Office life
A tale of two cats
Holly Budd
Te first casualty of 1995 can be chalked up to Byron, the office cat. I don't suppose many offices still have cats; modern `Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?' management would demand that each has a budget and if the local authority heard that cats were fed kitchen scraps they'd send in the health police. Nevertheless, the fatter sort of cat, wafting from limousine to lift, neglects the every-day at his peril.
We've had generations of them, often more than one at a time and usually anony- mous inconstant creatures, but Byron though pretty inconstant himself — was a favourite, always spotless in his black tie and endlessly fed and fussed over. He once curled up in the back of the boss's limou- sine and greeted a startled foreign client at the airport. He was dangerously fond of cars, particularly of their warm bonnets, and the shocking news that he had been run over in the basement garage seemed tragically apt. Work stopped, there were tears, dona- tions to feline charities and a poem in the staff magazine. Nigel had to make Debbie a cup of tea and buy a packet of custard creams. That would have been it, were it not that the killer was Wiltshire, head of personnel. Horticulturally speaking, Wiltshire was an unusually pure example of the species, egregious boardroom creeper. The cult of caring being the fashionable rhetoric, that was the direction in which his ambition eagerly flowered. He started calling himself Director of Human Resources and announced on Day One that human resource management was 'about' caring. It was actually more about sacking, as some discovered Wiltshire himself showed us the way.
It would have been acceptable if the boss or one of his favoured marketeers had killed Byron. Along with the tears and poems there would have been unspoken acknowledgement that such people were fundamentally like that, but the zealous apostle of care could not be forgiven. Sto- ries about him spread, he became rattled, his behaviour more erratic. His combined PA and mistress ditched him just after he'd told his wife, leaving him to an expensive divorce. He tried to make up to his chil- dren by taking them skiing, breaking two of their legs. He bought loud new suits and boasted of the cost. There were suspicions of favouritism and problems with his expenses. His new PA asked for a move.
People ceased to believe him: you could not be a carer and kill cats. His pronounce- ments were mocked, his policies disregard- ed. He became desperate, affecting a bow-tie and wanting to have lunch with everyone. We all knew he was finished.
Somerset, his successor, had been in the chair less than a week when Byron returned from the dead, identified by white hairs on the tip of his tail and his liking for car bonnets. Wiltshire must have killed one of the many lookalikes. There was rejoicing and Byron and his colleagues look set to continue their comings and goings for ever more. Just like directors of human resources.
Previous page
