Hours: not to reason why

I was talking to some police officers the other day.'Can't you loosen those handcuffs they're rubbing my wrists?' I said. No I didn't. I wasn't under arrest at all but we were talking. They'd told me that they work a 12 hour shift on a rota that required an IBM AS/400 to compute the permutations of days on/nights off/on. But the amazing thing is, they told me, was that everyone up to the rank of Inspector gets paid overtime.

Overtime.
I mean paid overtime.
Can you believe it?

I mentioned to the officers, in passing, that the last time I got paid overtime was in 1979. 'No way' they said. 'Yes way' and No Kidding. When I left the lowly clerical grade that I started on in my first job after University I, like many others, was expected 'to work the number of hours necessary to complete the job'. This, of course, means that the organisation could now exploit you to the full by making you work so many hours that your salary fell rapidly to the equivalent of 10 pence an hour. As a young ambitious and, just possibly, tad naive graduate I naturally fell for this malarkey and promptly started working around the clock, down in the mines and cleaning chimneys. Mrs EoTP however, worked for an organisation that did no such foolish thing and had proper start and finish times. This meant that we saw each other during July only and rarely at any other time during the year as our arrival/departure times at home never coincided.

Fails to go to hospital to see the baby

So ingrained did this way of life become that when we had our first child, born late at night on a weekday, I actually went to work for a while the following morning before going to see my wife and new born in hospital. Mrs EoTP was not impressed I can tell you.

Then of course, five months later the company made my job redundant - so it had all been worthwhile hadn't it?

Exemplem: Eyes on the Prize gives example from own life.

And this is the thing of course. Organisations rely on this huge level of unpaid work to get anything done. I'll come back to this in a minute. Come with me for two tics and let me give you an example from my own life. Working for a company down in West London they, the daft management, decided that they were going to enforce rigidly the start time of 9 am. Failing to take into account the appaling traffic in the area and the fact that employees who were unable arrive on time, through no fault of their own, always made up the time at the end of day plus they also did lots of unpaid overtime, the new policy was introduced - you would lose a full days pay if you failed to arrive on time. Oh yes, it worked, everyone left home an hour earlier to get to the office but...no one actually then started work until 9am exactly and everyone left exactly on time. In just two weeks the Management (good grief, couldn't find their backsides with both hands and a route map) recinded the rule because they found the company was beginning to fall apart without the unpaid extra time being worked.

Working many, many hours is 'silly' - shock report says.

When you've been kicked around a bit, like my four redundancies, you begin to see that working many hours for nothing is probably, well, silly. After all you're not going to be lying on your death bed thinking 'Gosh wish I'd spent a few more hours at the office' are you? So when a senior manager colleague moaned, a few years ago, that most of the staff were actually daring to go home on time I pointed out that that was, contractually, what they were paid to do. 'Maybe we should pay overtime if you want them to stay on' I suggested. Look of horror on colleague's face.

There is another aspect to hours worked. And that's logging them. I work 3.5 days a week. I have decided, as no one else has, that a 'day' is 7 hours work plus 1/2 hour for lunch. I log any work that takes longer than 10 minutes. I regard travelling time as 'work' but not if I'm going to the office because that's my place of work. Not contentious so far is it? Except that there are sorts of discussions about this. Some of my colleagues think I shouldn't regard travelling as work - well what is it then? If you stay away overnight when does work stop? When you arrive at the hotel, when the meal with your colleagues is over (as you discuss work with them) and so on. I am paid a fixed salary but I still have to work more hours than I am paid to to get the job done. Am I mad? No need to answer that one. Well, in the end, I try and be sensible about all of this because I like what I do - if only there were more of it - and you have to deliver.

The final aspect of hours I'd like to share with you today is 'where do they go'. Look, at 0910 am this morning I decide that my day will consist of completing a number of specific tasks. By 1630 hrs I discover I have partly completed one, put off all the others until another day and started on six more that were given to me during the day and were totally unexpected. I am not the Prime Minister of Great Britain or a Captain of Industry, so where has the time gone? Who has taken it and can I please have it back?

Oh well, no option then, I'll just have to stay on after work to finish it.

Bleak expectations

'Well I'm looking on the brightside this morning' said Mrs EoTP 'I've a new pair of scissors to use at work'. We'd been discussing, before we both left for work, the increasingly grim economic news (you may have noticed it recently unless you've been living in a parallel dimension) and I, in my optimistic and prophetic way this morning, had opined that this was probably Not A Good Thing for my full time employment prospects. I had also stated that it would probably start snowing and not stop until March, fuel prices would rise a further 100% by December, interest rates would treble, a herd of llamas would invade our garden, the house would be repossessed, the family would disintegrate (split up, not disappear into individual atoms which might get a small mention on the news), and, you know the sort of fully rationale response we all have to the odd personal setback in life. Mrs EoTP declared that you have to take all the small pleasures as they come, though I think she might have been making a point but it passed me by.

Why this gloom? Easy one that. Because 17 years ago, when I was first made redundant the market conditions were remarkably similar and suddenly no one was recruiting - I was, of course, in an anti-recruitment situation. The dastardly HR team didn't actually say those words but I bet they wanted to. Being in the automotive industry as I was (and still am) it seemed to take the downturn very badly though those in the financial services industry probably believe that things aren't quite as rosy at the moment as they might be. Saying 'Have a good day' as they pass might be considered akin to having a death wish. With five months of falling vehicle sales in the UK you can bet that further rational phrases such 'for Pete's sake slash all the budgets, nobody spends anything, ban travel, turn off all the lights use candles, ban entertaining, in fact ban everything, employees have to pay us to come to work, however I still need to travel business class to San Francisco for that meeting make sure the hotel is 5 star won't you?' will be used throughout the head offices of all the car manufacturers. It still makes me smile that the instruction used to come through, all those years ago, to only make phone calls in the afternoon and stop sending faxes to save money. Rome burning and all that. All about you the business is failing and collapsing and you have to stop sending faxes. Whatever they are.

You can't give yourself away. A local company advertised for a part time marketing manager (did I tell you I am a qualified marketing manager, I'm sure I did, you just haven't been paying attention). I was vastly over qualified for the job but, wanting some extra work, rang the MD before sending in my CV to explain why someone so clearly so wonderful would want one day a week work. 'I fully understand' he said, 'love to see your CV, just what we were after.' Needless to say a) the pay would have been impressively low and b) I got the inevitable email 'we found someone who's experience matched our needs more closely'. I have an MBA with a marketing focus and they found someone with better experience! I was virtually giving myself away and there is someone they want more?

Right now there are lots of well meaning articles in print and on the web aimed at the recently redundant and I have to say that I think most are meretricious rubbish. Not that I have strong views on this you understand, but most seem to have been written by people who have never been made redundant and are trotting out the same old tosh. Over 40 years old and you have, in my experience, a heap big problem, over 50 and it is a heap bigger problem only the heap is smellier. OK I admit that in the good economic times it is easier to get a new job but when thousands are having their jobs made redundant and all employers are freezing recruitment then believe me, it's gonna be a long hard winter.

Charles Handy (he of the 'Empty Raincoat', Reinvented lives' and so on) wrote extensively of developing a portfolio of jobs. Great idea, not so easy to do. See example above. I am not quite sure what type of employee these companies who seek part timers want but I bet the words 'young' and 'cheap' are part of the description. And of course there is the theory of why people have low paid jobs: because they accept them. Yes I know, get down from your soapbox before you start lecturing me, many people have no option but to accept these type of jobs but, in this country, employers seem not to value experience but prefer cheap. And young.

I continue to apply for part time jobs, though I don't spend much time on the nuances of the application forms, cut and paste makes it easy. And by emailing them you save on postage.

Well Mrs EoTP will have been using her new scissors all day and will, no doubt, be savouring the delightful experience.

Me?

I'm sure it's going to snow.

A small case study

The first time I opened it, it creaked very loudly, like an old door with ancient hinges, creasing the pristine leather. Inside was a soft, yellowy lining, with differing sized compartments, so many compartments, to store so many things, so many things that I actually didn't possess. And then, in my best handwriting, I wrote my name, in biro on the inside of the flap, because this was my first, my very first satchel. In brown, pristine leather with gold coloured buckles and a long leather strap. In fact it was the first time I recall having to carry anything regularly to and from anywhere and the reason? I'd just started at my new secondary school and it was on the list of required items sent home by the school, along with body armour to protect one from attacks from pupils from the rival school plus a 'make yourself hideous to girls' kit (for this was a boys only school and to be seen anywhere near a young female was tantamount to making them pregnant instantly and tarnishing the name of the school - which was the most heinous crime of course). I think we were naturally hideous to girls as a result of the extended peaks on our mandatory school caps, having to carry satchels and having nascent acne but that might be simple prejudice coloured by time. On the first day of school I put my pen, eraser, pencil sharpener and compass in the cavernous bag and set off for lessons. By the end of the first term the satchel had become, progressively, a weapon to hurl around on the strap to keep assailants at bay, a pitch marker for rugby, something to drag along the ground like a dumb pet and, very occasionally, a container for carrying substantial numbers of books.

When I started work full time I reverted back to the not having to carry anything to and fro for several years until I got my first company briefcase. This was the size of a small steamer trunk but was mandated for the position of field manager - everyone who had the role had to have and use one. It was a badge of office. It was made out of material that could withstand an airburst nuclear attack at a height of 50 metres, could accommodate a small motorbike and had clasps to secure it that opened with a sound similar to a large gun being cocked. When all the field staff came in for a meeting and opened the cases you needed ear defenders on to protect your hearing. In the five years I had it (it really was indestructible, it's probably in a landfill site now and will still be there until the crack of doom) I never managed to fill it more than a third full and always felt faintly embarrassed when my dealers glanced in and saw how little I had to carry. And you needed 5 managers signatures to get a new case but only 3 to replace a car. Totemic or what?

At least it was sturdy (in a Forth Road Bridge sort of way) because I also recall duffel bags purposely designed, I'm convinced, so that you would deposit your games kit on the road as the bottom tore out at random times when cycling home. And why were they always covered in a tartan material?

Anyway when I left my first organisation for greener fields (oh how I now laugh now at that naive thought) I had to hand my case over to my successor. This left me feeling rather naked without a suitcase attached to my hand when arriving at the new offices. Recognising, belatedly, that I never actually filled the first briefcase I bought a slimline Samsonite case with locks that sounded like large guns being cocked when opening them. What is it with briefcase locks? Naturally I never filled this either though would jauntily take it on aircraft and then feel embarrassed when having to open it at security when all it had in it were two pens, a pencil sharpener and a compass. This lasted about two years until I finally realised the futility of carrying a 90% empty briefcase around with me.

Then I discovered leather document folders and these have been my standard carrying item ever since. Slim, elegant and seemingly indestructible they have accompanied me around the world. All the papers I need always fit in them and I can get my iPod, glasses cases and sundry other items in with ease - and no more embarrassment at security as it passes through all their scanners.

I had several company laptops that came in bags of a similar size to my first briefcase - so big were they they wouldn't fit behind the driver's seat of my car but had to be towed on a trailer behind the car or rest on the back seat sliding about as I drove along. Now, if I take my Macbook out, it fits in a messenger type bag slung over my shoulder. Easy. And probably cool too. A little.

You can see this progression in trends by looking out of the window at the kids making their way to school. A few years ago it was all backpacks, bigger than those used by the British Army, then a year of plastic supermarket bags with various bits of games kit and school books poking out and now it's mainly messenger type bags. Good heavens I'm keeping up with the youth scene. Gd grf thts Gr8.

There are times though when you do need to make a statement with a bag and when that happens it's time to deploy the old battered briefcase that was my wifes and her brothers before her. Battered, scratched, marked and with a clasp that probably last worked in 1935 it is a true statement of pedigree and style (and a refusal to spend any money on a new one). So why I carry it I don't know, but whenever it is out and about it always attracts positive comments from true afficionados who know that a bag is for life and not just to impress.

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.