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'Work harder', and other brilliant advice from a new manager brought in to shake things up

HI, I’m Nikki Hollis, your new manager. I want to touch base on my plan for overhauling this company and getting on your tits.

Work harder

I’ve observed that you guys are working seriously hard. But could you be working even harder? You may not think so, but perhaps the prospect of a nightmarish appraisal with me could change your mind and stop you wasting time making a cup of tea when you could be calculating revenues. Just a thought.

No more meetings

Does anyone actually like sitting in meetings? No. That’s why my new strategy is to delete them from the calendar and replace them with  ‘synergy sessions’, where we all sit in a room together and discuss stuff. Yes, it sounds a lot like a meeting but I’m being paid £50k a year to be here so I have to pretend to be doing something innovative, okay?

Be more flexible

I understand that you guys enjoy mundane activities like sleeping and spending time with your family but your strict adherence to the 9 to 5 over the last few weeks has been disappointing. That’s why I’m instituting an exciting new ‘flexible’ schedule, where you can work through lunch or until 7pm if I tell you to.

Stop wasting time

So much time is taken up by you lot doing pointless things like using the toilet and walking around occasionally so you don’t get deep vein thrombosis. I’m no robot, but I think we can all agree that you can do those things while filling out pro forma invoices, yeah? Each sneeze costs this company 0.002 seconds of productivity. It all adds up.

Think of great ideas

One thing I noticed about this place is that you guys don’t routinely come up with inspiring, world-changing ideas. Why not? I know we’re a tiny company working out of a trading estate in Gloucester but I need you to do some stuff that makes me look good, so get on with it and invent the next TikTok or something.

Father and daughter shaken and silent after driving lesson without screaming match

A MAN and his daughter have been left reeling after completing a driving lesson without any yelling incidents.

Father Wayne Hayes and daughter Lauren managed to get through the entire hour-long lesson without shouting abuse at one another as they slowly drove around a deserted B&Q car park and quiet residential areas.

Lauren said: “When I took my foot off the clutch too quickly for the seventh time I was convinced dad was going to explode. Instead he calmly told me I’d get the hang of it, which if anything rattled me more.

“To make things worse I didn’t accuse him of being patronising and even thanked him for his encouragement. That was when an eerie sense of familial bonding descended on the car. I’m still trying to get over it.”

Father Wayne added: “At one point Lauren was doing 7mph in a 5mph zone, yet I felt no compulsion to grab the steering wheel and call her a stupid mare at the top of my lungs. I probably need to see a doctor.

“If this carries on then we’re in danger of developing a mature relationship with healthy communication techniques. Before you know it we might say we’re quite fond of one another, or even use the L-word if we’re not careful.”

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