Natasha is an HR manager and while her job description is to manage people, in reality, her day is spent finding ways to justify the existence of her profession. She lives by the time-honoured HR credo: “finding problems today for yesterday’s solutions”.
The one thing she learned from completing ½ a psychology degree it’s that every decision about an employee should be made pursuant to corporate horoscopes aka DISC personality profiles.
As young Claire found out after having her office romance with Todd flagged as inappropriate. After all, an admin-Virgo has no place with a middle-management-Capricorn sweetie, it’s for the best.
Of course, if only 2 people are pissed off then an HR manager’s duty is not done. So, Natasha spends her morning snooping through a new employee’s Facebook. Oh boy, she hit the jackpot, turns out Tom has poor privacy settings and she has stumbled upon a photo of him in a dress at a uni party 7 years ago.
Not on her watch – she calls a crisis meeting and makes him commit to 3 sessions of sensitivity training and a 6-month good behaviour agreement. She has donned the strap-on of political correctness and it’s cop or walk for you corporate cuckolds.
God damn, the way he feared for his livelihood gave her a gushing HRgasm. She needed more, so she summons all staff to a compulsory lunchtime meeting.
They gnaw on the dry sandwich triangles of compulsion as Natasha runs through a 1-hour Powerpoint preso about how she is banning handshakes because they constitute sexual harassment.
She noticed everyone’s will had been broken. Their expressions of crushing defeat wouldn’t look out of place in the Eagles changerooms after the last derby.
Was it her thundercuntery? No, it’s they who are wrong. So Natasha makes a further announcement, “ok sad sacks, we clearly need a TEAM BUILDING DAY!” The horror.
To set the fun & easy going vibe of the day Natasha emails all staff to say that anyone who doesn’t attend or acts contrary to a “spirit of joy and pleasure” will face immediate disciplinary action. She’s holding the Pepsi can of authority and she’ll crack it if people aren’t living this corporate day to the max.
She watches gleefully as her staff are forced to sing as loud as they can on a CAT bus, hug random strangers and form a flash dance mob in the middle of Forrest Chase.
Hey, one HR managers idea of team building is another’s idea of a slow and painful death by cringe-stration. To say they want to die would be to ignore the fact they are already in literal hell.
By the end of the day, at least half the staff are scrolling through seek.com on their phone. However, Natasha takes a contrary view of the day, as she writes a Linkedin article about how she “gets the best out of people” citing this corporate war crime as proof.
Well, it’s proof of something, proof she is more out of touch than Gerry Harvey’s twitter carry-on.
Enjoy her magnum opus: IN FOCUS: Corporate Team Building Days
Documenting the Human Zoo is thirsty work, so if you enjoyed what you read how about buying Belle a beer, ay?