Heed grapevine for your own good
By: Sheryl-Lee Kerr
ONE should always pay attention to office politics. This is for your own good, to avoid untold foot-in-mouth friction. I argue it's even an idea for office managers to incorporate into that first-day-on-the-job tour a commentary on the extra-special sites of interest.
For example: “We're now approaching the water cooler, also famed for concealing the presence of a very drunk photographer who was able to wake in time to capture, in 8 x 10 glossy glory, the affair between Jenkins and Ward and still get the prints up around the building before passing out again.
“And over here is the staff recreation area, the site of the Christmas party where Paul started cracking jokes about Mr Smith's dalliances to the pretty redhead, who subsequently turned out to be Mrs Smith and who became the last sight he saw until he came out of that unexpected coma.”
Such information, while tawdry at best and although we always deny it, is also quite handy to know. It avoids any awkwardness, embarrassment and comas resulting from irate bosses hurling large punch bowls at one's head.
I never used to bother with gossip until one fateful day. At age 179/10, I became a “copy boy” at Brisbane's now defunct Daily Sun. For those who don't know, a copy boy is the equivalent of a pre-evolved micro-organism in the newspaper food chain.
The job description entails trying not to wince too obviously when someone lets loose the word “COPY!” into your eardrum, to inform you you're about to have the thrill of refilling their coffee cup from the jug two feet from their arm. (Not that I harbor any bitterness or
anything. Laugh…)
Much gossip flew around in those days but I never absorbed any of it. And that left me missing a most vital piece of information. One day, my Chief of Staff beckoned me close. He explained uncomfortably that a fellow copy boy had once again not bothered turning up at work and that this was now unacceptable. He looked at me with a beseeching expression.
“So you want me to phone him and ask him to get in here?” I asked.
“Oh would you?” the boss sighed in relief.
Odd. Still, I ambled off to make the phone call.
The wayward copy boy wasn't home. His dad answered instead. Yet the father seemed to have a curious lack of interest in his son turning up at work on time.
So I explained as sternly as I could muster for all my 179/10 years that his bosses were wondering where the lad was and added this “wasn't on”'. But the father just kept saying, “It doesn't matter. It's okay.”
I futilely tried to explain it did matter. I may have even politely questioned the family's dubious work ethic. When I finally put down the phone I noticed there was an eerie silence over the newsroom.
The Chief of Staff was white as a sheet. Everyone was looking at me, agog. At me the pre-evolved office micro-organism.
“What?” I asked in bewilderment.
“I thought,” said the Chief of Staff miserably, “that you, ah, knew that that boy was the son of our editor.”
© Advertiser Newspapers
& Sheryl-Lee Kerr. TUE 19 JAN 1999, Page 034