Wanted: Corporate Allies - Any Idiot Can Apply

From my position in the window of Sally Gulliver’s office I can see her in the atrium below, attempting to work out who to sit next to at lunch.

We have all been there. When you start at a new place, you have to work out who your friends might be, and who your allies are. I remember my days at the nursery: how come those in charge only ever listen to the creepers? Why is it always me left passing hankies to the weeping willow?

Having polished off (as all employees here must) her obligatory blancmange dessert, Sally returns to her office. ‘Sally,’ I rumble, ‘You seem to have created an infinitely better induction process for everyone except yourself. Where are your ‘buddies’, your mentors, your allies?

She sighs glumly. ‘It’s tough at the top.’

‘That would be fine if you were at the top, Sally Gulliver, but I’m afraid you don’t have that excuse.’

Head of HR deflated. Pot plant attempts to rally her. ‘If Felicity in Marketing is your evil nemesis, and evidence increasingly suggests that is the case…’

‘She just gave me a dirty look in the canteen.’

‘Quite. Then it is time to compose a list of potential allies. Who will run to the flag of HR?’

There is a long silence broken only by operatic slurping as the Blancmange Testing Directorate next door puts some products through their paces.

I clear my throat (a trick which other plants rather envy). ‘Ah. Perhaps it’s too soon for that. Who, then, will run to the flag of Sally Gulliver? Or - put it another way - who will run away from the flag of Felicity in Marketing?’

‘Bingleby,’ scolds Sally. ‘This is playground stuff. This shouldn’t be how we do business.’

‘Of course it shouldn’t. But until you change the culture here, which may, I suggest, take us a little longer than we currently have, we need some allies. And as nobody has had the opportunity to like you yet, perhaps we should find someone who at least shares your wariness of our Marketing colleague.’ 

‘Hmm. Bingleby, for a pot plant, you’re incredibly Machiavellian. I think I’m going to be a bit more grown-up than that. I got talking to Gabriel Silk, the Comms Director, at lunch. I think I’ll have a conversation with him.’

It is fortunate that plants do not possess either hands or foreheads. As I was therefore unable to clap one against the other in despair. 

    
Next Friday: The worst Office Politician in the world

@BinglebyinHR

 
Bingleby was confiding in Richard Goff