ViVa La Bottom Line: PART 4

Lunch is a buffet and I immediately make my way to the deep-fried prawns and tempura vegetables. I load up on potatoes wedges and create a central pool of dipping sauces. People sit around the beer garden and talk about places they have worked in the past. They talk about how this company seem particularly bad at looking after it’s staff. They say that wages owed have not been paid, and complain about various aspects of management. I have heard this kind of talk in every corporate style company I have ever worked in.

Everyone I talk to has a negative opinion of the training. Most have negative opinions of the company. Many are planning to leave. Some say that they will stay until after the refit is complete, mostly just so they can see if their tips increase. Asking a few questions I find out that the longest serving member of staff outside of the kitchen is the Craig David look alike. He has been working here for just 11 months.

Most of the team joined in the weeks before Christmas which would make for an average of about 7 months. Turnover in the service industry is very high, so much so that it may be safe to assume that in another 7 months it may only be the managers who remain. This makes this kind of training all the more strange, why spend money training team members that are most likely about to leave. Most of the time service staff learn their trade on the job, they go from bar to bar picking up new skills on the grapevine. Many of the Team members have worked in several bars. They rate the best places to work as the independents, places that valued a common sense attitude rather than strict discipline. People talk about times spent sitting around sharing a staff drink after a busy shift. They say that that is far more important than this kind of training for building a team. It is a chance to wind down from the zombie-movie madness of a bar three deep in punters. In that kind of situation tensions can run high, people snap at each other and drop the formalities of polite language. At the end of the day a staff drink is a time to show that there are no hard feelings. There are apparently no staff drinks at The Company. People say that all that unites them here, is a common hatred of management; whispered moments in the middle of the pandemonium, like those between members of the resistance in an occupied country. Being fairly new I had no idea feeling ran this high. As I look around I realise that now, while we are eating lunch together we are actually bonding as a team. For the first time outside the stress of the floor and the structured, school-like claustrophobia of the training room, we are getting to know each other as people. There is a screech as one of the Polish chefs attempts to grab one of the buxom barmaids boobs.

The more popular of our managers comes to a table near us and immediately conversations turns to discussing the relative merits of the original animated transformers against the newer computer animated live action movie. It is decided that if a man denies crying at the death of the old school Optimus Prime, he is a liar, just the same as if he denies ever picturing Megan Fox in the nude.

We drift back up to the training room. There are still scraps of paper on the floor from the collages. I can see one of George Clooney's eyes, dismembered staring up at me from the floor. Just then our Trainer tells us, ‘it’s time to build a Giraffe!’

George winks from the floor. Why not?

We are divided into three groups, each group will be observed by one of our managers. These groups have been predetermined; groups for the collage were done by a random number selection so I wonder if there is a reason for these groupings.

I am grouped with the buxom barmaid, the steely Frenchman and a couple of other people I haven’t mentioned before and probably will not mention again. The task is to build the tallest Giraffe that we can out of newspaper and sticky tape. Oddly enough this is the kind of activity at which I excel most in the world. I immediately begin work on some sturdy legs. The trick being to unroll the sticky tape before rapping it around the rolls of newspaper. This is because you want the tape to just keep the shape of the tube and not be too tight and pull the newspaper together like a girdle. Someone else in the group makes the decision to make each leg two pieces of newspaper high. It’s not a bad Idea. I bunch up some newspaper and wrap it up and ball it up with tape to make a body. The Frenchman disappears; there is some suspicion that he has decided that this whole circus isn’t worth his time. Word starts to build that he has ‘walked out’. I can see how being asked to make a Giraffe might prove a step too far for a man like that. I feel the same emotion but don’t dwell on it. There is after all, a Giraffe to build. Just as I am fixing the neck to the body the Frenchman returns with a head he has made. No one says anything about how they doubted his commitment to the team. The head is the perfect size and shape. I stick it on, our giraffe is now five and a half feet tall and it stands proud. I look around to check the progress of the other groups. I am expecting something special from the architect but progress is laughable. We are told we have ‘one minute to go’ for the third time, it is clear that the other groups will have trouble finishing on time let alone competing with our megalith for height. The Frenchman begins to decorate it with post it notes, giving it that characteristic yellow spot pattern. He was never going to walk out. He is loving this. We all join in. I laugh when I see what a piss poor job is going on across the room. They are trying to use scrunched up pieces of paper for legs… Behind us things are going no better, the architect has rolls of sticky tape stuck to the backside of her Giraffe to ‘counterweight the head’. The extra weight collapses the back legs. She has stuck drinking straws to the legs to try and buy them some stability. We look back at ours, from somewhere the Frenchman has managed to find two foam balls, he is taping them together. He sticks them between the legs of our giraffe. The architect attempts to hang her giraffe from a light fitting with tape. This is deemed to be ‘not allowed’ I laugh harder still as the straws are also removed. One of our giraffe balls falls off leaving him with only one. We decide to call him Hitler. We sit around bored as the trainer eeks out ‘thirty seconds people...’ to it’s maximum possible length. I put a head dress on our beast to gain us an extra few inches. We decide to stick the other ball back on and rename the animal to something less controversial. We’re going to call him Mr T. At the end of the time Mr T is a clear foot taller than the other two efforts and on top of that looks like the teacher in special needs school for giraffes.

I am proud, rightly proud of myself as we wait for our chance to feed back to the group, to be analysed as a team by our manager. Welsh trainer lady asks us what we have named our giraffe. The Frenchman tells the group his name. Referencing the advert for snickers he adds ‘because he’s got nuts’. People laugh. I love it when a plan comes together.

Our Giraffe has won hands down, there is no prize, bar the fact that it is still standing as a newspaper monument to good team work and leadership. it is its own trophy.

Our watching manager feeds back on our performance. She singles me out. She puts me in front of the group and tells me that I am a natural leader. While she is talking I hold a poker face. I wasn’t expecting this. I feel like if they are going to get me, then flattery is how they will get me. I don’t know what to think. Natural leader… Part of me wants to burst into tears and yell ‘thank god you noticed!’ Part of me wants to walk the hell out of the room and go do something that means a damn. But the've got me right up and down, they figured out that all they really need to do to get me onside is to stand behind me and work the knots out my ego. Is this why I was put in this team? Did they put together an A team to show how it should be done? perhaps we were picked at random.

Half wanting to fight the feeling of pride that now feels twisted and wrong in my chest and half wanting to underline the fact that they are in fact right about my leadership qualities, I step forward to ‘out leader’ my watching manager. I declare that the group had no leader, that we all just kept our eyes open, looked to see what needed doing and then played our part. It’s what Hanibal would do. I’m sure of it. Most of the rest of the Team just look at me confused. I am sure at least three of them are thinking, ‘What an Arsehole.’

Welsh trainer, takes the hint, sees my bluff performance as what it is, a lure for the compliment fish. She looks me in the eye and throws the fish right at me. She tells the group that sometimes ‘a good leader doesn’t tell people what do, he just allows them to do it for themselves.’ And in that moment I snap out of it. I am the one left looking perplexed, and I am suddenly angry. If she hadn’t been saying nice things about me, I might have yelled it at her ‘If you know this to be true, then why the hell are we in this room? I stay quiet.

The next activity of the day is going to involve us watching a video. The laptop is rigged to an overhead-projector screen, but unfortunately the cord that would connect the laptop to the inbuilt sound system has been left somewhere, so we are asked to come and crowd around the minuscule laptop speakers in order to hear. Still trapped in good leader mode I am the one that organises a detail of team members to get the windows closed and the blinds down. I watch myself and despair at how easily bought I can be.

Huddled around her laptop likes scouts around a campfire we wait to hear what stories are to be told. What unfolds is a half hour documentary about the working practices of the fish sellers of Pike Place Market in Seattle. Seattle: my second home. The fish sellers of Pike Place Market are world famous. Some of The Fishmen wear long hair and earrings, many have half beards and three day stubble. One of them looks like howling mad Murdock. Their gray hoodies are dirty with fish guts and dislodged scales. They look tired but manage to move around with a lot of energy. The Fishmen have invented their own language. One shouts something I don’t quite follow. Something like “red in the heart of Montana!” and then the rest repeat it in unison, I still don’t quite get what they are saying. Then from off screen somewhere, something comes flying in at fifty miles an hour. The central Fishman sticks out his arm and with one hand, scoops a mighty salmon from the air.

This video is about how to have fun at work. the story is that these people could 'just be working in a fish joint somewhere'. They could be any fishmonger anywhere in the world except they chose not to be. They chose to goof around; to chant about, and throw and catch fish; to put on a show about fish for the crowd; they chose to have fun.

Almost as a by-product of having fun, they sell a lot of fish and they got to be world famous.

In an interview with one of the Fishmen, he tells us that we can choose our attitude. That there is no need for us to come in and be grumpy and angry. The interview is interspersed with shots of the Fishman at work. He tells us that he had three hours sleep last night, and that he’s looking at a 14 hour day. Then he stops and says. ‘But I’m still smiling! No point getting down about it. That would just make my day worse!’ I know a girl whose best friend dated a Pike Place Fishguy. She said they drink a lot and take a lot of drugs. It’s just hearsay, but as I watch the tape I think, ‘a 14 hour day on top of three hours of sleep is going to require some serious Red Bull at the very least.’ We see him catch a fish thrown in from off screen, his reflexes are somehow unaffected by extreme fatigue. He turns to the camera, and yells ‘I never miss! I never miss!’ the laptop speakers distort. The camera cuts away.

We see more interviews with more Pike Place Market Fishmen. They tell us that work needn’t be work, that if we can just be ourselves and have fun, then ‘work can in fact… be play.’ It’s a great message. A message completely at odds with the pre-lunch uniform session about leaving our ‘selves’ behind the yellow lines of the Disney tunnel. The two messages seem not just to be conflicting but so different as to be at war with each other. I look at my managers to try to figure out which side they would be on.

As the images roll over me I look at the men and wonder if they are being paid minimum wage? I notice that they are all men, there are no women, and that their banter reminds me a lot of my limited experience of team sports. I look at their exposed tattoos and jewellery, their facial hair and dirty clothes, and the way that the customers don’t care about that because it’s all part of the show. For a moment I picture them in this room, a close nit group of testosterone roughnecks, going through a training session like this one. Being taught how to goof off properly, being told if they don’t, then they are failing the company and failing themselves. It’s not a pretty sight, I am totally convinced that they would tear this room apart. Fish f**king everywhere.

On the screen we see the Fishmen, goofing around with the customers. On the very edge of audibility we are told by the laptop to ‘Make our customers day!’ What is bothering me about this video isn’t so much the message as the fact that it is being told to me. I pride myself on actually doing these things. But I do all these things ‘for me’. Now that the Company is asking me to do it ‘for them’, so that they can make more profit, it just fills my stomach with bile. I feel like they have taken my moral acts of kindness and friendliness and made them into immoral sales tactics, I feel that they are making me into a hypocrite.

My wife is portrait painter and we have talked a lot about the nature of art. We sometimes watch commercials and ask how we would feel about them if the selling was removed. Could they make it as artistic short films, life affirming video poems describing lazy mornings or the conflicting pressure’s of the modern hectic lifestyle? perhaps they could be animated comedys about Meer cats or minidocs describing sportsmen at the top of their game. We came to the conclusion that there seems to be something that changes in the human brain when we know that someone is trying to sell us something, even if it’s something we like. Even if it’s for our own good, the very act of being sold to is so unpleasant and uncomfortable as to render all potential artistic merit to pap.

After the video is finished, we return to our seats. Trainer Lady dissects and repeats the information from the video. She asks questions like. “How did they cope when they were tired and had to come into work anyway?” and “What did they try to do for each customer?” she makes us repeat the phrases. ‘Choose your attitude to work!’ and ‘Make their day!’ as often as she can. She tells us that it is this kind of attitude that will make the Company unique, that if we can take this on board we will truly be one of a kind.

Apparently I learn, almost everyone except me has seen Fish! before. One of the chefs has seen it three times. One of my mangers tells me he has seen it four times, once each in three separate companies and once during his degree course in service management.

Just a few months ago the whole management team went on a training exercise where they threw and caught fish together for an entire day. This seems to me like a classic case of putting the cart before the horse. I can see the thought process. ‘ These Fish! people are a great team, because they A: know and trust each other to be themselves without recrimination, or because they B throw fish?'
'lets go with B... B is much easier to emulate, in fact lets get the team to do B.'
The trouble is there is no B in team.

Our Trainer uses the pictures of management throwing trout about to illustrate the fact that They don’t just talk about these things they are asking us to do here today, 'We go and do them ourselves!’ I can't resist it, controlling my voice to make it seem like an innocent question I ask her if she has ever worked as a server in a bar and grill.

Catch that one.

She looks flustered. She babbles something about having once worked as a waitress many years ago. For a moment, silence is golden. One of my mangers steps in. ‘Yes, Yes of course you have, we did all that training… Remember.’
‘Oh yes.’ she says ‘of course I have.’