A fool and his money Structuring Bernard Hollowood
The Work Research Unit set up by the Department of Employment to inquire into the problems of increasing job satisfaction will shortly announce a new set of research projects.
I hope the Unit will consult me in this matter, for as readers of this column will be aware, I have in my time tackled most jobs and gained enormous experience in attacking boredom.
My methods are and were completely unorthodox. When I was a schoolmaster I used novel methods of disciplining my classes. If there was a murmur while I worked on the blackboard with my back to the class, I would swing round like a startled bull and identify the culprit by his look of guilt or injured innocence. Then I would march up the aisle and rap the knuckles of the boy next to the offender.
The result was always the same. Laughter from the rest of the class, protests of innocence from the sufferer and a flush of shame on the face of the boy who had escaped punishment. The class was put in good humour, the boy who had been lightly tapped became the hero of the hour while the wrongdoer was seen for the time being as the villain.
By this and similar stratagems I alleviated the boredom that I occasionally experienced as a pedagogue.
Office work — in advertising — I found unutterably tedious. That is, until I restructured my job. My work was purely administrative, but I managed to invite myself to all the meetings of the 'creative' department of copy-writers and draughtsmen and enjoyed myself enormously. I shall never forget some of the campaigns I managed to launch, or those that didn't please our clients. Of the former I recall an ad for Foskett's mustard reading "You leave most of it on the plate! So why pay more?" The client needed a lot of persuading, but when, in the body of the copy, I wrote "and the same can be said for salt and vinegar" the idea was accepted and proved astonishingly successful. Actually, Foskett's was twopence dearer per packet than the product of the market leader in the business.
Muckearlier in my career I had worked for a time as a counter hand at a big department store in Birmingham. The job was routine and very dull. I was expected to interest a customer in a particular tie, tell him that it would go best with a suit of a green Harris (of which the store had a huge stock) and conduct him to the tailoring department.
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