Over this impromptu meal we strayed away from business talk for a while and I caught up on what was happening to everyone outside of work. Mary had just been to St Albans to see a new movie called 'The Quite American'. Dave was still into football and suggested that the Italians would have their hands cut out tonight against the Spanish. George had been working in his garden and just bought a new shed - 8' by 1' I think, with a heated radiator.
Bob was grumbling to himself about old people and how they should be shot at birth.
"Sorry, Bob, did you say something?" I asked
"No" he said "I was talking out loud"
"Those chips look nice, Tim." said Billy
"You're Morecambe and Wise." said Tim
"No thanks, that would just be greedy." said Billy
Eventually break time was over I rallied the troops back to work. Now, I'm not paranoid, but I'd been watching them all morning. They were just sheep in wolf's clothing. I knew that, generally, you could take a duck to water but you couldn't make it drink. But this lot were like Pavlova's rats and they were just looking for a lap donkey. Like the gang of old that I assembled at the start of my isms research we still had back street drivers and staff who were as dead as a doughnut. I wish, for his own good, that Billy would leave the ISMS; I've known him since he was grass-high to a knee hopper and I think it would make him feel more stressless. Sometimes for him coming to work must be like the south side of the Eiger.
"Right" I said "Let's reconsider our celebration plans, and this time let's try and be more pacific. I want to nip this in the butt so we're going to reintroduce peer-to-peer reviews to make sure that we stay on track." I knew that would go down like a ton of lead balloons but who cares, it's the old case of the chicken and the mouse and we needed to make progress - fast. "We need to hammer some pegs into the ground to make sure we're all singing from the same hymn sheet. Forget the earlier plan; it's as dead as a nit!" I added.
