Friday 17 December 2010

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".

6 comments:

  1. Aye, that's the cooncil.

    Apart from the bearded tit, that is.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pretentious?

    Moi?

    How very dare one?

    Erm, btw, could the HR department not have a drinks cabinet too. I mean, it's only right?

    Oh, and one last question before one goes (shooting weekend in abroad) there's someone missing someplace, someone who might be found visiting anyone who had a drinks cabinet and leering at their nubile young secretaries, damned if I can think of his name now, but sure it begins with a D... no, wait its a B..

    Yes, he's missing... It's these damned computers you know...

    Anyway, off to do some shooting in Englandshire. Chap named Osborne you know.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Conan,

    What a co-incidence that you're a librarian - it never occurred to me.

    The staff in my local library, the William Patrick, are very nice but they keep fining me for late returns. I suggested to the lady that she should take into account old age before fining me but, unfortunately, it was my next door neighbour and she told me to "feck off" - whatever that meants.

    ReplyDelete
  4. tris,

    My dear old chum, how can your possibly think that the "pretentious" remark was a reference to your good self. Granted the rest of it might have been but let's just hope that Niko does not catch you doing a Prescott so be careful to shut your door before making improper use of your desk.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I rather enjoyed this post, and it makes a number of good points.

    ReplyDelete