Blank faces and barely perceptible nods

The boss of a company has informed staff of his intention to do an endurance challenge and received no follow-up questions from anyone.

When chief operating officer Nathan Muir, aged 49, asked for a moment of his staff’s time he expected cheers, awe and promises of vast sums but instead got carefully blank faces and barely perceptible nods.

He said: “I’d been building up to the moment I announced I was doing the Swansea Bay Ironman Triathlon next year, so convened a special lunchtime meeting.

“But the big reveal got me nothing. I can’t understand why. It wasn’t from any lack of enthusiasm on my part, or the quality of the PowerPoint and spiral-bound brochures.

“I outlined the course: a mile swim, then biking out through Mumbles into the hills of the Gower peninsula, then a final 13.1k loop along the bay. I invited them along to spectate, but they were staring at their shoes and checking their phones. This is 70.2 kilometres! It is a big deal!”

Team leader Oliver O’Connor said: “So that’s a year of training, boring on about his hydration levels and telling the girls to prod his calves, frequent absences we’ll have to cover and he’s asking us to pay him £50 each.

“Sorry, it’s for charity. Though he didn’t mention which one, presumably because that’s beside the fucking point.”

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Arseholes

An office arsehole has greeted the end of the May heatwave by saying ‘Hope you enjoyed summer,’ and the worst of it is that he may well be correct.

Martin Bishop, aged 44, has accosted everyone he meets with the one-liner he mistakenly believes to be the pinnacle of ironic British humour, but is more likely to be an entirely accurate forecast.

He continued: “Apparently summer’s on a Wednesday next year! Eh? Eh? You like that one? Why the sour face mate, only a joke.

“Three months of chilly drizzle’s only going to make you appreciate your holiday more. And my gag, which is as British as greasy fish and chips in soggy newspaper and will surely only get funnier as the grey weeks roll on.

“After all, you can’t get more British than complaining about the weather, can you? That stiff upper lip, battling through valiantly in the face of adversity. It’s a classic. Everyone here’s just a miserable bastard who hates to laugh.”

Colleague Emma Bradford said: “He’s right about us being miserable bastards, but it’s not laughing we hate. It’s Martin.

“Is there any kind of old pagan tradition about sacrificing a regional sales manager to the gods in order to banish the clouds and guarantee a good summer? Because if not I’m willing to start one.”

The Daily Mash

Of course.

[The "real" story? It's been pissing down, with thunderstorms, today.]

Testicle sandwich bath yum yum koala

The effect of AI on jobs is expected to be bad. But having said that, there are some professions we’d be happy to see gone forever. Such as these…

Management consultants
You’ve got admire the sheer brass neck of 22-year-old Anthropology graduates telling 50-somethings how they should be running businesses older than they are. But firms are already laying off consultants, probably because AI can tell you to sell more and cut costs. It’s well within AI’s abilities to handle strategy memos and financial analyses, and any client would rather deal with dull ChatGPT text than the smug face of a recent Oxbridge grad called Xander.

Radio DJs
A computer can surely generate inane anecdotes between songs and a less annoying voice than most DJs. Only an overtly evil AI like Skynet or the Allied Mastercomputer in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream would come up with something as nefarious as Chris Evans or Chris Moyles. So that’s DJs out of a job. Never mind, they can be repurposed as cannon fodder for the army. TV presenters will be allowed to remain, though, as some of them have tits and that cheers everyone up when there’s bad news.

Linguists
Revenge for being humiliated in year 9 German or French, plain and simple. Translators, interpreters and language tutors are some of the most at-risk jobs, with all of us now able to speak any language at the touch of a button. Not to mention the universal language of mockery as we laugh at those who were silly enough to master the past indicative. Okay, there’ll be no human filter if the AI is malfunctioning and you’re saying things like ‘Testicle sandwich bath yum yum koala’ but it’s the future and the tech bros are never wrong.

Poets
Many people hate poets, with all their emotions and dandelions and shit, and the tedium of doing the girly romantic ones at school. Even worse are people who think writing down their inane thoughts with no rhymes or structure is brilliant ‘free verse’. AI is going to have no problem replicating most of this stuff. If anything it’ll be a boom time for poetry. Poetry lovers – both of them – can probably get ChatGPT to knock up a million poems in the next five seconds.

Restaurant hosts
No longer will checking into a fancy restaurant involve being looked up and down by a 23-year-old in size 6 jeans who’s clearly never eaten any of the food being served in her pricey establishment. AI can let you check yourself into the restaurant, tell you what table to go to in advance and probably choose your meal for you. Although AI has no idea what food is and glitches badly sometimes, so you may find yourself asking if the chef can prepare a sheet of A4 paper on a bed of moss.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Work? Experience?

The nation’s employers have been deluged with a torrent of teenagers on work experience who do not know how to do the most basic of tasks.

Britain’s shops, offices and leisure centres are inundated by 15- to 17-year-olds who are there to learn about the working world and are doing so by sitting in a corner on their phones.

Jim Bates, manager of a dry ski slope, said: “I understand why we’re doing this in theory. It’s just in practice that it has no function whatsoever.

“I’ve taken on three teens who it appears believed they would get to ski about for free all day, and instead are resentfully handing out the wrong size boots or not grasping the principles of sweeping up. I’m just not sure who this helps?”

Customer Lucy Parry said: “It’s infuriating. These kids, recovering from months of high-pressure exams, should really be much better at carrying out tasks they’ve received minimal training for.

“If I were them I’d be skipping towards a week in a menial position they’re not being paid for. But instead they’re awkwardly loitering around the place and communicating in monosyllabic grunts. That’s a privilege you have to earn.

“The sooner they fuck off to university and I can complain about them being woke and getting pissed all the time, the better.”

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Harder, Faster, Stronger

I am on day #1 of three days of training for work. Groo!

To help me through the tedium, here's a little something that I have loved for years:

Pentatonix - Daft Punk medley

Wish me luck!

Perception-based incremental upshifts

A woman given a new role and job title is unsure whether she is being recognised for her outstanding work or treated like a prize twat.

Senior assistant accounts executive Joanna Kramer was advised on Friday that she was now accounts executive sub-team leader and spent the weekend celebrating by drinking the same amount of alcohol she usually would.

She said: “I assumed it was a promotion. It kind of had a promotion vibe, though looking back that may just have been the exhilaration of it being Friday afternoon.

“However, now I’m here, I’m at a different desk doing the same work with the same people for a package of what I now see are ‘comparative pay and bonuses’. Leaving me feeling uncomfortably like I’m the dickhead.

“I asked my boss if I’m just doing exactly the same job with a new name and she replied that my role now begins with account executive rather than ending with it, and perception-based incremental upshifts are very in right now.

“So either I’m climbing the corporate ladder rung-by-rung or I’m an easily placated knobhead stuck in a dead-end job. I don’t know whether to be elated or fucking livid.

“Either way I’m doing piss all work while I try to work it out.”

The Daily Mash

Of course.

[Oh, yes! Yet another "restructure/consultation" is hovering over all our heads in work. Deep joy. Again.]

Knuckle down and eat shit

Boss asking 'Where do you see yourself in five years?' hoping to hear 'doing more work for less money'

A boss is hoping that his employee’s five year plan aligns with his own vision of an increased workload for decreased compensation.

Managing director Norman Steele is working on his team’s personal development plans and would like to see them be realistic and embrace a future of doing the work of three people for the pay of one.

He said: “I’ve had enough dreamers through these doors with their ‘I’d like to be head of department’ when there’s no budget for that.

“So we’ll have no ‘ready to take on a leadership role’ or ‘develop skills that align with our corporate mission’. We need them to knuckle down and eat shit for the foreseeable.

“It would be music to my ears if Ellie’s vision of the future was taking a pay cut, working through lunch every day, and picking up Sandra’s duties when she goes on maternity leave. That’s what I look for in an employee.

“If she’s ready to piss away the next half-decade in a dead-end job while ignoring the symptoms of burnout, I’m here for her. We’ll draw up a roadmap and hit those goals together. Failing that we’ll lose her in the restructure and hire a younger, cheaper drone.”

Ellie Shaw said: “I’m drowning in work, hate my colleagues and I’m struggling to pay rent. But five years of job security? Where do I sign?”

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Back from a fantasy

Aaaaaargh!!!

Holiday is over...

Soul II Soul - Back To Life (However Do You Want Me)

Back to life, back to reality
Back to life, back to reality
Back to life, back to reality
Back to the here and now, oh yeah

Show me how
Decide what you want from me
Tell me maybe I could be there for you

However, do you want me?
However, do you need me? How
However, do you want me?
However, do you need me?
However, do you want me?
However, do you need me? How (however)
However, do you want me?
However, do you need me?

Back to life
Back to the present time
Back from a fantasy, yes
Tell me now, take the initiative
I'll leave it in your hands
Until you're ready, yeah

Have a good week, dear reader. I won't.

Incompatible with working

The time is now exactly "knock off work and drink five delicious pints in a beer garden o’clock", scientists have confirmed.

With temperatures soaring to levels incompatible with working, senior and genuine scientists have agreed it is imperative that you put your out-of-office on and head to the nearest pub for several refreshing pints in the sun.

Professor Henry Brubaker, of the Institute for Studies, said: “Just as the hands of the Doomsday Clock inch ever closer to an apocalyptic midnight, the heatwave has finally nudged drinking time to midday piss-ups. Enjoy.

“We’re long past staying hydrated by drinking water. Even the lightweight’s Pimm’s o’clock is in the past. The mercury hits 30C today which officially heralds the start of Greenwich Steamed By 3pm Time.

“Don’t worry about falling behind with your work or getting rumbled by your boss. They’ve already installed themselves outside Wetherspoons and are knocking back pitchers of Candy Rosá.

“Follow their example by quintuple parking yourself with ice-cold lager. Avoid salty crisps. They’ll only make you more thirsty which is dangerous in this heat. Far better to drink on an empty stomach.”

Drinker Martin Bishop said: “See, science gets a bad rap with that climate change shite, but it can be useful.”

I wish...

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Every paperclip was precious

Generation Z colleagues not taking their job seriously? Sit down and terrify them with tales of a primitive time when the working conditions were as antiquated as the haircuts:

The reliance on fax machines
You think the photocopier’s insanely large and impossible to reload? Once we had a device called the fax machine, the Satanic spawn of a cantankerous printer and a vengeful, screeching demon trapped in a landline. Everything important had to be sent over the unreliable monster including your timesheet. Sent it wrong? No money for you.

Endless paper
Where do arriving faxes go? Your in-tray. And once you’ve laboriously entered their data? Your out-tray. What about the ones that are a bit hard? Someone else’s desk. Where does this leave your working environment? As choked with paper as the scene in Harry Potter where a million letters come down the chimney.

Cubicle servitude
Hot desking is the modern hell, but being fenced in with furry corkboards was a more taunting torture. No amount of faded family photographs pinned to these barriers could replace the longing for the world outside or stop hours dreaming of the scent of grass, the feel of sunshine, the memory of any colour other than grey.

Tippex was real
Amending a form? There’s no delete in this world. Instead, open yourself up to a lifetime of substance abuse by cracking open the potent biohazard called Tipp-ex. Nearly the worst of all the white liquids, it fixed imperfectly, took too long to dry and made it look like a pigeon had shat on your suit. But combined with a photocopier made forgery easy.

No personal phone use
Not your mobile phone, they didn’t exist. The phone that sat on your desk all day, that you spent all day making calls from, was as closely monitored for personal calls as your internet is today. Make one quick call to your bank and you’d be given a verbal warning and made to pay back 45p.

Territorial stationery wars
In the bygone land of analogue, every paperclip was precious. Feeling emotionally attached to a specific stapler was normal, as was the need to label your own personal hole punch and stroke it lovingly. Until one morning you came back and it was all gone, raided and scattered across a floor’s worth of desks and you never trusted again.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Reading material

I'm on a "study day" for work today.

Believe me, the subjects I'm studying are not nearly as interesting as hers...

Blathering on

Workplace safety assessments are finding that the main occupational hazard facing Britons is being around twats all day.

Factors such as noise, stress, long days and dangerous conditions are all minor compared to the risk of spending up to 40 hours a week in the company of total arseholes, it has emerged.

Mary Fisher, of the Health and Safety Executive, said: “You can set up your monitor at eye level, you can get your chair adjusted, you can lift heavy objects by bending at the knee. It won’t make any difference if you’re surrounded by knobheads.

“You get a headache and back pain by 1pm every day because you have to listen to idiots standing in the kitchen blathering on about whatever idiot shit they did this weekend. Some of them have the temerity to be your boss.

“Rip asbestos out with your teeth, type a 100,000-word report with your nose an inch from the screen, lick receipt paper, stick your arm in a wood chipper - none of it is anywhere near as damaging as close proximity to a bellend who calls Friday ‘Fri-yay’.

“Even working from home means incessant emails and Zoom meetings with wankers promising to download the latest 'key learnings'. You’ll never reach retirement.”

Marketing manager Helen Archer said: “On the other hand I am a twat, and I find inflicting that on everyone else intensely relaxing.”

The Daily Mash

Of course.

We are always here for you

Human Resources want to fully exploit their humans as a resource and for them to be happy about it. These are the contradictory messages you will get this week:

Return to the office full-time and give your work-life balance a thumbs-up
The CEO has had enough. Return to the office five days a week or face disciplinary action. And when back at your desk, on time because you’re not lying on your sofa now, can you complete this employee engagement survey glowingly? We’ll bludgeon you with emails about something called a ‘net promoter score’ until you do.

We really care about your wellbeing, work harder or else
Take regular breaks and look after your mental health because we really care about you as an individual, as long as it doesn’t impinge on a moment of your working hours. We have aggressive quarterly targets to hit. You can manage your so-called wellness on a Sunday, like Victorian mill workers.

Bond as a team over drinks but do not bond too much or get drunk
Effective teams work, rest and play together in an atmosphere of psychological safety. Alcohol is provided at work events but if you fail to draw the line at exactly the right point – before getting your cock out – you will be fired. Enjoy negotiating all that while shitfaced.

We are always here for you and never contact us directly
We are dedicated to meeting your needs, it is the reason we exist, and we refuse to directly interact with you. Emails will not be answered. Our phone number is for senior managers only. To report a serious grievance or get answers to crucial legal questions, complete our intranet form with a ten-day response time.

We’re dedicated to your personal improvement and here’s your devastatingly low performance rating
Requires Development may seem like a punch in the stomach, given all your unpaid overtime while your mum was ill, but we are laser-focused on bringing you to your full potential. Your Performance Improvement Plan certainly isn’t the beginning of manoeuvring you out of the business without paying notice. That would make us monsters.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Smells, soggy bums and manky toes

Office workers struggle through the depths of winter every year, hoping to be rewarded by summer. But the heat brings its own ordeals:

Identifying co-workers by smell
You don’t know the name of the new guy that sits behind you, but you could pick him out of a line-up based on B.O. alone. Be advised: if you hear him start talking about getting back into cycling to work, you are legally entitled to go on extended medical leave.

Fighting about fans
One person’s too hot, one’s too cold, one hates the noise, one needs the socket for their laptop charger. The ensuing bickering will create an unpleasant atmosphere until the end of September. And if the office has air-conditioning, some twat will always insist it’s set to freezing. It’s one of nature’s laws.

Watching the life cycle of a colleague’s sunburn
If they want to singe the skin off their arms and legs every weekend, it could be argued that it’s entirely their business. However, when you’re the one that has to watch it crust over, flake off, and get all over your desk when they come by for a chat, it feels like you are very closely involved as well.

Hearing about wanky family holidays
You had to put up with your line manager’s smug out-of-office for a fortnight, and your reward is to nod along to their anecdote about one of their many interchangeable offspring being a ‘natural’ at windsurfing for the millionth time. Which is annoying, especially as you can only afford a long weekend in Barnstaple this year.

Hearing your boss’ arse peel off her chair
A two-fold torture experience. Firstly, it’s made you picture just how sweaty her arse is. Even worse, it’s made you realise how soggy your own bum is, and worry about the noise that will be produced when you eventually have to stand up.

Seeing manky toes
Middle-aged men need to learn that only their closest family should be forced to witness them in sandals. Also, why has wearing shorts to the office become acceptable? Their pale bony ankles are almost as horrifying as their disgusting feet.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Thought for the Day

My job would be so much better if I didn't have to deal with people.

Nobody had done any prep, nobody wanted to be there and it was close to being entirely unproductive

Attendees at a business meeting have confirmed all the actual decisions were made in the final fifteen seconds before everyone stood up to leave.

The meeting, titled ‘Q2 Budget Review’, began at 10am and the initial two hours were wasted getting drinks, watching an uninformative PowerPoint, and sharing gossip about anyone not in attendance.

Marketing head Carolyn Ryan said: “It was a traditional business meeting in that nobody had done any prep, nobody wanted to be there and it was close to being entirely unproductive.

“We lost fifteen minutes early on because we’d changed rooms and Nathan had missed the email, then Lindsey had to go and get two more chairs, then I needed coffee but there weren’t any mugs in the kitchen so I had to go down to the fifth floor.

“When I got back Richard was halfway through a story about his mum being ill so we couldn’t just move on to the actual topic of the meeting without being heartless bastards. Katie did a PowerPoint that had fuck all to do with anything, then we had biscuits.

“Suddenly it was lunchtime, there were people banging on the doors for their meeting, and so we agreed we’ll go for a 7.5 per cent budget increase weighted toward last year’s results and review in April in line with the strategy statement. Then got our mugs and left.

“It was so productive that Damien’s booked in a follow-up next week.”

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Now you have an insight, dear reader, into a typical day in my office...

An American called Chad telling you about GDPR

Do your workplace’s obligatory online training modules make you want to smash your monitor with your coffee mug in frustration? Survive them with this handy guide.

Engage the least possible amount of brain
Don’t read any of the text and click through as quickly as you can. Amazingly, you’ll probably still manage to answer incredibly tough questions like: ‘Should you ask your line manager if you don’t understand something?’ or ‘You punch Tom from marketing in the face. Is this acceptable?’

Do it at the last minute
Your boss has been getting supercilious reminders from HR that only 50 per cent of her team have done the training two days before the deadline, so stress them all out by leaving it until 17.29 on Friday. It’s all about the small victories.

Find the colleague responsible and take them hostage
Calmly advise security that you are happy to release Martin from compliance with all his fingers still attached as soon as managers have clicked on four jigsaw puzzle-shaped pieces, and dragged them to a corresponding box to learn more about teamwork. It’s such an effective way to gain knowledge you’re surprised the world’s leading universities don’t do it.

Jump out of the window
It may take time to find an actual opening window in the hermetically sealed box that is your office building, possibly designed this way to prevent staff escaping. However, several broken limbs is still better than clicking on and reading about five items that could be a risk to workplace security.

Refuse to do it
Yes, you’ll end up getting fired, sleeping in a bus shelter and using a nearby bin as your toilet, but at least you won’t ever have to watch a clip of an American called Chad telling you about GDPR.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

It's January. Bored senior managers with nothing else to do are "ticking those boxes" again...

Sigh.

Thought for the Day

Back to the grind today, dear reader...

Working hard is the worst mistake

Working hard is the worst mistake anyone planning a successful career can make, research has revealed.

Getting your head down and really grafting is more damaging to your career prospects than absenteeism, incompetence, sexual harrassment or fistfighting colleagues in an open-plan office, according to new work by the Institute for Studies.

Professor Henry Brubaker explained: “Progressing through the ranks has no connection to hard work. It’s about networking, Powerpoint panache and constantly broadcasting your achievements.

“Anyone actually working has no time for any of that, because they’re too busy doing everyone else’s work. Consequently they go unnoticed and unrewarded. The fools.”

Chief operating officer Nathan Muir said: “I used to do actual work but then decided I’d have six months off and hang around agreeing with my superiors instead. They haven’t stopped promoting me since.

“It’s all perfectly fair. I even had an interview for this job, though my boss assured me over a sneaky pint that it was a done deal and that we were just doing it to keep HR happy."

Employee Emma Bradford said: “I work diligently and trust that the results will speak for themselves. Then Nathan says he did it.”

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Think hard about whether it’s ever worth interrupting me before coming to the conclusion: no

Workplaces frown on negativity, foul language and cracking your co-workers’ skulls against their desks. Use these acceptable alternatives:

‘There could be something worth exploring there’
A phrase silently followed by the word ‘but’. As in: ‘There could be something worth exploring there, but right now we’re focusing on solutions actually possible in this fucking universe, thanks, dickhead.’

‘Did this suffer some sort of glitch?’
I know there wasn’t a glitch. You know there wasn’t a glitch. But I’m asking you to apologise for the shitstain of a piece of work you just delivered to me, and go fix it. And, for no other reason than I’m forced to. I’m doing it nicely.

‘No worries’
You may have no worries, crashing through life like a bull with no idea what constitutes a sentence and poor formatting skills, but I fucking do. Stay out of the way while I clean up your bullshit. And your line spacing.

‘As per my last email’
How dare you fucking email me at all, let alone with something I already fucking said? Go learn to read, learn again, go over my every communication character by character then think hard about whether it’s ever worth interrupting me before coming to the conclusion: no.

‘Please see the forwarded email below’
An escalation from the above, after you managed to somehow believe you were still in the right and yet again stomped into my inbox. Piss off, delete your email account, never turn on a computer again.

‘Is this urgent, or can we pick this up in the morning?’
Calm. The fuck. Down. You may have some sick belief that staying in the office past 6pm is a good way to spend your time, but don’t rope me into your twisted fantasy.

‘Let’s push that meeting back until we’ve met a milestone’
I’ve thought long and hard about how I would kill you.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

I'm heading to the office again today...