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Book: Life... With No Breaks (A laugh-out-loud comedy memoir) by Nick Spalding
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Authors: Nick Spalding
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Accounts hates Susan from Personnel with a passion that’s almost holy because she stole her boyfriend Carlos.
Forget the fact that everyone in the office universally despises Colin, the rat-faced line manager, who only got the job because his father is on the board .
No, let’s not worry about these things.
Instead, let’s all go to a small Travel Inn in the Lake District for a weekend of exciting group activities and fun co-operative exercises.
Oh jolly, jolly bullcrap.
Nobody below senior management wants to go on these trips - and they only do because it gives them a chance to give the Jag a run up to the country.
Everyone has to though, as not going would mean forfeiting those days in lieu you’ve built up for the two weeks in Tenerife you promised the other half.
So you travel the three hours to the hotel with a sinking heart and a stress headache forming above your right eye.
…and you just know the person you’ll be in the same hotel room as - because the company is too stingy to spring for a room each - will be Colin the line manager and his bizarre bathroom habits.
The weekend crawls by at roughly the speed of a stoned sloth.
You play the games you’re required to and share some half-hearted jokes with the boss - who you know will fire you on sight if you don’t get that processing report to him by Wednesday morning.
Everyone grins and bears the jobbing actors employed to be your Team Leaders! and you wind up getting totally bladdered in the hotel bar each night with the three or four people in your office you actually get along with.
The night is capped off by returning to your hotel room to find Colin on the toilet, cleaning his teeth and ear holes - with the same brush.
The weekend concludes and you gratefully return home to complain about the whole debacle to your spouse. They take it all in good grace for about half an hour, before screaming that they don’t want to hear anymore about the trust exercise, where you had to catch the three hundred pound elephant from the typing pool, giving yourself terrible backache.
And you know what?
The following morning back at work:
Claire still hates Susan, everyone still hates Colin, the processing report still isn’t done and you’ve developed a nasty rash from the poison ivy you fell into during the Team Trek! round Lake Windermere.
I genuinely feel sorry for the working folk who buy into this corporate brainwashing. They come back from the team weekend with a renewed sense of purpose and a positive attitude that anything can get done if we all work together and communicate !
They’ll be the ones trying their hardest to haul the rest of us up to an acceptable standard and will spend vast swathes of time printing off well meaning motivational posters.
They’ll also be the ones that stay late and work harder, only to discover in three months that their annual holiday has been cut by five days and the Christmas bonus has been cancelled so that Colin and his dad can go skiing in Colorado.
Speaking from personal experience, I was forced to go to a paint-balling day in the New Forest about a year ago. I was not happy with this turn of events, as I'd planned to visit friend of mine in Ireland, where much drinking of Guinness was in store.
As it was, I had to get up at 6.00am - on a bloody Saturday! - drive out to a cold and windy forest and strap on body armour that made me look like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s anaemic cousin.
Then I was forced to run around holding a mean looking paint ball gun, trying my best to avoid the poison ivy while attempting to shoot that annoying prick from Deliveries in the testicles.
Give a man a gun - any gun, real or fake - and at some point he’ll start to think he’s Jack Bauer.
The red mist of battle will come down and he’ll run around in a strange bow-legged crouch, shouting out commands like Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan.
This happened to me after about an hour of mincing around in my
Forget the fact that everyone in the office universally despises Colin, the rat-faced line manager, who only got the job because his father is on the board .
No, let’s not worry about these things.
Instead, let’s all go to a small Travel Inn in the Lake District for a weekend of exciting group activities and fun co-operative exercises.
Oh jolly, jolly bullcrap.
Nobody below senior management wants to go on these trips - and they only do because it gives them a chance to give the Jag a run up to the country.
Everyone has to though, as not going would mean forfeiting those days in lieu you’ve built up for the two weeks in Tenerife you promised the other half.
So you travel the three hours to the hotel with a sinking heart and a stress headache forming above your right eye.
…and you just know the person you’ll be in the same hotel room as - because the company is too stingy to spring for a room each - will be Colin the line manager and his bizarre bathroom habits.
The weekend crawls by at roughly the speed of a stoned sloth.
You play the games you’re required to and share some half-hearted jokes with the boss - who you know will fire you on sight if you don’t get that processing report to him by Wednesday morning.
Everyone grins and bears the jobbing actors employed to be your Team Leaders! and you wind up getting totally bladdered in the hotel bar each night with the three or four people in your office you actually get along with.
The night is capped off by returning to your hotel room to find Colin on the toilet, cleaning his teeth and ear holes - with the same brush.
The weekend concludes and you gratefully return home to complain about the whole debacle to your spouse. They take it all in good grace for about half an hour, before screaming that they don’t want to hear anymore about the trust exercise, where you had to catch the three hundred pound elephant from the typing pool, giving yourself terrible backache.
And you know what?
The following morning back at work:
Claire still hates Susan, everyone still hates Colin, the processing report still isn’t done and you’ve developed a nasty rash from the poison ivy you fell into during the Team Trek! round Lake Windermere.
I genuinely feel sorry for the working folk who buy into this corporate brainwashing. They come back from the team weekend with a renewed sense of purpose and a positive attitude that anything can get done if we all work together and communicate !
They’ll be the ones trying their hardest to haul the rest of us up to an acceptable standard and will spend vast swathes of time printing off well meaning motivational posters.
They’ll also be the ones that stay late and work harder, only to discover in three months that their annual holiday has been cut by five days and the Christmas bonus has been cancelled so that Colin and his dad can go skiing in Colorado.
Speaking from personal experience, I was forced to go to a paint-balling day in the New Forest about a year ago. I was not happy with this turn of events, as I'd planned to visit friend of mine in Ireland, where much drinking of Guinness was in store.
As it was, I had to get up at 6.00am - on a bloody Saturday! - drive out to a cold and windy forest and strap on body armour that made me look like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s anaemic cousin.
Then I was forced to run around holding a mean looking paint ball gun, trying my best to avoid the poison ivy while attempting to shoot that annoying prick from Deliveries in the testicles.
Give a man a gun - any gun, real or fake - and at some point he’ll start to think he’s Jack Bauer.
The red mist of battle will come down and he’ll run around in a strange bow-legged crouch, shouting out commands like Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan.
This happened to me after about an hour of mincing around in my
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