One of the greatest benefits of this recession, apart from a noticeable reduction in the interfering HR department, is the curtailment of the corporate entertainment budget. Memories of getting repeatedly and painfully paintballed by athletic office juniors are starting to fade, although I have kept up the therapy sessions in fear of a relapse.
Worse still were the teambuilding events held on assault courses, where I always got paired with the least nimble, most famine-resistant colleagues. The predictable last place was worsened by being continually shouted at by faux ex-military types with washable transfer tattoos and army surplus battle smocks.
Normally, I go to town on this particular type of man. They invariably live with their mothers and wear corsets and body armour to alter their dimensions. Furthermore, they exhibit an unfounded hatred for 'civvies', as if this bolsters their commando self image. In contrast, some of the most dangerous real soldiers I know would sooner cross-dress then wander about in fatigues: normally their only distinguishing feature is an insistence on using 24-hour clock times or peppering normal speech with army slang such as "NAAFI" or "khazi".
Last month, we did something different, when we mustered most of the overseas team and invaded Germany for three days on the Nürburgring race circuit. This proved to be a roaring success, partly because there was considerably less physical pain involved, and partly because, for the first time, I had a chance of winning.
We know each other reasonably well and have a pretty good idea of who would thrive with certain challenges. Some of my colleagues are gym enthusiasts and win at assault courses, others have Scottish origins and triumph in drinking contests, while one is vegetarian and a world-class performer when it comes to flatulence. For once, however, we had no clue who would come out on top, which made it all the more interesting.
The COO has a Bentley, which was certainly the most powerful car, but we all know he drives like a pensioner. My counterpart, who deals with the Far East, procured a classic Porsche 911 Turbo, so we were certain he would crash. Most money was put on both me in my tweaked Subaru, and an Audi RS4-wielding senior account manager.
Alas, the latter cheated somehow, and as a result I am adding RS4-driving account managers to the same list as GI Joe pretenders. The HR department owes me one, too, so maybe someone will get redeployed somewhere sunny to sell our enterprise-level computer equipment, such as the Sahara desert. I'm pretty sure that's an untapped market in more ways than one.
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