ViVa La Bottom Line: PART 3

We are given an exercise to do involving paper and scissors and glue. As the art materials are handed out I am surprised that they do not tell us to find an adult to help us with the scissors. I think more about the purpose of these constant regressionary tactics. I think that what they want from us is faith. At school I believed. I believed that what we were being told was true, I believed that the words of our teachers were universally acknowledged, that I was being taught without mendacity or guile. My teachers were the metaphorical waiters of knowledge, handing out facts to hungry minds that might well starve without them. It was not until later that I learned to question the ideological framework through which I was fed my factual diet. Not till later did I loose my unblinking faith in the god-like figure that stands in front of a crowd.
The glue and the scissors and the paper have been given to us so that we can make a collage that demonstrates the difference between a Canteen and a Grill. Before we start we are spoon fed what they would like to see when it’s finished. Almost word for word. Our trainer tells us that ‘A grill is for upmarket people, and a canteen is for downmarket people. So cut out pictures of upmarket people and stick them on.’ she continues ‘A grill is food based and a canteen is drink based, so cut out pictures of expensive looking food.’ My group is to do the opposite we are to demonstrate canteen culture. ‘So you know, people looking dowdy, maybe people in dirty clothes… that kind of thing’

After our instructions we are allowed access to the magazines, some of them are men’s magazines. The criteria as explained by our trainer are instantly forgotten as the Polish chefs begin cutting out all the pictures of naked or semi named women they can find. I take charge of the glue and start sticking things down at random as they are handed to me. Deciding to let go and have some fun I get quite into sticking male heads onto female bodies and vice-versa. I make a central image from the body of the queen. I give her new arms so that it looks like she is doing Jazz Hands then replace her head with that of a devout Muslim. Stopping to look at it I am convinced that with the right contacts and marketing I could win a turner prize. The chefs grab the glue and begin sticking random slogans and scraps of writing to the paper, many of them could be viewed as racist in the context of the images they are stuck too. My Islamic queen becomes ‘The Human Bomb.’ A large picture of a black man, whose eyes have been replaced with smaller pictures of Heston Blumenthal’s face, has the words ‘Dark Horse Cock’ written across it in three separate typefaces. I realise that It’s probably me that’s going to have to feed this back to the group and time is swiftly running out. I come up with a plan. I stick stuff over the racism with odd phrases like ’20 pints and still standing’ and ‘Bench Test!’. Then I swiftly re-organise all the half naked women and my genderless freaks around a new picture of Freddy Flintoff. In a final act of artistic dementia I cannot resist replacing Freddie’s grinning mug with the luscious features of Kelly Brook. I stand back. It’s done. I begin to prepare myself to present the collage to the group.

So ‘explain what this is about’, says our trainer.

‘Well…’ I say, ‘You said people were confused about the brand and what it was, well these people here, with the heads, they’re very confused. And they’re confusing too, so that, you know… count’s double. And um, these women, they’re like a hen night and Freddy, well Freddy likes a drink right?’

‘Why does he have Kelly Brooks head?’
‘Because he’s also confused about the brand.’
‘OK.’

She then asks me a load more questions, about what a canteen and a bar should mean to me. She pulls out the “correct” answers like they’re my teeth.

Then it’s the other groups turn one of the chefs is chosen to talk us through their poster. It looks like a total mess. I pick out a woman, a watch, Gordon Ramsey and a steak. I relax, mine was bad but at least it had Artistic merit. As he starts to explain the collage my jaw drops. In broken English he tells the story of the perfect night out. ‘You take this woman, to this place, you get this food cooked on time, by this man.’ He finishes by pointing at Gordon and bowing to an impromptu round of applause. I realise in that moment that this tubby affable chef is a genius. I turn to one of my managers, the most approachable one. ‘That was amazing, I say, way better than ours’
‘Yeah’ he says ‘He had a plan, you just made a piece of art and then blagged your way through’

Story of my life.

The collage is meant to be the wind-down exercise before lunch. But we are told, before we get to eat, there is something they want to give us. The Management have produced a booklet that they want us to keep with us at all times. ‘Company Vision and Values’ I later found out that this booklet cost £12000 to produce. I can immediately tell that most of the booklets will be either thrown away, lost or shown to friends as an example of what a moronic arsehole of a company this is to work for. This cannot be what they had in mind when they earmarked the money.

On the back of the booklet are the words “Until a Company value is demonstrated by behavior it remains an aspiration” I later Google this but sadly I am unable to find out who it was that said these words first. It could have been Lance Armstrong, it could have been Timmy Mallet I have trouble shaking the feeling that it spat out at random from an unplugged army super-computer. I eventually found the quote minus the company name on a management consultancy website belonging to a woman called Sue Newton. On her site she said that she uses the quote “To drive home the understanding that creating a values driven organisation is about behaviour day in & day out and not plaques on the wall or entries in company handbooks” She was the only hit I got.
With a rising sense of panic it becomes increasingly clear that none of us are going to get to eat until we have read through at least one section of the booklet.

Page one is a letter from Our CEO, it is nestled next to the Jazz hands photograph that was on the projector this morning.

‘A Very Warm Welcome to The Company- You are Joining a winning team, Our Vision is simple: The Company – a simply perfect experience’ for both you and our guests’

This seems fair enough, our trainer continues to read out loud.

‘It’s simple for a reason – there are no wasted words or complications’

At this point I flip through booklet looking for a word that has not been wasted.

‘Our shared Values are our biggest strength; we believe that those are what makes us strong and sets us apart from the competition.’

This seems odd, as every company seems to promote ‘shared Values.’ I have sat through training like this in at least three other companies, The genius chef will tell me at lunch that the reason he is such a genius at this is because he has been through training like this so many times it has become second nature. Can they really think we believe they are the only ones doing this?

‘They describe the way we should all behave at work’

Surely those are rules and not values.

‘providing us with guiding principles which help us to make the right decisions.
Welcome to our team, embrace our vision and values and enjoy your personal journey with the company.
Best wishes
The CEO’

Embrace our vision and values… is that an order? Are we being ordered to take this on board? Perhaps it is simply advice advice. For a brief moment I read it as a threat, implying that if we do not embrace the vision and values, will we not enjoy our personal journey with the company? Like it’s saying perhaps we’ll have a hard time enjoying our personal journey with two broken legs… best wishes.

The rest of the booklet is divided into five sections or Values each with it’s own cryptic subheading.

‘people- less body more soul
guest-whatever it takes
sales- never leave a sale on the table
profit –show me the money
brand-brand obsession!’

It becomes clear that the one we are going to cover before lunch is ‘Less body more Soul.’ Stomachs grumble. Chefs grumble in Polish. It’s hard for me to imagine how Less Body More Soul! Became a catch phrase they decided to put in print. In the booklet there is a quote from a team member in Bristol, it say’s ‘if you smile, you succeed; for me, that relates to less body, more soul.’ I think… really? What with my empty stomach I am sure it has something to do with weight loss. I ask my trainer twice what it was supposed to mean. She cannot answer but merely repeats the phrase at me with more and more expressive body language. “You know. Less Body..” she lets her shoulders sag and does a sad face “more Soul!” she does the kind of half dance, that looks the sign language for ‘boxer’.

‘I still don’t get it.’ Eventually she says I will understand after we do the role-plays. My heart sinks; if those role-plays are scheduled before lunch then this place is going to turn ugly.
The ‘less body more soul ‘ section is dealt with over a double page spread on the left hand side of the left page is a photograph of five team members and a manager. Two of the team members are chefs. Three of them are front-of-house. One of the team members is wearing a thumb ring. This is not allowed according to uniform regulations. The manager has a clipboard. The team members are laughing. One of them looks adoringly at the manager.

On the left page, under the cryptic heading discussed above is written…

‘What the Company Expects from you:
This is about how we behave as one team:
• Smile-‘it’s show time’
• Have the passion to do a great job
• Stand and deliver-
‘what a great job looks like’
• Live life! As a team player
-giving one another praise and feedback
-it’s about every job being as important as any other
-Treat others with respect
• It’s good to be different
-shout about your ideas and opinions
-be yourself-less body more soul

At this point any confusion I had as to the true meaning of ‘Less body more soul’ is been completely cleared up. Wait a minute, no I still have no idea what that means. I live in England and have spoken English all my life and it is utterly incomprehensible, I can’t imagine what I would make of it if I were Polish. I think I understand what they want from me. But my immediate feeling is that this list of values was born in a meeting in which members of the management shouted out vague ideas to a third party who then wrote them on a flipchart. That flip chart was then copied word for word into this booklet. Job done, everyone went back to doing Jazz hands and wearing sombreros, ‘ViVa la company!’ shouts the CEO, ‘Lets shoot some guns in the air!’

I am in love with this corporate booklet. It is the worst I have ever seen. I love the midsentence exclamation mark on Live Life! I love that ‘It’s about every job being as important as any other’ is differs massively in grammar from the other points on the list. I love the visual image that is conjured when I think of taking its advice literally and coming into work ‘shouting about my idea and opinions’. Surely that would get me fired faster that writing this letter. I think about what it would be like, actually ‘Being my self. Less body more soul…’

Before writing this I googled the phrase. As far as I can tell it originates as an advertising slogan for ‘Skinny Cow, Low fat ice cream.’ It has also been used by ‘Ben and Jerrys’ to advertise their frozen yogurt. I am more confused than I have ever been in my life.

I decided I should give them a chance and look up the words ‘body’ and ‘soul’ in a dictionary to see if there was some obscure meaning that had escaped me inside the training room. Apparently not. There were some interesting usages, that were halfway applicable, like the life and soul of the party, and the soul of discretion. The word body also, it can mean a group of people, or the size of a persons hair (long hair should be tied back according to uniform regulations) It can also be used to describe a corpse. Less dead, more alive.
Nothing in the dictionary really seemed to fit exactly.

Perhaps ‘Less body More Soul’ means this. “When we pay you, we agree to rent out your body for a certain amount of time, in which it will do what we tell it to do. We would also like your soul.” Perhaps it doesn’t mean anything. Perhaps it’s a collection of wasted words that do little but complicate and confuse. I know one thing for sure, it won’t help me learn how to make Cocktails.
On the left hand side of the right hand page to counter “what the company expects from you” the following text.

‘what you can expect from the company:
We will:
• Exude high levels of passion and energy
• Demonstrate ‘what a good job looks like’
• Give honest and straightforward feedback
• Enable you to grow and develop during your time with us
• Respect you, listen to you and involve you in a monthly team meeting
• Keep you engaged with clear and regular communications’

These were my thoughts as my bowels demanded the sweet release of carbs and protein and the trainer went painstakingly though the list one by one.
Passion and energy’ how about instead of this they exude competence and acumen.
So far in this training they have failed to demonstrate ‘what a good job looks like’ not in the photograph of the cocktails, not in the way our managers modelled the uniform, not even in the way this booklet was written.

Something snaps and part of me gives up the ghost. My sugar levels plummet, I hit the lowest point of the caffeine cycle. I despair. Face down on the desk with my arms outstretched in front of me I simply cannot take any more. The smell of the immanent buffet comes wafting up the stairs. Tiny particles of deep fried shrimp and potato wedges in a bar-be-que sauce. I open my eyes and look pleadingly toward our trainer. To my joy she seems to be rapping things up. She catches my glare, stares deep into the hollows of my desperate eyes and reiterates how important it is that we keep hold of these ‘very special and unique books.’ She wants us to ‘carry them with us in our pouches whenever we are working.’ She says with great emphasis that they are ‘very special’ and that they ‘mean a lot to everyone in the company.’

I do not ask a question that wants to explode out of me like trapped gas in a vacuum.
What the hell am I going to do with a book full of nonsense on the restaurant floor?