Please don't put me on the stage...!

[Neil Ward]

Hi gang!

I've just spent three days on a management course at The Industrial Society,
which culminated in a final task in which each group had to make up a
performance piece to motivate an imaginary staff.  I *loathe* this sort of
thing with a passion, but - oh deary me -  everyone had to be involved...

We decided on a really lame theme of baking a cake called "Motivation" (it
gets worse).  One of our number penned some lines of doggerel based on such
motivational things as "incentives", "praise" and "personal development,"
while another drew cartoons of each topic on flipchart sheets.

The idea was that we would recite our our the poem, screw up the
motivational ingredients, and drop them into our mixing bowl (a disguised
waste bin).  Meanwhile, our "chef", a hyperactive woman resplendent in a
paper-bag chef's hat (labelled Pukka!) would mix them up with a spoon made
of a rolled up magazine and a squashed plastic cup.  At the end, we planned
to produce a drawing of a cake and sing "Motivate Your Staff - Come On!" (to
the tune of "Celebrate").

My reluctant role was as a backing singer and dancer.  Three of us stood
behind the unfolding scene described above, singing lines from songs, such
as "I cain't get no... moti-vation," "Praise you...!" and "You're simply the
BEST!" and doing something that could have been a natty, Supremes-like dance
routine had we not bumped into each other and stared at our feet the whole
time.

I sent myself on this course: how stupid is that?

Neil
Flying Ford Anglia