Pinnochio's Nose

Every day a small ant called Sophia arrives at work very early and starts work immediately. She produces a lot and she is very happy.


Her boss, Niko the lion, was surprised that she was working so hard without supervision and the thought came to him that if she could produce so much without supervision she would produce even more under expert supervision.


With that in mind, he recruited a cockroach called Iain who had extensive supervisory experience and was particularly adept at excellent report writing and was an orator of note.


The cockroach's first decision was to instigate a clocking-in system which required the employment of a team of security guards to supervise the system.


He also recruited a fly personal assistant to formulate reports and a secretary to type the reports.


The reports were so extensive that a library was set up employing a bearded tit to manage the archives and arrange the siestas. The bearded tit, having been conditioned by years working in public service, felt honour bound to employ a tea-lady called Jenny.


The lion decided, due to the increased staff, to set up a human resources centre supervised by a wily old bustard, with obviously forged university qualifications, but with a pretentious double-barreled name.

The old bustard immediate set up an IT section staffed by drones which would enable him to blame the computers if anything went wrong.

Niko was delighted with the cockroach's reports and asked him to produce graphs and spread-sheets to describe production rates and to analyse trends.

Sophia, who had once been so productive and relaxed, hated this new plethora of paper-work and endless meetings which used up most of her time......

Niko then came to the conclusion that, to further boost morale, he should employ an over-all manager and after careful consideration he employed a friend of Iain's, an ermine coated skunk whose first decision was to buy a red carpet, an ergonomic chair and a drinks cabinet, purely for entertainment, for his office.

However, after reviewing the changes and the consequent production levels from Sophia, Niko discovered that production levels were falling rapidly.

In an attempt to find the Answer he employed SM753, a prestigious and expensive consultancy noted for their ability to carry out an audit, adjust figures to suit and suggest solutions.

The seven hundred and fifty-three consultants spent three months in formulating an enormous report, in several volumes, that concluded:

"The department is over-staffed".

Niko, duty bound to justify and take note of the extremely expensive report's conclusions sacked Sophia, the ant, simply because the report showed:

"She demonstrates lack of motivation and has a negative attitude".