On The Job

ON THE JOB

Stories of people at work

Roger Monk

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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On The Job

Copyright © 2011 Roger Monk

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The information, views, opinions and visuals expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of the publisher. The publisher disclaims any liabilities or responsibilities whatsoever for any damages, libel or liabilities arising directly or indirectly from the contents of this publication.

A copy of this publication can be found in the National Library of Australia.

ISBN:  978-1-742841-52-6 (pbk.)

Published by Book Pal

www.bookpal.com.au

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Roger Monk was born in Adelaide and grew up on the Yorke Peninsula and Lower North of South Australia. He spent a number of years in banking, latterly as bank secretary; five years in the automotive manufacturing industry and 25 years at the University of South Australia specialising in managerial and organisational behaviour and the psychological implications of business practices, and as a supervisor of Honours and Ph.D. students. He is at present working with tertiary students with Aspergers syndrome problems. He holds a BA, a Masters degree in Organisational Behaviour, an MBA and a Ph.D. in Human and Organisational Psychology, and is a Fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia. He has done substantial overseas research, lectured extensively in Hong Kong and Singapore and has worked at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Cornell University. He is the author of numerous papers on aspects of organisational behaviour and organisational psychology, and is the author of the McGraw-Hill published book, Just Managing.

Roger Monk lives in the foothills above Adelaide with his wife, Valerie, a registered nurse, and enjoys writing, reading biographies and murder mysteries, gardening and fishing. He has grown and made his own dry Eden Valley Riesling at their property in the Barossa hills.

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ON THE JOB

Stories of people at work

- for Valerie Joy

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PREFACE

There is at least one story per person in every office, factory, farm, clinic, shop, educational institution or other workplace.

Each story involves a human being either actually at work, appearing to be at work or endeavouring to maintain a work position whilst living with a disruptive personal problem emanating either from within themselves, from illness, from home interference, from their boss or from fellow workers. How they meet or attempt to meet the personal challenges placed in their paths is the story.

Given a sprinkle of exaggeration, or its opposite, understatement when the full truth would not be believed, most of the stories in this book are based on true 'at work' situations. However, all the characters are fictitious, and any resemblance to living persons or to any organisation is purely coincidental - even though you may be absolutely convinced that you have worked with or in one or more of them. You probably have.

Many of the people in these stories are ordinary, fairly reasonable folk, but as there is no such thing as a 'normal' person, they are all a tad different or slightly odd, and isn't that most of us? Many are a little idiosyncratic; some have real problems and a few should receive immediate professional assistance. They all work, or are in a work situation - and the two are not synonymous.

You may have met a few of them, even though you are not one of them yourself, are you.

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Contents

THE BIMBO

ONE MAN'S MEAT

IT ALL BEGAN

CUBE CASTLE

PARROTT FASHION

THE LOST ACCORD

RANK AND FILE

MAID IN HONG KONG

SANKA

THE LAST MINUTE MANAGER

SPUD

CLENE, SWEEP & JUSTIN TYME

BORN AGAIN

HANKER'S MUSE

AUNT SALLY

TWELVE THOUSAND

GUESS WHERE I'VE BEEN

FIRE AND BRIMSTONE

THE SELF-FULFILLING FORECAST

MANAGEMENT BY MEETINGS

SABOTAGE

THE MOLE WHO MOVED

FEEDBACK

NOR FOUL FIEND

THE PROFESSIONAL APPRENTICE

DOWN, DOWN, RIGHT DOWN

STUCK

ON THE JOB

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THE BIMBO

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THE BIMBO

When the Big Bang spat itself into space and began exploring the void and a couple of the meanings of the word null, a small batch of certain minerals and newly formed metallic elements accidentally stuck together for about two billion years, without deliberately intending to do so, and together ended up in a certain spot at a certain time in space.

Over two billion years later, Finn Aaksen, a Norwegian tourist of no fixed Australian abode went off the road a few kilometres south of the Northern Territory - South Australian border. So enjoyable had been his long, solitary, semi-liquid lunch on the side of the road that he hardly noticed the bump as his hire car left the highway and wandered away to the right, his foot still firmly planted on the accelerator. The landscape was not one to entice his car to misbehave, being rather flat except for a few low mounds and much open space sparsely covered with very tough, low bushes, but it had no choice. In fact, it wasn't until one particularly high mound slanted the car to one side and dislodged his foot that it was able to shudder and lurch to a rather metallically-noisy stop.

The sound of his vehicle in distress was sufficient to drag Aaksen to consciousness, and he started up and looked around. What had happened? Where the hell was he? For as far as he could see, there wasn't a sign anywhere of what we refer to as civilisation. Nothing except the previously mentioned low mounds, flat spaces and low bushes, going on forever in all directions.

For once in his rather eccentric life, Aaksen did the right thing: he stayed with his car. And a couple of days later they found him, thanks to a little GPS gadget attached to the vehicle by the hire car owner that gave the exact location. The local cop, a hundred or so kilometres away, discovered him before dehydration had taken very much of a toll, and the next day the local garage sent out a mechanic.

But Aaksen hadn't just sat there, twiddling his thumbs for two days. Not having much else to do once the shiraz had run out, he spent most of the daylight hours wandering around a radius of a few hundred metres from the car, looking very carefully at the ground and picking at it with a stick he had broken off one of the few low trees in the area. Unbelievably, that boring, flat, red dirt interested him greatly. Well, not so much the dirt, but what was embedded in it. How he yearned for a spade or a fork, or even a bulldozer!

Aaksen returned to Alice Springs, the source of his extremely helpful lunch, and flew down to Adelaide as fast as the airline would let him. Not that there was any real need to hurry; that part of the world had been lying there for quite a long time, uninterrupted. But he was very excited about something and wanted to positively locate its exact whereabouts and to register his interest in it with the Powers-That-Be, admirably controlling his impatience while he did so. And he wasn't only interested in that two or three hundred square metres he'd walked around: he coloured in over ten square kilometres with the red pencil they lent him.

From Adelaide he flew to Melbourne, and from there to Norway via New York and London. In each city, he held discussions with certain people who either knew him or of him. After a few days' R&R at his home on the outskirts of Oslo, he flew to Delhi where he met some of those same people and three prosperous looking Indian gentlemen, and they and he then flew south. The curious sight of about twenty people in overalls and floppy hats of various shades and designs, poking around those ten square kilometres was noticed only by a handful of sheep and a solitary kangaroo, but the outcome of their earnest endeavours was the sight of many more people and some very large machinery on the site within about eighteen months.

By that time, of course, the newspapers had glimpsed a story and that piece of red dirt became even more popular - until they built a high, wire fence around it. Finn Aaksen, the eminent although relatively young Scandinavian geologist suddenly became as well known in Australia as he was in the northern hemisphere, surprising many local interested parties and radio announcers who had never heard of him and weren't quite sure about his surname. His previous 'accidental' successes became equally well known, and the road from Marla to the border grew in popularity. Yes, Aaksen had done it again!

It was eventually decided that the new company's head office should be in Adelaide, much to the incredulity and hollow laughter of both Melbourne (second choice) and Sydney (which just couldn't believe that anywhere else in Australia actually existed). Adelaide was the obvious choice because it was the nearest city to the action and because it was cheaper to buy and build in that city. An American architect was hired to design the company's head office building - providing it wasn't in green glass - and two non-heritage buildings on Greenhill Road were razed to the ground.

Finn Aaksen himself stayed in the background, as he always did once the discovery had been made and he had ensured that he was written into the contracts in excellent financial terms. He was quite happy to spend some of his time watching the huge earth-moving machinery working the expanding hole near 'Aaksen', the newly named site that was rapidly becoming a town with all amenities, and sifting through the lode samples to gauge their composition and density. Besides, he was also busy looking for another accidental success to add to his growing stable of holes in the ground, and spent time every day staring at seemingly vacant lumps of land on his maps of South America. As far as he was concerned, someone else could do the dirty work of company building from now on, but he would return, he promised them, for the opening of Aaksen House.

Some people are grateful to their parents for the names they were given but many are not, and Twirlybird Jackson is certainly one of the latter.

Her mother has a vague notion that soon after she had given birth to her one and only at the age of eighteen, she had seen one of those eye-catching wire-suspended butterfly or bird mobiles hovering over someone else's baby's cot and had got the name from there, but she wasn't at all sure. For most of her adult life, she hasn't been very sure about most things, including how she managed to acquire a baby when physical activity has always been at an all-time low. Life has usually been one confused blur of alcohol, white powder and staring into space, and has remained that way, width a few short exceptions, for most of the years before and after Twirlybird's arrival. In fact, when actually able to concentrate, she has been quite amazed to find that she had stopped sniffing and binging for long enough to, somehow, keep the child alive, especially after a death-cheating, prolonged experiment with a series of hypodermics some months after childbirth.

Twirlybird herself was equally amazed but not particularly grateful. She reluctantly forgave her mother for not having more than a vague idea who her father was, and by the time she was entering puberty she had come to grips with the fact that her mother had had a rather rocky and elongated adolescence and had no idea who her own father was, either. But to this day Twirlybird has had great difficulty believing that she is someone named Twirlybird Jackson. She has considered having it changed on a number of occasions, but the consideration always ends up with her having an argument with herself, and losing. There just doesn't seem to be a name that is right for her, from Abbie to Zara, and slowly but surely she is unconsciously coming to the realisation that she was meant to be Twirlybird and that her mother had, for once, got something right.

Ms Jackson's academic career was equally astonishing, considering her pedigree. Without any assistance whatsoever she flashed through her primary and secondary education, walked into a job in a fast-food restaurant and took economics and law at university, doing so well that she was strongly encouraged to apply to Harvard for its crème de la crème MBA course. Not having anywhere near enough money to finance herself, she also applied for a scholarship and found herself in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the early Fall of the following year.

Harvard University and Twirlybird Jackson just loved each other. So much so that she felt that she had at last found her real parents in the brown-grey buildings, the lawns, the faculty professors, the chapel ... everything. She metaphorically hugged them all, every day. She got on quite well with her fellow students, although keeping to herself most of the time, and not one of them ever raised an eyebrow when they heard her name. Some of their names were equally different. She sailed through the degree and, swallowing hard, set her sights on a doctorate, finally deciding to dig and delve into some (to her) fascinating developments in mining economics.

Seven years went by as though in a day, but eventually, Dr Jackson realised that she had to leave the comfortable world of tutoring and to go out into the real world and earn a real living. Life had been good, and she assumed that it would continue to be good, but she had overlooked one thing. She was beautiful.

Not just beautiful, but beautifully beautiful. So perfectly smooth of face that no painter with brush and daub could ever capture it. In colour, texture and form, Twirlybird was absolutely exquisite, her face a mask of perfection framed by extremely blond hair. Almost too absolute to be genuine. So much so that, although she had got on with her fellow students and faculty, not once had any of the men tried to flirt with her or to pursue her in any way. It was as though she was too lovely to be loved; too flawless to be real. Hers was a face without character, without interesting blemish or intriguing personality. When the boys called Hi, Doll, they meant it.

Those bright young men, tomorrow's leaders, instinctively saw Twirlybird as an empty-headed bimbo because she looked as an empty-headed bimbo was presumed to look. Beauty equalled brainless in their minds, even though they knew, if they really thought about it, that she was as bright as they were. Their eyes contradicted their brains and won the argument. She must be a bimbo and was therefore of no interest to them. They had no intention of spending the rest of their ladder-climbing, power and fame striving lives shackled to what everyone would assume to be a bone-headed bimbo.

Planning her removal from Harvard, Twirlybird felt herself drawn to two quite logical manoeuvres: to leave North America altogether to return to Australia, and to look for a job in her area of expertise, mining economics. She wasn't homesick in the usually accepted form, having no idea where her mother was living, but she did feel that her homeland was calling her back; more a home-calling than an aching heart, and she knew from her reading that Australia was mineral rich and actively mining, and she felt excited about that.

During the following long summer break, Twirlybird Jackson packed her bags, said her goodbyes and took a flight across America to San Francisco, suddenly realising as she looked down at the earth, far below, that so intense and all consuming had been her studies that she had totally overlooked exploratory holidays of any kind. In fact, she hadn't left Massachusetts for even one day during those years and she hadn't involved herself in any of the usual student activities on or off campus. Not for her the marching for a cause; not for her the rowdy parties or weekend excursions. She knew little more about the people of her host nation than before she had arrived. She mentally shrugged and opened her newly arrived copy of the Financial Review; days late, but that didn't matter. This was what she needed to know about - wanted to know about.

Upon her arrival in Melbourne, Dr Twirlybird Jackson booked herself into the Parkside International and flicked through the room's phonebook.

Quite a few Jacksons, but not one with her mother's initials. She shrugged. Perhaps not even still alive, although she wouldn't be much more than in her mid-forties. Perhaps moved to the country or interstate, although highly unlikely; her mother rarely moved anything or anywhere at all. Probably just hadn't bothered to get a 'phone. She shrugged again and went for a walk. Somehow, the air smelled different, cool and clear, and the bare trees told her that this was winter 'down under' - a phrase she hated as a double negative but apt right then. She bought an Australian and an up-to-date Financial Review and walked back to the hotel, trying to read as she went.

Karl Hutchins, Financial Services Director for the Tantine-Ross Corporation stood up as she was announced, smiled automatically and mentally dismissed her before she had sat down. Damn it all, he thought, here it was, just after nine on a Monday morning and he hadn't had his coffee yet. What the hell was wrong with them down at the Enquiries counter? This is a mining company, not a burlesque show! But he politely appeared to listen while she explained herself, nodding once or twice. How long could he keep this up? He had work to do! He decided to give her five minutes and then send her down to Human Resources; they'll probably be able to find her a job somewhere - if she's any good at all. He appeared to write down something she'd said, but all it read was 'Talk to Enquiries.' And he did, straight after giving her directions for the HR department.

Human Resources very politely told her what Hutchins had thought, but without actually suggesting a dancing or modelling alternative. They had positions in two clerical departments where she may find filing and computer recording a satisfying career, but what she was suggesting was quite specialised and out of their province. And they rather hoped that she wouldn't try to gain an interview with the Director as he was up on the North-West fields and the company aircraft only flew up there twice a week and was for their experts only. The farewell was not lengthy and the whole department heard the door bang shut.

At the Australasian Mining Federation office, Craig Masters sighed, twice. Not another one, he thought. God almighty, the merest smell of money and they all come running, dollar signs in their eyes. Suddenly, they all want to get into mining!

She looks like a what? Oh, for God's sake, that's all we need! No, definitely not! No, I won't see her. Not another one! Not another one!

And at the Victorian office of Mountain Ridge Pty Ltd she was told in no uncertain terms that a career in Marketing would be right up her street, although she'd have to start at the bottom, of course. They had even called her 'Miss', completely ignoring the 'Doctor' as though she'd made it up to make herself look important.

With tears in her eyes, Dr Jackson stepped out into Philip Street and looked around. What was she to do? Where could she go from here? No one was taking her seriously! Why not? What was wrong with her? She wandered along the pavement, deeply inside herself. All her hopes and plans had come crashing around her. She passed a street-level window and looked in at her slightly distorted figure. No changes as far as she could see. The same person, perhaps slightly more mature, who had been accepted without question by the famous and very fastidious Harvard. And she was wearing her very best and brightest rainbow skirt with top to match, which should have caught the eye of even the most jaded executive. A passer-by grinned as he caught her looking side-on in the window and she turned the other way and walked on.

Her money would soon run out. Should she fly to Sydney and try the mining houses there, or should she just grab any old job here in Melbourne? A less expensive hotel? But a good address was important.

She sat on the bed and flicked through the newspapers, not really concentrating ... just looking. And what was that? It had caught her eye on the previous page, just as she had turned it over. Couldn't have been very important - towards the back of the paper. Back a page ... and a good example of importance being in the eye of the beholder. A small announcement of something important to some: Grand Opening of Aaksen House in Adelaide on the following Tuesday!

Twirlybird had read something of this Finn Aaksen's discovery up near the Northern Territory border, and had followed it as a matter of interest only. Too early to need a mining economist or even someone remotely like that? Surely not! Within half an hour she had made up her mind and the trip to Sydney was off, at least for the time being. She went out and bought a ticket to Adelaide for the next Monday afternoon, feeling the very first tingling of something which could be interpreted as excitement. This was a brand new company doing something adventurous! But she mustn't get her hopes up and spoil everything. She dug into her file of cuttings and Google pages, reading everything she had on the Aaksen find, little as it was. The Monday would take a long time coming.

The first thing she noticed was the smell: the smell of new. Different from the smell of a new car or a new dress, but certainly new. And impressive, too, in stone and brick rather than glass which took twice as much air conditioning to keep cool. Four stories of Aaksen House on Greenhill Road, just down from the motel to which she was recommended. The foyer was spacious, and people were just starting to wander in, looking around like kids at a new school, vacantly gazing. She'd deliberately arrived early so she didn't miss the tour that was promised before the actual opening ceremony - and the drinks and nibbles, of course, - but mainly to get a feel for the company, young as it was, and to perhaps meet one or two who could help her.

The guests, with stick-on tags, and the interested or just plain nosy, were not all from South Australia; in fact, it became obvious as the foyer filled that the majority were from interstate. The man from Mountain Ridge was there with a young woman who could have been his assistant, as was the man from the Australasian Mining Federation who had rung Craig Masters for her, and Karl Hutchins of Tantine-Ross with a support team of three. All three noticed Twirlybird at different times, and all three took a second glance while trying to remember where they'd seen her before. No HR people, as far as she could tell: this was a mining gathering, pure and simple, and no one was interested in recruitment - unless you were happy to distinguish it by calling it head hunting. The group of Indian financiers was there, talking quietly together, and she was surprised to find that she could distinguish between the British delegation, the American specialists and the two Scandinavian associates of Finn Aaksen, not only from their suits but from what she called 'the look of them'. This would have been fun, she thought, if only she wasn't so desperate for a really good position with the company.

A man standing on the bottom stair called for attention, finally given, and small tour groups went off in different directions, smiling jovially as they ran into each other on different floors. Twirlybird was impressed: a great deal of money had been well spent on fittings and furnishings, and the floor and basement especially set aside for mineral research and investigation were extremely well prepared and presented. Obviously, she thought, the company was absolutely convinced that it was preparing for a very prosperous future.

As if by magic, all the groups met again in the Board Room on the top floor at almost the same time. Waiters in the new company livery moved around with Pol Roger, two single malts and the local Eden Valley Riesling, and the new Chairman, Geoffrey Lovelock AO, banker and chair of at least two other Sydney companies, called for order. There was almost