Pitch battles

Have you ever been involved in pitching for new business? I mean really, have you? Is there any more soul destroying and irritating event in business life, except of course for the annual Christmas party or IT installing a new company wide system and stating 'it will all work without problems we promise' whilst keeping their fingers crossed behind their backs and hoping you don't notice?

When I was self employed I found that the search for new business actually took 3 out of the 5 working days a week. There are actually creatures who can noticeably evolve faster in the time that it takes some potential clients to make up their minds about who to use to create the advertising for their new range of rubber bands or multi-coloured what-nots. I found I was compelled to start charging my actual clients a new tax, on top of the agreed daily rate, called the 'dithering tax', a variable sum of money necessary because of the amount of time it took for some people to make up their minds whilst I subsidised their inability to make a decision - and I mean both yes or no. Because, whilst they dithered, they also expected you to reserve the time in your diary so that, in the forlorn hope they actually came to a decision, you would then start immediately on the project, notwithstanding that they'd taken six months to come to a decision in the first place. No, continents could come together and move off again in the time it took to decide to spend £115 on a new leaflet design that would go straight into every recipient's bin without a glance. I believe my all time longest gestation period for a decision was just over two years. Yes folks, two years after submitting the pitch the potential client replied that they would like to go ahead with my proposal if I could please start tomorrow. By that time I had actually been in a new job (full time, I just about remember what that feels like) for 18 months. And then they asked plaintively 'What would they do now I'd turned them down.' I almost told them.

Just as bad as those not so potential clients who are just using you to pick your brains for good ideas and have no intention of ever using employing your talent. I call them the...oh no better not, keep it clean. After bitter experience I can now recognise the symptoms. A brief that is quite vague except for precise phrases such as 'How can we reduce our overall operating costs by 25.63% in five months - be totally specific and name names for the big chop.' A client who, when you submit your business proposal passes it back to you and asks 'but how exactly would you do this'. I was in an interview once and had got quite tired of this line of questioning after answering in a general fashion and eventually replied 'well you could employ me and then I'd tell you' but got the big glare but not the job. I now use the 'sell not tell' technique as, if you are too specific there go your ideas, floating by in Powerpoint, presented to the big boss as someone elses's big answer to the giant problem.

The worst example of this was - no can't name names once again. Anyway they wanted the organisation I was working for to come up with a way of changing a process. We were 'the only bidder' (how they must have chortled) and therefore they wanted us to be fully specific about the process, the costs, the project timing, the colour of the walls and the name of the office cat. So we did. In good faith all this was produced, including an animated 'fly through' of the process. I constructed spreadsheets of such complexity you could calculate the effect of buying one extra biro on operating costs and profits. We presented the information, we recalculated it, we coloured it in in crayon without going over the lines, we presented it to anyone who would listen. And then they took our plans, gave them to one of their subsidiaries, 'we didn't have any budget in the first place', and took the work we had been doing away from us. And imagine how pleased they were when we asked for the costs of the project to be repaid (estimated at £30,000), oh the outrage, the huffing and puffing, the 'do you not consider yourselves partners of ours, oh how ashamed you must be to have asked such a question.'

And it doesn't change. Just a few days ago I spent four days responding to a client's pitch that was urgently required so I could start the project at the beginning of September, please hurry up with your detailed response. Now they've asked me to completely rewrite it as, as they've had a little think, it wasn't what they wanted after all, and I could possibly start in late October or even November, possibly.

So what do I make of all of this? It's hard to say as maybe it's just the way of the world. But yesterday I did go for an interview where they said 'a decision will be made on the day'. I'm still waiting to hear that decision - they didn't say what day though.

The day the gerbil broke free

You can see what happened here.

It all started with the best intentions. We'd agreed to look after a pair of gerbils this year. Well it beats the duck sitting that we agreed to do last summer. They arrived, two little rat like creatures, in their cute gerbil cage. It started well with one of the boys having the cage in his room. That lasted one night. 'They kept me awake all night with their scratching' he complained so off to another (empty) room for subsequent nights. He's a teenager and needs sixteen hours sleep a day. Then came the extra food treats, a little piece of carrot, a slice of juicy apple. Next an empty cardboard roll for them to 'play in, they'll find it interesting'. What they found was it was good for was chewing into teeny weeny pieces. In seconds. Like piranhas on little legs.

Then it moved on to more daring thoughts. 

'I don't like them cooped up in that cage they need more exercise and gerbil stimulation' said someone.

And then came the hunt for a suitable receptacle to put them in for. What Mrs EoTP found was a large packing trunk and she, and the boys, then created what they believed was gerbil heaven. But we will soon find out that gerbils have a different view of what constitutes heaven. The story continues. In the trunk are placed more empty cardboard rolls, ramps and bridges, little huts with doorways and peep holes, a restaurant, swimming pool, car hire outlet and Tesco Express. What more could a gerbil want you might ask? 

And the answer is freedom.

I don't want to say 'I told you so' but about 30 seconds after they were placed into gerbil paradise I mentioned, casually, that these little cute creatures could jump like a kangaroo. 'No worries' came the reply followed by a scream of 'One's got out'.

Yep, eschewing gerbil paradise for freedom one of the little horrors jumped and ran - and boy can they run. Within seconds he'd cleared the room, got into the kitchen and headed for the back of the house with all of us now in hot pursuit. Fortunately all the doors to the outside were closed. However, we all coped admirably and only ran around like headless chickens for five minutes, shouting 'OMG, OMG'. One of the boys opened a door to the outside (for some reason) and promptly found me screaming at him to shut the door. 'Can I come back in now?' he kept asking plaintively from the other side. 'No' I said 'keep the door shut'. I think he's still outside, I must check. The other boy stood laughing but contributed nothing to the recapture plan which evolved (put a bucket over it, throw a napkin over it, appeal for it to come quietly using a bullhorn, show it a picture of an attractive female gerbil, tell it we don't care and it can run around all it likes it's only amusing itself and so on). Mrs EoTP was on her knees peering under the furniture and pointing to said escapee which was interesting but not terribly useful. 

Contemplating, just for a nano second using the vacuum cleaner to capture it (I was desperate at this point), I came up with a cunning plan which was then executed with skill and panache, and quite a lot of swearing, to round the animal up. I don't think there is a career as a cowboy waiting for me anywhere but if you have a small, fast domestic animal loose in the hoose then I'm probably your man. Their is nothing quite so pathetic as four humans trying to round up an animal the size of a mouse. We can get to the moon...

So now the gerbils are back in their cage and that's where they are staying. Looking after other people's pets is too stressful. Mrs EoTP has to check on the welfare of some chickens in a few days. I have made her promise not to open the hen house, I can't face the angst of them flying the coop (as it were) or trying to come up with an alternative metaphor like headless chickens in front of the chickens (they might have feelings you know - howabout runaway gerbils?)

Last year it was the duck and the teenager (see here)

This year it has been the year of the gerbil - and the teenager again (not so bad this year, only left the windows and doors unlocked this time).

I think next year we need a break. From the animals.

The burden of work

When I had holiday jobs as I student I carried only my thumb so I could hitch lifts to work and back. I might have carried some loose change in my pocket just in case I had, if all else failed, to catch a bus home but this would be a mark of such abject failure that it was not to be deployed if at all possible. I wouldn't carry a coat either, just a T shirt and jeans, that's all I needed to get through the day. If I got wet then that was all part of the teenage macho image. If I took sandwiches then they'd be wrapped in some grease proof paper and stuffed in my pocket and the crumpled remains, delightfully unchilled, would be plonked on some surface for the morning until it was time for lunch, though lunch was usually provided free in staff canteens - the perks of working for a hotel. We won't go into my summer of cleaning sewers.

Then I started my first full time job. By this time the jeans and T shirt had gone replaced by, and it embarrasses me to recall this, a brown suit with lapels so big you could glide several hundred feet in the air with them like some gigantic flying human squirrel and flares on the trousers that could knock pedestrians over 30 metres away with the back draught as they flailed around my ankles as I walked. But jumping from the car and walking into the offices from the staff car park, I carried nothing more than my wallet and pass to get me through security. You could be out of the house and into the car in seconds and then from the car to the office in a few minutes. When it came to the end of the day all you had to do was push all the stuff on the desk into a drawer with your forearm, lock the filing cabinet, wake the boss and walk out.

It all started, straight after a promotion to a field job. First came the briefcase, then folders to put in the briefcase. Because you now had a brief case you felt you had to take it home at the end of the day, for no good reason as it stayed firmly closed all night in the hallway, it was just what everybody else did. So that meant unpacking it in the morning on arrival in the office and then packing it all up again in the evening. An extra ten minutes either way. No more jumping in and out of the car either. The case had to go on the back seat or seat well which now meant opening the rear door. 

Then came the mobile phone. At first it was installed permanently in the car and then it became 'mobile' or, for those of us that remember such things, the size of a military sized field radio that needed carrying on a back frame. So now the journey involved remembering the briefcase, the phone, switching on the phone, wedging case and phone in the car on leaving home, getting phone and case out of car in the office car park walking into the office, unpacking the files, finding a place where the mobile both received a signal and could be charged and then reversing the process for the return journey. We've just added 15 minutes to the journey each way.

Now the field based job. It got even harder. The briefcase, the phone (smaller admittedly), the suitcase (as I had to stay away for several days at a time) and the complete set of A to Z's for Northern France and Belgium and the Baltic States plus all my A4 files, probably 50 in total. Now it takes half an hour to leave and half an hour to unpack at each hotel or when I get home.

The executive job. This includes a laptop because having a laptop means that you can work on from home after a full 12 hours at the office, and can therefore never be away from the 'office' which indicates you are important, plus a Blackberry, colloquially known as a Crackberry because you can't put the damn thing down as it chirrups incessantly as new emails arrive demanding to be dealt with NOW. Of course this has all added more time to the leaving and arrival palaver as you now have to put the laptop in the special docking station in the office and boot it up. For some reason booting up a laptop onto a network takes the best part of a morning as does the shutting down process in the evening, when Windows likes to take a very leisurely route to turning itself off. You only have about two hours during the day when you can actually use the thing. Naturally I circumvent this by yanking the whole unit from the docking station after half an hour of 'Windows is shutting down please waste 30 minutes of your life that you will never get back as we decide when we want to go home, not you.' I gave the Blackberry back after a month. I couldn't stand it anymore.

Today. I pack my laptop in its own case, put my files and notebooks into a leather document holder, pick up my three glasses cases (driving, reading, and sunglasses) and walk to the car and place them on the passenger seat. Then I come back into the house put on my jacket, pick up my wallet and Filofax, pick up my mobile phone, Bluetooth hands free set, SatNav and Coolbag with my sandwiches in (thoroughly chilled) and return to the car. I then attach the SatNav to windscreen, wire up the power cable to the SatNav and stick the Bluetooth hands-free slug into my ear. It's taken 45 minutes to prepare to leave. For goodness sake they can launch the Space Shuttle and have it in orbit in less time. There are palpable signs of evolution on animals in the time it takes to put all the equipment in the car - and this is without unpacking it all when I get to the office or my destination. Then I have to work out what needs to go in the boot of the car for the time being, because of the issues of security when leaving the car in a public car park. Thieves would need a fork lift truck to move all this equipment from my car.

I thought the electronic world would relive us all from this burden. I see I am wrong. What I really need now is a Bergen military backpack to carry it all. But who will carry me?

It's all in the cards

I am a man of many identities. I know this to be the case as I have the papers to prove it. These are, of course, business cards and I have about 20 of them charting my career as it, too, has careered over the years. From account manager level to Director level and, my all time favourite, no job title at all level, they rest in peace in a box somewhere in the house so I show my kids the rise and fall and fall of my career.

At the moment I actually have two different business cards. How cool is that? One set for my three and half day a week job and the other set for the other organisation I was desperately needed for, sign the consultancy agreement papers NOW and send them to us immediately is there anyway you can hand deliver them there is a job that needs doing NOW, can't wait, hurry, hurry, hurry we'll print you business cards and FedEx them to you. Actually that was four months ago now and yes, you knew it really, it never actually happened.

But what happens to these cards, I mean does anyone actually do business with them? I diligently collected other people's business cards for years on the basis that they 'might be useful.' I have them here, right now in this purpose designed business card holder with the words 'business cards' picked out in sky blue Dymo tape on the top, in case I was under the illusion that it held a Faberge egg perhaps?. What's even more astounding is that they are in alphabetical order. That's why, presumably, I have the Mayor of Cordova's, Alabama card. Now I can't begin to remember why I have his card, where I met him or why I though this would be useful. Here's some others. One for an online used car sales company (out of business, I just checked), a paint shop in Singapore (just in case I needed some paint as I was passing through?), Banco Fiat in Sao Paulo, the delightfully titled Directeur de l'Observatoire in Paris, a barrister (ominous) with his name, telephone number and one word title (full marks for going overboard with design there), one for Gasper in Sao Paulo (who was Gasper, or what?) and one in Arabic on one side and Japanese on the other.

I can honestly say that I have never contacted these people again. And they haven't contacted me either but we all go through this rigmarole of handing out these little paste cards to each other. For some reason. Of course, like so many things, cards have become more and more ingenious. They have changed size, they are bigger/smaller, open out like a folding ruler and some are quite clever bits of origami. You know the sort you can't fold them back up properly afterwards, like a large newspaper after you've read it. I've got transparent plastic ones, ones with people's pictures on, square ones, ones written on rice grains, three dimensional cards, holograms, ones that don't exist in our time space continuum, ones printed on the back of live animals that I now have to look after, talking cards and even mini CD cards that you are meant to put in your PC computer tray and then look at. And look at them you will for ever if you put them in some CD trays because they never, ever come out again.

So all this effort to create attractive cards that represent one's business and capabilities and they all get put in a little red book with blue dymo tape for ever until they are forgotten. How sad. I did have a really groovy one, when I was self-employed, that was designed by my friend, a terrific graphic designer. The design wowed people, they would stop in their tracks and admire the striking design. They never called me though and I sent out/gave out hundreds of them. Would you like one, perhaps a box of them I have several left over?

Then there is the ritual of the exchange of cards. If you are the one entering into an office you always have the advantage - card already secreted in a pocket you whip it out and hand it over with a flourish - there that's my credentials so now you have to take me seriously. They, on the other hand, immediately dive into a drawer stuffed full of loose elastic bands, staples that have escaped from the box, fifteen pens that don't work and twenty seven pencils that you keep meaning to sharpen if only you had a pencil sharpener, 126 paper clips all connected together from when you had that really boring on-line conference that took hours, six memos that you meant to reply to but had lost, sixty seven business cards from previous visitors and a year's supply of PostIt notes and mutter 'I have one here somewhere' and then hand you one with a coffee stain on as they can't find a coaster for the coffee either. Then you leave and your card becomes the sixty eighth. Of couse there are always the dreaded V cards, little attachments to emails that are meant to update your central collection of business contacts - somehow these never seem to work and get deleted.

Then there's people's titles; Grand wizard, Associate (i.e we don't actually employ them), Gerente Geral (sic), Head of Group Synergies (you just know from that that there aren't any), TQE District Manager and so on. Some put all their academic qualifications on: GCSE in woodwork, ironing and coracle weaving, along with the big ones: B.Sc (HONS), M.A (HONS), FRIXT Assoc, GMINT Acc, FRIAPP (Fellow of the Royal Institute of Associated Pygmy Photographers) or whatever. They have a qualification and boy are they going to make sure you know it, whether they actually earned it or paid an annual fee to have membership to the association.

It's all now lost on me anyway - as soon as I get a card that I know I will need the details for I write them in my Filofax anyway.
And throw the card away.

The Iron Man

I think King Canute got it wrong. He should not have attempted to stop the tide coming in, as legend tells us, he should have tried to stop ironing appearing, a much, much harder task.

I'm getting to grips with this household management thing though. When I mentioned in passing a few weeks ago about doing the cleaning yet again (on the one and half days a week I don't have paid employment) Mrs EoTP looked at me (the Look) and said 'I've done it for the last 16 years so a few months won't hurt you.' and strode off to boss the Parachute Regiment around. She terrifies them. She has changed so much since starting work again. Somethings I just can't do - cooking for example - I still struggle with all meals except those that involve 'remove outer sleeve and pierce film, place in microwave' or food that can be put in the toaster. Sometimes I confuse the two with hilarious results. Try toasting frozen lamb mince and you'll see what I mean. Toasting and microwaving are just about within my competencies.

DIY is something I try to avoid - I can't do that either, and it has to be more of a PSE or 'pay someone else'. Mrs EoTP still reminds of the day I was replacing a light bulb, fell off the chair and broke an occasional table...with my head. Or the time I wired the electric cooker to the mains. That blew the fuse box right off the wall when I switched it on. The fact is that my hands will not completely obey my brain in certain conditions, usually those involving practical issues.

I've more or less cracked this dusting and vacuuming thing though. I can now clean the house, for the week, by 1230 on a Monday and I only need to start cleaning at 1145. Mrs EoTP will never discover the little 'short cuts' to cleaning - not until the holidays that is but by then it will be too late.

But there is one thing I can do and that's iron. I have discovered that I can put creases in trousers or shirt sleeves that you could spread butter with, they are that sharp. I can happily while away several hours ironing, listening to my my iPod and getting the cable of the iron tangled up with the earphones of the iPod (with hilarious results). Oh what pleasure there is seeing an empty laundry basket putting away the iron and ironing board and then turning around and finding there is still washing on the line, in the washing machine or hanging on a drier somewhere in the house. But no matter how much I do it still keeps on coming. It seems to make no difference how much I iron or when I do it (throughout the night at this rate) the amount of laundry requiring ironing never stops - in fact we seem to be have about 30% more ironing than than we have clothes. I am becoming suspicious that somehow I am doing the ironing for the street. The neighbours must be creeping in and depositing their ironing in our laundry basket, it's the only answer. How families that have more than three children keep up I don't know. Perhaps they are ironing in perpetual motion or in shifts. The other annoying thing is that, and I hate to admit this, Mrs EoTP is a lot faster than me - she seems to polish off shirts in no time but then can cut you cut a steak with the creases in her shirt sleeves like you can with mine? I think not.

I believe it is a Good Thing that I can iron, a way of demonstrating my solidarity with the necessity to keep the family clothed and fed. Mind you it is not a skill I put on my CV admittedly and neither is it a topic that gets raised down at the pub with the lads. Not for me the 'Oh forget about Chelsea's performance against Man United last night let's talk about whether non-iron shirts really don't need ironing and don't you think that linen is awful when it's become bone dry on the washing line. Those new man made fibres iron well on low heat don't they?' I think that might lead to me losing my hard man status. And any further invitations to go to the pub.

On reflection maybe Canute chose the right thing to try and stop. How would the history of the British Isles have been different if the Royal lineage has chosen laundry as the battle standard? The Doomswash Day book anyone? Magna Overnight Soaking?

Chips with everything

I manoeuvred my car slowly down into the quarry following the muddy track the trucks used to enter and leave the site. By the time I reached the site office car park my company car was covered in a grey sticky film of mud. I got out of the car and, walking on tiptoe in a vain effort to keep the mud off my shoes and suit, headed for the Portacabin where the person I was due to meet worked. Two mangy Alsatians, held back only by their long leashes barked loudly at me eyeing me up as if I had been scheduled to be their meal today. As they jumped and strained to reach me they showered me in more mud. I entered the Portacabin, shook hands with the site manager - he offered me a cup of tea before we started the meeting. I thanked him and said 'yes please'. And then I saw the mugs.

The mugs were weapons of mass destruction. They were stained in ways I couldn't believe it was possible to stain a mug without using ancient banned magic. The deep brown stains of a millennia of never once seeing warm water and washing up liquid. Not a millimetre of white left on them. Striated like some monstrous geological fault with deep cracks running around the outside and inside. The rim of the mug was deeply chipped around the whole circumference. There were the stains of dribbles of tea from the last user running down the side. The site manager plonked the mug down in front of me, and drank deeply from his own mug - it had what remained of a cartoon on the outside 'The world's greatest...'. Indecipherable - poisoner, mass murderer? 'I'm going to die so young' I thought 'Of some horrible virus that has mutated for years on this mug and for which there is no cure. That's why the Alsatians were eyeing me up - they knew this was my last walk.'

Well I did die - oh no, I couldn't of of course. Staff facilities - they are mostly gross, rarely clean and generally have torn and crooked notices hanging from one drawing pin exhorting staff to leave the facilities as they would find in their own homes. On the basis of many years observation I would have to say that with most people's homes therefore you would be wiping your shoes as you leave they must be so disgusting.

As a student in self catering halls of residence our particular kitchen was singled out for praise by the long suffering cleaners on the basis that:

1. We actually appeared to wash the tea towels more than once a term
2. When we washed them we used warm(ish) water and soap powder
3. We wiped down surfaces in the kitchen and actually used disinfectant to clean surfaces
4. The contents of the freezer did not pre-date the last ice age.

Staff facilities have that rare ability to deteriorate within seconds of cleaning, if they are ever cleaned at all. Tea towels that are so stiff with dirt and stains that you could attach four wheels to them and use them as skateboards. Dish cloths that have a smell so peculiar that they could be used instead of tear gas during a riot. Washing up bowls that look like they have had an oil change performed in them, the sinks themselves that are scratched and scored like an ancient glacial valley. Mugs and cups that are never actually washed, just rinsed and put upside down to dry before the next, random user. Tea spoons that are left to dry so that a brown rim forms in the bowl of the spoon which can never be cleaned.

My current favourite that I use, favourite in that I have to don a full nuclear/bacteriological hazard suit before I enter actually has, get this, a dish washer that is never used. Dirty mugs, plates that are deeply encrusted with late night curry detritus and tea spoons. We'll quickly pass over the state if the tea towels again, last washed in 1968. And just what happens to tea spoons? No matter how many are provided they all disappear within a few days. Must be a thriving international trade in contraband tea spoons. And,yes, there is the inevitable notice pinned to the wall that says 'Please leave these facilities clean or they will be withdrawn.' The notice has been there as long as the tea towel to my knowledge.

In one place where I worked I couldn't stand the state of the coffee making facilities any more so I bought my own bottle of washing up liquid to work and started, daily, washing the team's mugs before we used them and at the end of the day. At first I was regarded as a two headed monster and then, one day accidentally leaving the washing liquid behind, returned to find a queue of people waiting to wash up their mugs with my lovely soapy suds. At least we had a sink - don't you just hate people who wash their mugs in the staff toilets? The sinks I mean not the loos.

However I knew I reached my nadir in one country in Africa. I was there on business. I'd been offered refreshments at the office I was visiting. They kindly offered me sweet coffee, which I accepted (mustn't offend the host) and, of course, the drink came in the inevitable chipped cups. 'Would I like some food to go with the coffee' they asked. Now on full hygiene alert I havered, what to do? I finally said yes and so they proudly brought out some disreputable looking plates and emptied some white spherical objects from the fridge onto the plate - there were as many flies in the fridge as in the room as the temperature difference was only about 2C between the inside of the fridge and the room. 'Eat up' they said indicating the plate. It was only then I recognised what they were on the plate. Sheeps eyes. 'I'm going to die so young I thought (again) of some horrible virus.' For the Queen and Country I drank the coffee and swallowed the Sheeps eyes.

So that is why, when offered a coffee from anywhere other than a machine, I look very, very carefully at the staff facilities before I make a decision - it's going to get me one day.

Claims procedure

I'm owed £400 this month.
From expenses.
There's a word that brings both delight and terror to the claimant.

As you regular readers know I have worked for many organisations - therefore, by dint of my work, I have had to claim expenses throughout my working life and the experience has varied from one end of the spectrum 'Here is the rule for everything and you will obey, exterminate, exterminate' to 'Dunno really just claim what you think is reasonable'. Both ends are as difficult as each other.

Let's go for a stroll to the 'We have rules' end. This company, a substantial multi-national had an expenses form that an accountant must have devised with codes for everything and a strict requirement to account for VAT. Receipts WERE required or you were shot. No, thinking about it, your expenses were just not signed off and you starved. The rules were made and kept by two elderly house elves who maintained the company archives and who were locked away night and day on the fifth floor where the company library was located. Here giant dusty tomes were opened with the spine of the book creaking as the heavy pages were turned. 'You may claim for a car wash each week with no receipt as long as it does not cost more than £2.50'.
'Right then' we'd ask, 'can we just claim £2.50 a week and put it on the expense form?'
'Yes' the house elves would reply.
So we'd claim the £2.50 a week and the cars would get dirtier and dirtier (as, of course we didn't wash them) until we could convince a car dealer to clean them for us - for free.
'Field staff can claim £2.50 a day for lunch without a receipt.'
'Can we claim that every day whether at home or in the office or on an interplanatery trip?'
Well of course we could and did, and most days the dealers bought us lunch anyway. Fuel was a good one as well. You claimed on a pence per mile basis according to a fuel rate. Basically, unless you were driving in excess of 100 mph in second gear all the time, you made a substantial profit on fuel.
And this was all condoned by the management - no wonder few members of the field staff wanted to return to head office for promotion - you couldn't afford the drop in salary. It all started getting difficult when my then manager started asking me to get blank receipts from restaurants, get an amount filled in, claim that amount and when reimbursed, pay him the money in cash so he could go horse racing. We were talking serious amounts of money here - then some of my colleagues who lived in my territory, thought it would be a jolly good jape to take their friends/wives/mistresses out for a meal and get me to claim the bill as 'entertaining' and then pay them back, 'No problem the boss will sign it off'. Bit of a problem really as are you really going to shop an influential and senior manager and then continue to have a career in the same company? The only answer was to join the CIA, become a hit man and take him out. Actually I had a quiet word with another manager and it all stopped, as did my career, but at least I didn't do anything dishonest as I said to the manager of the Job Centre as I signed on. The daft thing was that you make a substantial profit on your expenses by just claiming them as allowed - you didn't need to make dishonest claims

Wandering across to the other end of the spectrum we have the company that has no rules and has an expense form that is basically a blank piece of A4 where you write your name at the top. For this company, Consolidated Who-Hahs, I travelled the world selling who-hahs to anyone that would buy them.
"Can I travel business class?'
'Suppose so'
'Can I stay in 5 star hotels and claim laundry as I am away for several weeks?'
'Seems fair'
'Can I arrange my flights so that at weekends I can stay in fabulously exotic resorts at the companies expense?'
"S'all right.'
'Can I eat like a King and buy the most expensive wines in the world, smoke the most prestigious cigars and be waited on by fair hand maidens selected from the world's most beautiful women who I will fly in especially?'
'Spect so'
You see, no rules and the net effect was that I would actually travel like a penurious student to save the company money that I hadn't been expected to save anyway it would seem. Of course they had no idea what I was claiming as all the receipts were in Thai/Vietnamese/Saudi/Brazilian thingies and so on and the Caribbean island I was actually buying on the basis of expenses was never spotted.

And so we have variations on that theme across the expenses spectrum - right now I work for a reasonable company that takes a reasonable view and therefore expenses claimed are always reasonable. Still got a big form to fill in though and the phrase 'I need a receipt please' is still in daily use. And will be for years. Spect.