‘So they want us to use a particular font of a particular size and a particular colour for our email signatures?’[1]

‘Yep’

‘And there’s no corporate stationery or template for this?’

‘Nope, you make your own.’

‘I see.’ I think it over, devoting a whole nanosecond to the process, which still seems rather too much in view of the subject matter. I deliver my judgment.

‘And when, collectively, we blow it out of our arses, do they want it to be a particular fragrance?’

Ok, not exactly constructive, I’ll give you that, but when the boat’s sinking, you don’t call in the painters and decorators do you? We aren’t meeting our targets and why? Because management is fiddling with the curtains when they should be checking out the dry rot. Each time a target is missed, instead of finding out why that happened, they simply beat everyone over the head with a big stick, threaten to name and shame poor performers and delete a whole band of jobs. The upshot? You guessed – the people who were doing one job and failing to meet targets are now doing two, one of which they didn’t apply for, have no skills in and don’t understand. So what happens? Right again. Even more targets get missed, another round of deletions ensues and suddenly everyone is doing three jobs, only one of which they have a now fading grasp upon.

Meanwhile, somebody with no important nail varnishing or nose hair removal scheduled, has got the hump about email signatures that show a spark of originality, and you’d think it is a form of insurgency given the attention it’s receiving.

I examine my signature: wrong font, wrong size, wrong colour. Perfect.

[1] This could apply to almost any corporate body, any time, anywhere. It didn’t.

From Not Being First Fish by P Spencer-Beck.  Available from Amazon (non-illustrated edition). Second edition (illustrated) due 2018.