Greetings!
A bit of a change today: two articles on being lost. But enough of this persiflage! On with the newsletter.
Terry
Lost causes
Until recently I hadn’t read anything by Basil Boothroyd, a prolific writer who contributed to Punch magazine for many years. Somehow, I had managed to avoid him, quite unintentionally. But then Rambo and Win mentioned him in a comment on my End The Week#4, so I thought I should see what the fuss was about. After all, anyone worthy enough to be mentioned in the same sentence as Stephen Potter and Paul Jennings (the late journalist, not the children’s author) deserves to be looked into.
I reserved a book of his from my library — Accustomed As I Am.
As the title suggests, it’s about his (mis) adventures as a public speaker. In an anecdote I found particularly amusing, he demands to know from the receptionist at the National Book League why they haven’t accommodated his event. It turns out that he was supposed to be at the premises of the English Speaking Union instead. His talk mentioned his book for sale after his talk, but of course the books had been delivered to the NBL by mistake, where they are probably still languishing to this day.
The closest I ever came to being in the wrong place to give a talk was when I leapt onto a train to Wokingham and then realised with horror — after it had taken off at the speed of light — that I SHOULD have been on a train to Woking instead. After much consultation of train timetables I managed to somehow get across to Woking without starting the entire journey again. And such is my aversion to arriving late I still managed to arrive on time.
Mind you, there was that time I was due to help support a business presentation in Oxford. I asked a ticket collector at Waterloo where the next train was departing from. “Platform 14” he said, so I duly raced along to the train standing at platform 14. It was only once the train had shuffled off that I realised I’d caught a train that was going to stop at every single station along the route, and even a few that weren’t. Grinding along through the English countryside, the train took at least twice as long as I’d allowed. I can tell you, it is pretty dispiriting to realise that at the precise time the meeting is starting you have hardly left the starting block. I arrived a good half-an-hour late, but at least I wasn’t the sole attraction.
Then there was the occasion I made arrangements to meet the girl with the golden smile outside a pub in Guildford. I couldn’t recall the name of the pub, but I was able to describe it in fine detail. While on my way I suddenly realised that I had given Yvette the information relating to a completely different town— Esher. This was in the days before mobile phones. so I was unsure about how to rescue the situation. I needn’t have worried. As I sailed into Esher, there was Yvette, standing outside the pub I’d described, beaming her magnificent smile, and waving.
If you enjoy tales of people getting lost head over to Dear Reader, I'm lost , by Rebecca Holden Holden. She writes interesting, often humorous, sometimes poignant, nonfiction stories, beautifully illustrated with her own art and her husband’s photos.
The lost generations?
A PR person recently sent me an email asking if I would like an article about something called Bare Minimum Monday. Apparently, this is an “initiative” that involves doing the bare minimum when you return to work after the weekend, so as to ease yourself back into work.
I’ve worked with people who do the bare minimum, aka the least amount of work they can get away with, and not only on Mondays. The result tends to be either that their colleagues pick up the slack, or the end-user, such as the customer, is not given the quality of service they’re entitled to.
Apparently this is a thing embraced by, in particular, Gen Y and Gen Z — those people born between 1981 and 1996, and 1997 and 2012 respectively. Perhaps they think this is a great way of maintaining good mental health.
I should have thought that in these fragile and uncertain times, doing as little as possible is perhaps not the wisest strategy.
Thanks for reading!
Terry
I know what you mean by the bare minimum. I endure this from 95% of my co-workers every single day that they are here. It is so frustrating. I have to do their work plus mine. Half the time, they are just standing around. When you tell them the customer is waiting, they do not rush. They dont care. And they still get a raise. It's not fair and something should be done about it.
Loved your drawings as usual, Terry, and your accounts of being on time/being almost late/being late are relatable. Riding on the train that stopped at every station would have been stressful for me!
"I should have thought that in these fragile and uncertain times, doing as little as possible is perhaps not the wisest strategy." Amen! The Gens you mentioned are in full force at my workplace. My coworkers are asked to be in the office Tuesday - Thursday. "Bare Minimum Monday" carries into Tuesday for them.