Guru

This credit crunch really does threaten to ruin Guru's Christmas.

Yours Truly had already been forced to promised Her Indoors he will halve his mince pie budget to £100, and only attend three Midnight Masses to cut down on petrol, and now those killjoy lawyers have made the annual office parties almost pointless.

While lily-livered consumers everywhere drag this great country into recession with their reluctance to open their wallets, one band of heroes is keeping the nation afloat with its big-hearted, big-natured, big, er, breasted spending.

Yes, despite the so-called economic crisis, the number of men having breast reduction surgery is rising.

Guru received a news release this morning alerting him to the fact that 'cyber cynicism' was gripping the UK. Yours Truly almost threw it away as soon as he saw the word 'cyber' - what interest could that be to anyone?

Still, there wasn't much else going on so Guru thought he would have a look through it.

Guru is forever receiving emails about some recruitment firm opening a new office in Slough or Chorley or Kings Lynn. Big deal...

But Guru was mightily impressed when he heard that executive search firm Pedersen & Partners had opened an office in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Not just impressed by the extreme location of the new opening (how many executives need finding in central Asia?), but also the volume of letter 'a' used in spelling the capital city.

It led Guru on an internet search to find some more interesting factoids about this distant country. But he couldn't find any really, not even on Wikipedia. The best he could come up with was that the area now recognised as Mongolia was founded in 1206 by one of Guru's heroes, Genghis Khan.

What didn't help was the fact the press release accompanying the email about the new office was written in Mongolian, a snippet of which can be found below:

Зах зээлдээ тэргүүлэгч, нэр хүндтэй олон улсын компани болох Педерсен & Партнерс  ХХК нь 2008 оны 12 дугаар сарын 1-ний өдөр Монголд салбар компаниа нээснээ албан ёсоор мэдэгдэж  байна.

Guru believes this paragraph to say that Mongolia is very nice in the spring time, has wonderful landscapes and is a good place to go and work if you have been exiled from the West.

December is the most common month for catching a cold, Guru has recently discovered, and apparently most of the 120 million colds contracted in the UK each year (an average of two per person) are caused by germs spread by the hands. 

Yes, we are all officially part of the great unwashed - particularly after going to the loo.

According to a recent news story, the White House is leading the way and already taking steps to beat the bug through the use of hand sanitisers. President Bush is reported to have offered Barack Obama hand sanitiser the first time they met four years ago.  

Obama recalls shaking hands with Bush, who then "turned to an aide nearby, who squirted a big dollop of hand sanitizer in the president's hand". Bush is quoted as saying: "Good stuff. Keeps you from getting colds."

And disinfects you after touching a Democrat as well, Guru thinks.

Is it just me or does that hand squirting etiquette seem incredibly rude? Imagine it in an everyday meeting scenario: Two people meet, shake hands and then one turns round and sprays his hands.

You might as well say: "I think your hands are disgusting, germ-ridden extremities and can hardly bear to touch them".

Guru much prefers wearing his trusty marigolds when shaking hands with someone for the first time, it sets off the colour of his eyes nicely.

As if those Poles unfortunate enough to still be in the UK needed another reason to pack their bags and return to their homeland, they are now to realise just how depressing their retirements would be if they stayed here.

Friends Provident has launched a pensions webcast in Polish to ensure that Polish employees of UK companies have sufficient information on the pension opportunities that are available to them.

That a market exists for such a product is astonishing - even Guru could learn enough Polish to explain the state of the UK pensions situation. In fact Guru already picked up the necessary phrase when he went on a stag do to Krakow.

But no, the poor Poles - already battered by the constant rain, the drying up of jobs and the mocking phonecalls from their compatriots working in a Euro 2012-fuelled boom back home - have to listen to an audio and visual overview of their corporate pension scheme's inner workings.

Guru thinks there may be a surge in the demand for one-way flights to Warsaw.

Guru can't help but be aware that as Christmas approaches, productivity in UK offices will plummet. Rather than bemoan that fact, Guru suggests we should embrace it. It's a been a tough year, right? Go on, take a break, have some fun.

With that in mind, Guru has undertaken some extensive research and found several online office games to keep disciples amused during the countdown to Christmas. They include the classic Penguin Swing Christmas Game, where you have to thwack a penguin as far as possible over the ice, and World Cup Safari cricket where African animals take the place of cricketers.

Other top Christmas games include Deep Freeze, where Santa has to freeze his enemies with a water gun, and Snowmen Invaders which involves throwing snowballs to defeat the evil creatures. 

In fact, for all Christmas office games just visit the Miniclip site - if your company firewall allows you to do so.

Guru has also asked one of his disciples to upload more free computer games on HR Space for everyone in the HR community to enjoy on a quiet Friday afternoon... or any afternoon.

Guru hereby grants the nation's workforce special dispensation to play these computer games and try and beat the high score. Yours Truly is now off to try and hit that pesky penguin more than 300 metres...

January
To get the year off to a puzzling start, the HR world was rocked by the news that the Ministry of Defence was mounting a strong... err... defence against the suggestion that it was targeting young children in its recruitment campaigns.
Picking up on the military theme, Guru noted that prime minister Gordon Brown also had it in for the youngsters, cruelly breaking the heart of a young lad by banning children from keeping elephants as pets and roping in a 'top boffin' to reliably inform the nation that "Elephants are very big animals". You don't say. Other big beasts in the HR news were the fatties of UK plc who will be helped to lose weight through a fat-fighting initiative.

February
Guru responded to the fat fight by calling for a Chip and Bun card to keep tabs on the nation's lard-arses, while simultaneously paying for fruit and vegetables for everyone - leaving the people with wads of cash to spend on cakes and beer. HR meanwhile was proved to be actually useful to business, yet Guru returned to the nature of his Teutonic cousins and their tendency to go naked at every opportunity. Sat on a beach in the Canary Islands, he was accosted by a delegation of Black Forest dwellers selling meatballs from a tray. But being short on uniforms and with the tray just below waist height, Yours Truly passed up the chance of biting into one of the salty balls.

March
March's big news was the launch of the 2008 Personnel Today Awards and the fact that private sector welfare-to-work specialists could be roped in to get the long-term unemployed off the sofa and into the workplace. Guru stuck to his visionary agenda, however, preferring to note that after only minutes in the big chair at the Home Office Jacqui Smith was showing signs of going mad as her mania for the national ID scheme took over her life.

April
While skills minister John Denham was distancing the government from its own idea of mandatory skills training, Yours Truly focused on the key subject of the year: surveys. Apparently research revealed that six in 10 people fall asleep at work. But it was not true, some only 'felt a bit sleepy'. But to Guru's mind the fact that 37% of workers have never felt sleepy at work was the surprise - what are they bionic? David Cameron? Yours Truly was also alerted to cat poo coffee for those with 'sophisticated tastes'.

You have to laugh don't you!? No really you have to. Especially, Guru learns, if you're a nurse.

For the NHS has decided that nurses are a sullen bunch who make patients miserable. They need to lighten up - hell, they get paid enough don't they? Nothing to do with the poor food, the overheated wards or, oh yes, the fact that the condition they find themselves in hospital is making them feel none too chipper.

Stopping to refuell on the A303 this morning, Guru noticed a rather unusual aroma in the toilets.

It turned out that the Little Chef in Popham, Hampshire, was piping coffee smells into its bogs in a bid to get drivers to stop and buy a hot caffeine fix.

Presumably this coffee habit then causes the drivers to stop more often to use the toilets, trapping them in a neverending coffee-toilet loop that empties their wallets and fills the roads with wide-eyed maniacs.

Guru likes it. And he wonders if employers could take the idea a step further.

While twiddling his thumbs and ignoring all emails coming his way, Guru wondered how best to spend his last few days at work. It didn't take him long to realise that ever other worker in the country was doing the same thing.

So in true office Christmas craze fashion, Yours Truly opted to don his bosses' private office in toilet paper. He had seen the clips on YouTube suggesting how to girlie-wrap and engulf every object from the chair to the wall calendar in beautifully decorated Christmas wrapping. But that was too boring and not very Guru. Loo roll strung everywhere, now that's a better idea and something he could blame on the cleaners.

And with that he saw on YouTube a charming companion from the across the pond had done the same thing. Was there a blue-faced ego in America too?

Oh well, who cares. Guru was off to enjoy the lager and meat feast ahead of him. As to the job, well it was only a temporary post doing consultation crap, excuse the pun, so no need to go back there. Just as well, as they've run out of toilet roll.

Guru was charmed by the news that 33% of Brits are ruder at this time of year, 11% argue with fellow passengers and 23% drink more alcohol - according to a survey by Tripadvisor.

As a likely participant of the survey, the blue-headed wise man was touched that perhaps there were more people like him out there than he originally thought.

But the travel advice site went on to warn people to steer clear of trains, planes and automobiles - to avoid bumping into the likes of Yours Truly.

Well, really. Guru, like the rest of us, has had a tough year. The need to let off a little steam and aggrevate fellow commuters and colleagues is a clear employee engagement tactic. It's the only way to wind down. 

The survey news goes on to suggest that service delays and overcrowding turn transport systems in to "battlegrounds", with the shock-horror that 40% of travellers confessed to being less willing to surrender their seat than usual and 22% swore more than usual on their journeys.

Sounds like the start of a very Happy Christmas.