeared from view for years, only to be rediscovered in moments of greatest need. It has come to the rescue of many a hapless engineer and some say, that if the List is ever used up, then it will be the beginning of the end - hot desking will become mandatory and internet access will be denied, new development will cease and all that will be left is bug-fixing...

Once upon a time, the List was in the care of my mentor. He gave it to me when he left the company. I, in turn, gave it to Rob when I left. It records all the subtle technical faults in the system that senior management is entirely unaware of but that would strike fear into their hearts if they were ever informed. By suddenly 'discovering' one of the problems on the List, an engineer can distract attention from a different disaster that's much more their fault. Of course, there is a price to be paid - all the problems are difficult, dull or time-consuming to fix. The List is never to be used lightly. It saved me on one occasion, however. When a race over my cubicle assault course led to myself, several co-workers and a vending machine falling out a window, the List ensured we got away with only our minor injuries and several weeks of database migration. It was a close thing.

More famously, LBO was years ahead of the game on Y2K because my old mentor needed to divert his superiors while he hunted around for the portion of fish and chips he'd lost in the internal workings of the primary mainframe. That incident has become legend.

I started suggesting entries from the List that Rob could use. "How about the Conduit Issue?"

This is one of the items on the List that is situation dependent. The password and access security on the LBO network is very tight. The data, however, travels totally unencrypted between buildings using cabling that runs only a few feet underground. This fact would obviously be a cause for concern whenever it was pointed out, but is liable to create much more panic amongst senior management if they look out the window and see a couple of shifty looking workmen poking around under a manhole cover. Rob keeps Virgin Media on speed-dial just in case of such a fortuitous circumstance being required.

"No time," replied Rob. "I'll never get a maintenance guy out here before this afternoon."

"You're right." I wracked my brains. "How about the NeverDay Accounts?"

In the early '80s, LBO introduced a thirty year savings plan. Not many people took it up and it quickly died a death. No one would remember it at all if it weren't for the five customers who signed up on the 29th February 1984. Due to an error in the code, their interest calculations have been somewhat inflated and they now own the company. On the plus side, there's another error which means, since 2014 isn't a leap year, the policies will never mature and the customers will never be paid. If the accountants ever find out, however, there'll be pandemonium enough to cover over almost any other catastrophe. (And, yeah, it could be fixed really easily but, unfortunately, that module of code got re-used and now forms part of almost every system in LBO. Testing nothing else got broken by the fix would take forever).

"NeverDay is overkill," said Rob. "I'm not taking the flak for uncovering that."

I could see his point. "OK, then, the Name Jumbler?"

When a customer's name is entered into the system it is stored surname first, followed by first names. Each of the elements is separated by a space. John Edward Smith becomes Smith John Edward. This makes it easy to list customers alphabetically by surname. When the system retrieves a name, it looks for spaces and re-arranges the name back to the right order. Letters would be sent to John E Smith. This works great almost all the time. However, the designer had obviously never met anyone with a hyphen-less double-barreled surname. John Edward Smith Jones gets stored as Smith Jones John Edward but comes back as Jones John Edward Smith. Every time. That's got to be annoying for all LBO's punctuation-phobic customers.

"That's maybe underkill," said Rob. "Gerald's not going to care. How many customers with hyphen-less double-barreled surnames do you think we have?"

"It's not the number; it's the importance," I said, becoming impatient. Sarah's meeting was fast approaching. Marie was also running out of paper. "There are a few high-profile special cases. See if Her Royal Highness, Princess Enid, Duchess of Anglesey, is still a policy holder."

"What? Hang on a minute. Have you got a policy number?"

"It's on the List."

"I'll need to get it out from behind the air-vent cover. I'll put you on hold..."

"Wait! No..." It was too late. I was subjected to fifteen minutes of Brahms and irritating reminders that my call was important.

Eventually, Rob came back on. "Right, got it."

"What were you doing?" I hissed.

"It was still in the air-vent in my old cubicle. I had to go buy doughnuts to lure people out of the room before I could get to it. I told them it was Rupert's birthday."

"Who's Rupert?" I asked.

"I dunno. I'm making this up as I go along."

"And no one queried?"

"Who queries free doughnuts?" said Rob.

"True. You might want to add that to the List as another potential security risk."

"Yeah, hadn't thought of it like that," he said. "Where's this policy number then? Oh, got it. Just hang on while I call it up... Right... OK, they put 'HRH' in as her title so that's fine but, oh, they tried making 'Duchess of Anglesey' her surname which means the system thinks her first name is 'of' and they left 'Princess' in there, which makes her initials... Oh, flip..."

"Yep, she gets letters addressed to 'HRH of APE Duchess'."

"Gerald will go ballistic," said Rob. "I still don't see how it's going to keep him out the way, though. He'll get someone else to sort it."

"No, he won't. Check out the name storage and retrieval modules - his name is all over them. He'll lock himself in his office and spend the rest of the week hacking up a solution."

"But there is no solution," argued Rob, forgetting to whisper. "All the data's compromised. Even if he changed the code, someone would have to go through about five million customer records to check which ones are knackered. Not that it'll be possible to tell with some of them without contacting the customer. It can't be fixed."

"His pride will make him try. Go tell him."

Rob subsided. "All right, all right. But your speech better be good."

"I'll start writing it now. Well, as soon as I've got the pink footprints off the telly. Things got a little out of hand while you had me on hold."

"Good luck with that."

"You, too."

I hung up and set myself to scrubbing a small child and various appliances. There was nothing else I could do.

Sarah phoned me a few hours later. The List had worked its magic. Gerald had been unexpectedly detained by a technical crisis and Morag had been unceremoniously ordered to the hearing. Apparently, she was fuming before she even arrived and was looking for a fight. Sarah's manager, Steve, was pretty quiet through the whole thing. (His wife, Deborah, still needs my help, so she's been advocating for Sarah ever since the redundancies were announced). Steve's manager, Scott, however, was as smug and annoying as ever and Morag told him where to go.

She even drew diagrams.

It's going to be another couple of weeks before final decisions are made but I think there's a good chance things should work out well.

I'd better start on that speech.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

Labels: birth, corporate madness, IT, jobs, Useless Dad

 
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  There's no going back now

Dear Dave,

Things are looking up. Sarah's been given a rundown of the reasons she's been picked for the redundancy list at LBO and they're decidedly unconvincing. As far as we can make out amidst all the business babble, there are three main strikes against her:

• She hasn't done the training course for the customer data analysis tools. This is true but, then again, she helped specify the system in the first place and has been using it daily for nearly seven years. The only reason she didn't go on the course was because it was a fortnight before she went on maternity leave with Fraser and her manager at the time couldn't see the point.


• Aiding and abetting the competition. This one's just nonsense. Sarah led a project designed to reduce customer turn-over. She spent months analysing the data, identifying the customers most likely to leave LBO and formulating ways to get them to stay. It was fantastic. The only problem was, she had to go on maternity leave with Lewis before the mailshot was finalised. Someone who had been on the training course pressed the wrong button and sent the letters to exactly the wrong people - hundreds of thousands of loyal customers received offers of sweet deals and all the customers who were already thinking of leaving got nothing.
  
  They left.
  
  This was, of course, disastrous, but definitely not Sarah's fault.


• The annelid debacle. On returning from maternity leave with Marie, Sarah was put in charge of implementing a marketing campaign that was already in the final stages of development. She had had nothing to do with the planning, however, and was dubious about the whole scheme. It was an attempt to persuade financial advisers that, although the products of other companies might look attractive initially, they had various legal complications and long-term costs. The campaign involved sending each of these financial advisers an unsolicited can of worms.
  
  And, of course, like fools, they opened them.
  
  Believe me, the complaints department received some irate calls that day. Still, not really Sarah's fault. Crucially, when she pointed out the madness of the scheme, she was threatened with dismissal if she didn't implement it. You can't sack someone for doing something they would have got sacked for not doing. (Well, not unless you use the kind of logic that can take you from the statement, 'All chocolate digestives are brown,' to the conclusion, 'All brown things are chocolate digestives.' And the people who do use that kind of logic don't last long - they have a tendency to choke to death on their own shoes at biscuit time).

So there we have it: one reason is illegal, one is spurious and the other is as insane as eating your own boots. Persuading management to see things that way is the tricky part. It might make them look bad. Still, they don't really have a leg to stand on.

Obviously, all the uncertainty has made life somewhat subdued round here but we're coping. We've had plenty of commiserations from friends and family, so we don't feel alone, but there's been some fairly dreadful advice as well, ranging from platitudes along the lines of 'It will all work out for the best' to idiotic suggestions that we use the opportunity to go traveling the world.

Hello! Three small children, people! We're entitled to be a little apprehensive of the future and to be reluctant to go backpacking in Borneo. (Everything else aside, I can't imagined the buggy would cope well with the rainforest terrain. And where would we plug in the Game Boys to recharge them? Not going to happen).

Oddly, however, nearly everyone Sarah has discussed her imminent redundancy with has, at some point, laughed and said, 'You could always send Ed back to work.'

On the one hand, they're half joking. As if they're sure she won't be able to persuade me to leave the house after eight years of, as they see it, sitting around eating cake and playing the Xbox. Which is, on reflection, a little insulting.

On the other hand, they're half serious. Getting me a job solves the problem of not having any money coming in, after all.

It doesn't solve the actual problem of getting a job but I guess that's just a minor detail. I mean, there's no reason I couldn't get a job. What people don't seem to realise, though, is that I can't compete with Sarah. When I stopped work in advance of Fraser's arrival, Sarah and I were earning similar amounts. Money wasn't an issue when deciding who stayed home to be dribbled on. That was eight years ago, however. Sarah now has eight years more experience than me. She has new and up-to-the-minute skills. She has smart clothes that fit and that aren't all wrinkly from dribble.

She has much more chance of quickly getting a decent job than I do.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that we're now financially trapped in our role-reversal situation but we'd definitely take a big hit in the bank account if we tried to swap back. It's strange how people just don't seem to get that.

Sadly, I suspect they would get it if I were female. It would probably be taken for granted rather than come as a surprise.

And, now I come to think of it, that would be far worse. I'll stop whinging.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS Marie's favourite song at the moment goes:

Everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody... everybody likes being a person.
Nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody... nobody likes being a pie.

It's quite sonorous but does tend to attract some odd looks on the bus...

Labels: corporate madness, discrimination, housedad (vol.2), jobs

 
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