Guru

This week’s guru

Golf challenge leads to flasher humiliation

Guru will never live down the day he fell victim to a fabulous chardonnay at
lunch on a golf jolly.

As he addressed the first tee afterwards (in wobbly fashion), the senior
executives he was playing with changed the rules and implemented the Women’s
Tee Challenge. To the uninitiated, this involves exposing sensitive body parts
for the remainder of the round if you fail to drive the ball beyond the women’s
tee.

Needless to say it was a long, cold and humiliating round of golf, and Guru
is unlikely to be invited back to the country club for an early evening sherry
(although he did retain his lucrative consultancy contract with one of the
directors present).

So new research from the US comes as no surprise. In these post-Enron days
of skulduggery, 82 per cent of high ranking corporate executives admit to
cheating at golf, 13 per cent have broken a club in anger and 11 per cent think
golf is more important than sex.

Guru thinks they should be spending more time looking for black holes in
their companies than holes in one down at the club.

Highlander fling smashes into Wonderwall

Rock band Oasis has threatened the
Army with legal action after discovering two of its songs had been used on a
recruitment video without the permission of songwriter Noel Gallagher.
Wonderwall and Hello, from its 1995 album (What’s the Story) Morning Glory,
form part of a sound-track for a promotional film for the Highlanders regiment.

The regiment has been forced to recall 300 copies after the
band’s record label refused to give permission to use the songs.

Guru is surprised the band appears to have been so mean-minded
– it has never made any excuses about ‘taking inspiration’ from the Beatles.

It’s a relief to have bog standard
loos

Guru is never happier than at 10am on
a weekday when he takes his copy of The Times and spends half an hour
completing his daily ablutions. It is a time to reflect, catch up on world
events and problem-solve. So he was unsurprised to learn that a Swindon call
centre, which won the title of Britain’s Happiest Workplace, has also won a
‘Loo of the Year’ award.

Cellular Operations’ staff can choose from five different
styles of toilet depending on their mood including: hi-tech with riveted
aluminium panels, transparent cisterns and see-through seats with inset mobile
phones and a sea green, mosaic space in swimming pool style.

These loos sound nicer than Guru’s office. Although he is
relieved his corporate bathroom is purely bog standard. Otherwise the length of
his bathroom breaks would come under scrutiny.

Bunker mentality hasn’t cost Dear

A double-glazing firm has proved the workplace environment can
affect staff performance after profits soared when its sales office was
transformed into a Second World War operations bunker.

Former Royal Signals sergeant Colin Dear gives orders to his sales
team from the office which is covered in aircraft charts and camouflaged
netting.

Dear also listens to war music and uses a 1940s phone from his
sales command post.

He charts the position of his sales vans by pushing wooden
markers around a map of south-east Essex.

Sales order have soared by 211 per cent since the office’s
military makeover and Dear is now thinking of completing its image by adding
sand bags at strategic points.