I worked for the same man for more than twenty years and for most of those years it was like working for a schizophrenic because of his mood swings.
One
day he would be an irrational gibbering idiot, next day completely rational and
on another day, he was like a zombie.
It
was like he’d had speed on his cornflakes one morning and downers in his coffee
the next.
His
poor diet didn’t help his condition with his favourite meal being a Big Mac,
Large fries and a Chockie shake.
On
his lucid days he was a sound bite man. He liked what he considered to be
well-constructed snappy phases, which got right to the crux or essence of any
situation.
The
reality of course was something quite different.
He
probably took a lot of his key words from the self-help book “How to speak
employer drivel”
The
problem was that although they may well have worked in California, they lost
some of their edge when spoken in a Lancashire accent.
Some
words and phrases though lasted almost as long as I knew him for example:
“BASICALLY” as used in “Basically Paul you work for me I don’t work for you”
“NOW WE’RE COOKING WITH GAS” this denoted things were going well.
“KICKING
ASS AND TAKING NAMES” this was in lieu of a greeting.
“HEY,
TAKE NO PRISONERS, ME” this was the prelude to negotiation.
“NO
FINGER POINTING GUARANTEED” I still don’t know what this means.
The
most interesting thing I ever heard him say was “I wonder what the collective
noun is for a busload of nutter’s”. Even to this day I have no idea what
prompted him to say it and as soon as he’d finished speaking, he turned on his
heels and returned to his office.
The
scary thing is that he was ever employed in such a position of responsibility
and even scarier still I’m sure that there are a lot more like him out there.
