If you are not a regular reader of my weekly blog, then quite frankly, I’m shocked. Are you really telling me a talking pot plant has nothing to offer you?
Grudgingly, then, I shall introduce myself. I am a plant of some maturity, currently residing in the office of the Head of HR (one Sally Gulliver), at sprawling corporate Global Blancmange. If it helps your feeble human minds, my voice sounds exactly like Winston Churchill’s. I have no idea why this is: all pot plants sound like him.
And if there’s one time of year I resent, it’s Christmas.
It’s not the jollity, you understand; I’ve always been fond of a spot of jollity. It’s not the decorations (though some of that tinsel can be blinking heavy, you humans aren’t shy of sharing a burden). Nor is it the carols, and it’s certainly not the presents.
It’s the competition.
Look at it from my point of view. I spend around forty-eight weeks a year in triumphant command of my space in Sally Gulliver’s office. And then, in the first week of December, what happens?
Blenkinsop happens. That’s what!
Blenkinsop the Christmas Tree cultivated by Sally Gulliver, nursed all year round in her back garden and plonked in the middle of her office – in pride of place, I might add – for four insolent weeks, as if he had a right to be there. I abhor Blenkinsop.
Why? Well, for one thing, he smells. Humans seem to like the whiff of pine needles but where I come from; it’s the botanical equivalent of B.O.
And I don’t mean to be an intellectual snob here, but to be brutally frank, in our world, trees are the thick ones. They have no class: no interest in art, no – how shall I put it? - savoir faire. All they seem to do is grow endlessly, and drop leaves on you. What’s the point of that? Name me one tree who’s written a symphony; just one. You can’t, can you?
And Blenkinsop’s conversation is soil-crushingly dull. He only gets out of his space at the end of Sally’s garden for a few days every year, so he’s a bit like a freelancer: when he’s suddenly in company, all he does is talk non-stop. What about, I hear you ask? Well, let’s just say that as he spends forty-eight weeks a year stuck in a hole at the end of a small garden in Streatham, staring at a fence, his outtake on life isn’t destined to be sparkling with bon mots. I’d say it’s like watching paint dry, but at least watching paint dry gives you an illusion of progress.
So come on, all you colleagues out there in CIPD-land. Help a poor talking pot plant. What should I do about Blenkinsop?
@BinglebyinHR
Bingleby was confiding in Richard Goff
A trackback is a method for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking, and so referring, to their articles. Some weblog software programs, such as Wordpress, Drupal and Movable Type, support automatic pingbacks where all the links in a published article can be pinged when the article is published. The term is used colloquially for any kind of linkback.