I just got my latest copy of Anglia Industry and Business, a gripping publication essential for anyone who wants a substantial coaster for their coffee mug, or an excellent fly swat. The magazine holds all the interest for me of a pamphlet detailing how to treat rampant thrush, but still I get it every quarter or so. I don’t remember ever having asked for it. It looks like it has been put together by someone who fell asleep halfway through the job, and shows all the imagination and creative input of the packaging on a Tesco economy bag of pasta.
Business as described by my free publication is a world full of fifty year olds in grey suits standing around smoky bars in cheap hotels, making wisecracks about the waitresses and breaking out into quarter-hourly fits of booming laughter, before cruising up the M1 in a Mercedes like a tank, the golf clubs in the back. It’s a world where publications feature lots of head shots of other business men with broad smiles and bad teeth, crowbarred into articles about outsourcing, networking, and how Stansted Airport wants to fly people to China, because the streets of Shanghai are paved with gold.
Images in business publications usually include handshaking, lots of handshaking. There are in fact so many handshakes in business publications, the actual moment of contact between two pinstripe-suited hands frozen in time, that it’s difficult not to think of some giant human chain of people in suits, or maybe just how gay it all looks. Other popular images include photographs of suited people taken from below the level of their waists, giving them the appearance of colossuses standing before town halls and shiny buildings with huge windows, and women with broad smiles standing before presentations in rooms with tables the size of squash courts.
Business has its own words that are of precious little relevance or use in the real world: synergy, outsourcing, networking, acquisition and solutions. Then there are business phrases, such as “Let’s run this up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes”, and a recent beauty described by my mate Dan, “Let’s not boil the ocean”. Business speak is characterised by the David Brents of this world tripping over themselves trying to create new language to describe old ideas, agencies and creative types going as far as to invent entirely new words, charging thousands and hundreds of thousands to change the Post Office to Consignia.
This is apparently what ‘business’ means – this cliche-ridden, Travelodge-loitering, Mondeo-driving, golf-playing, world of bad PowerPoint presentations, awkward pauses while the laptop crashes halfway through, and the clingfilmed sandwiches in the centre of the table slowly curl in the heat of a windowless meeting room. Creative types wear polo neck jumpers and cord jackets, IT support guys have five computers on and around their desk, but the Managing Director gets his PA to print his e-mails out for him and hasn’t turned his computer on since last year. Thank goodness it’s not all like that.
That The Apprentice appears to conform so tightly to this stereotypical image of business, with the big tables, sharp suits and strong words, is sad, but at least Alan Sugar speaks Plain English. I’ve not been watching the show since the start, but it has been refreshing to see that some irredeemable gobshites have been rooted out of the selection process. Some of the contestants come across as being concerned with nothing more than making as much money as possible, and seem to treat being as unpleasant as possible as a virtue. You don’t demand respect, you earn it, and I’ve barely been able to disguise my contempt for anyone I’ve ever met who doesn’t understand that.
Too many people are evidently still aspiring to a lifestyle that, viewed from the outside and experienced from the inside, can make you miserable. There’s more to life. I’m a fan of the Desiderata, which provides a sort of recipe for happiness that extends beyond bigger houses and fatter pay cheques:
Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.Max Ehrmann
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