This was inspired by an email sent by someone who got a bit tipsy at the corporate do one Friday in 2009. This is how his email should have read!
From: Graeme Harper (g.harper@oilyfsh.co.uk)
To: All Staff (all.staff@oilyfsh.co.uk)
Subject: Oil Yard Free Standing Holdings Christmas Party
Date: Monday 14.12.09
Janie, my wife, tells me I may have made a few off-colour comments to some of you during the course of our Christmas ‘do’ on Friday evening and I would like to offer my sincere apologies to each and every one of you.
Specifically, she says I should say sorry to Helen Cardyke of accounts. I would like to assure you that contrary to your name, you are most likely not a raging lesbian who preys on the two young female clerks who work beside you. Wearing a trouser suit to work every day is not indicative of a sexual preference. Even if it was, it certainly doesn’t mean you deserved to have your trousers pulled down to your ankles in front of the M.D. in the middle of the Dashing White Sergeant with a suggestion to get together with him and his good wife for a bit of double-entry you won’t forget in a hurry.
I guess I should also apologise to Sir Hugh Kettering and his lady wife, Jemima. I am sorry if this suggestion offended either of you, but given that I then went on to tell Jemima that she could do better than an aging old fart in a suit that first saw light of day when Doris Day was a virgin, perhaps by this time you were past caring. I am also sorry that I then grabbed Jemima and forced her to attempt to dirty dance when we were in the middle of a conga across the foyer of the hotel.
By the way, Sir Hugh, great choice of hotel. I was very impressed by the mile-long driveway and found it really difficult to pee on every bush along its length. Difficult, but given the amount of beer I put away, not impossible.
To Sally, Joe and the team in design, I would like to offer my assurance that I don’t really think my six-year old son could design better products using nothing more than his box of Crayola and Winnie The Pooh stencil set. I am sure there is a lot more involved in your work than join-the-dots and colouring in and that if you tried, you certainly could keep within the lines.
I’m not entirely sure where to start apologising to everyone in Goods Inward and the warehouse. I regret telling Charlie that he would be more at home in Nazi Germany where his nit-picking approach to quality assurance would have gone down well in the Auschwitz gold-filling sorting room. And Ian, Santa would be very lucky indeed to have you in his toy warehouse, even if you did have to call the other elves lofty. Size means nothing, says Janie, and she would like me to assure you that she would know.
Helen, Human Resources is a very important department in our company. Your people skills are extremely competent and any suggestions I may have made to the contrary are unfounded. I retract the implication that HR be renamed Inhuman Resources since it was staffed by a group of hysterical, menopausal she-bots whose idea of bolstering staff morale involved a cut in pay and quick kick up the arse on the way out the door. You don’t need to go to college to learn that although your three years there were not wasted, despite what I might have said on Friday.
Finally, I sincerely regret my parting comment that Oil Field Free Standing Holdings was a third rate company in a first rate industry and that all they would be giving us for Christmas was our P45s wrapped up in pages from the financial times smeared with the excrement of the management team. Always assuming they had any left after all the shite they had been telling us all year.
I hope you all have a fun filled Christmas and, if I may make a suggestion for next year, could we not bring our spouses as Janie has been nipping my head all weekend.
Best Regards,
Graeme.
©Nettie Thomson 2009
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