 Are
you older than your boss? |
 And
does the company now just consist of you and him? |
 Did
you leave a perfectly good job doing something people could
understand, to join your dot.com at triple the salary doing
something you have trouble explaining to your parents? |
 In
the beginning were the entire staff treated to free daily
fruit, free beer on Fridays, free morning croissants and coffee,
free champagne to celebrate the MD coughing, but frequently
found their wages going in days late? |
| Has
your Christmas party been reduced from a lavish seaside adventure
with 4 star accomodation for family and friends to a local
restaurant, 3 bottles of warm Liebfrau, and a present comes
supplied in the box with your food? |
| After
six months did you take a pay cut in exchange for a piece
of the equity only to discover that your dot.com has less
chance of successfully floating than a brick with Michael
Winner tied to it? |
| Are
most of the management team former public school chums of
the MD - regardless of their previous experience or qualifications? |
| Is
your office based in an extremely expensive warehouse redevelopment,
and kitted out with top-of-the-range equipment and furniture,
including a Star Trek captain's chair for everyone? |
| Have
they recently tried to auction off that swanky chair of yours
while you were still sitting on it? |
| Have
those 42-inch plasma screens playing trendy music 24/7 on
every wall in the office been replaced by a wind-up radio? |
| According
to the management team, are there dozens of venture capitalists
vying to shower you with cash? But have the last three phone
messages you took from V-Cs all ended with bursts of derisive
laughter? |
| Has
your business plan been rewritten dozens of times, each rewrite
containing increasingly desperate money-making schemes - the
final one involving a combination of the following words:
"wank", "coins" and "docks"? |
| But
have you recently heard the words "Relocation" and
"Feltham" being used in the same sentence? |
| "Those
Friday free drink nights down the pub - when was the last
time we had one of those?" |
| Were
your monthly sales meetings once held in a jolly corporate
venue like a zoo, with free food and drink, and holidays in
the sun as bonuses. Do you now all cram in the broom cupboard
and have a bonus payable "on achievement of team target" |
| Did
you arrive one morning to find that you were once an IT project
manager and overnight your department incorporated human resources,
customer support, marketing, stategic development and the
canteen? |
| Do
the terms 'consultation', 'restructuring', 'development',
'new horizons', 'exciting times' all mean the same thing.
I.e. "You're fired"? |
Has
the coffee gone from expensive filtered, to cheaper filtered,
to expensive instant, to cheapest instant, to "have we
used
a whole jar in a week?!" And does the MD have to borrow
40p off you to buy the milk?” |
| Have
you noticed that the MD keeps making 'Test Purchases' on the
site for large quantities of goods that actually seem to somehow
get delivered and no payment is ever made? |
| did
your first PC come fully equipped with a state of the art
21-inch flatscreen monitor with as many bells and whistles
as you could possibly want? Did it get replaced last week
with something from Dixons that came with a free laser printer.
And do you have to supply your own software? |
| Do
you get an uncomfortable and nagging feeling that the job
you do is pointless, the 'Team' a shallow buzz word, your
boss is full of cliched rhetorical bullshit? |
| Has
everyone slept with everyone else in the company? |
| |
