Blaikie’s Guide to Modern Manners. Thomas Blaikie

martyr?

      Stories of unbelievable behaviour abound. A senior colleague of Matt’s was sacked. His deputy visited the fallen man at home at eleven o’clock at night, apparently to commiserate but really to discuss a strategy for getting the now vacant post. A similar thing happened in publishing when a redoubtable editor (the job was her life) was made redundant. A colleague was so sorry, how appalling, how unfair etc. and what about so-and-so, the famous crime writer, I really think I’m very well placed to take him on now, don’t you?

      This kind of thing is the equivalent of turning up at your gran’s the minute she’s dead, the corpse not cold, and taking possession of the electric blanket from under her.

      Others strut about the workplace, saying, ‘My most outstanding quality is my raw intelligence,’ ‘I feel I make a huge contribution with my sense of humour,’ ‘I’m definitely ready to take on this challenge.’ Zoe tends in this direction at times but can be forgiven on account of her youth. Once she announced that in ten years’ time she saw herself ‘heading up’ her own company. Conspicuous use of jargon is another feature of the ambitious, and this can often be happily combined with putting down colleagues: ‘He needs to focus on his presentation strategy if he wants to be taken seriously,’ ‘She’s just not tuned in to the synergistic approach,’ ‘He’s going nowhere while his Powerpoint skills are stuck at that level.’

      These types spend most of their time plotting and scheming on their own behalf. They leave actual work to others, which is where the martyr, who might also be ambitious, comes in. ‘Yes, I was working,’ bellowed Mrs Thatcher at three in the morning as she emerged from the Brighton Grand after the bomb. Martyrs are always talking about weekends, about how they don’t have them, they’re too busy working. They sit in corners in offices with their heads down, a massive force field of disapproval slamming out at anyone who might be talking about what they’re going to have for lunch or whether they might buy a new pair of shoes. ‘You can’t be in a fit state for work if you’ve been out until three in the morning,’ they say if they get the chance. Martyrs dislike competition.

      ‘I had 368 e-mails when I got back from holiday.’

      ‘You were lucky to get a holiday. I only managed to snatch a weekend on the Isle of Wight and when I got back from that I had 873 e-mails.’

      ‘It took me the whole day to deal with them.’

      ‘I know. I was up all night with mine.’

      Unambitious martyrs are always ill and always telling their colleagues that they look ill. ‘The way they work us in this place it isn’t surprising. We’re all falling to pieces. I’ve had this cold for six weeks…’

      Finally, a disturbing office trait that might be displayed by martyrs, the hellishly ambitious or the insufferably smug. The director of finance for whom Matt works can be relied upon to say, at least twice a day, ‘As director of finance, I do feel that…’ ‘As director of finance, I was surprised that the auditor didn’t speak to me first…’ ‘As director of finance, I feel I should be sitting next to the group chairman…’ ‘I’m telling you, as director of finance, this is how I want it done…’ It’s called Pulling Rank.

       If you’re ambitious you should keep quiet about it.

       Boasting of all kinds provokes nothing but ridicule and contempt.

       Martyrs are black holes; they get everybody down.

       Martyrs spoil the fun.

       Don’t pull rank. We live in a democracy.

      Mobile phones at work

      Recently, Matt suffered an embarrassment. ‘I was getting a fair number of calls in a meeting. First of all, the boss asked me to switch my phone off and everybody cheered. Then afterwards he said he wanted a quiet word: “I don’t know why you even have it out on the table. We all know you’ve got one.” He said I looked like a wanker.’

      Maybe this was not quite the way to put it. But the boss was right.

      The mobile phones of really senior professionals (not quite Matt, yet at least) are never seen or heard. Tim Hely Hutchinson, who is in charge of a gigantic publishing conglomerate, possesses a mobile phone but as his secretary will tell you, ‘it won’t be switched on.’

      Which is just as it should be. People like that can’t be at everybody’s beck and call.

      Lesser employees in open-plan offices drive their colleagues round the bend if they take personal calls on their mobiles every ten minutes, especially if, like Zoe, you have the cicada ring tone.

      So, it’s perfectly simply really:

       Only allow mobile calls to interrupt other business (i.e. meetings, discussions, however informal) if you want to appear desperate and disorganised as well as rude.

       Remember the old-fashioned virtue: one thing at a time.

       If you know that you will have to take an urgent call in a meeting (even a meeting with only one other person), issue a prior warning and ask to be excused. If that isn’t possible, say, ‘Excuse me, would you mind if I take this call.’ Then disappear.

       Keep apologising.

       If your mobile is for personal use, it should be switched to silent mode in an open-plan office.

      Office e-mail

      Big groan from Matt. ‘I get hundreds and hundreds of e-mails a day. Half of them go, “I’ve mislaid my copy of The Rough Guide to Romania.