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As people stubbornly refuse to drop the working form home habit picked up during lockdown, a Crawley business is turning to cake trollies, smoking and sexy affairs to entice employees back to the office.
“It’s hard to convince people to return to the office when you think about how anodyne and soulless the modern workspace is,” explained Leslie Bassett, head of HR at Smith, Gallup and Tolhurst Ltd.
“Open-plan, smoke-free, no day-drinking, complimentary healthy snacks – I think it’s pretty reasonable that people want to avoid all that. So, we’ve got to change.”
Leslie’s first innovation will be sexy affairs.
“It seems amazing to me that sexy affairs at work have fallen out of fashion. Well, not at Smith, Gallup and Tolhurst Ltd. We’re having a stationary room installed with a light that doesn’t work. It will contain nothing more than a few boxes of post-it notes and will be given over entirely to people having illicit liaisons. We’ll also be looking at introducing match-making system in the coming months to make sure even our ugly employees are able to enjoy a workplace affair.”
One of the more controversial decisions Leslie has made is to re-introduce smoking to the office. All desks will be equipped with a big ashtray and employees will be given a complimentary packet of Players Number 6.
“Smoking is lovely. A bit relaxing, a bit buzzy. It’s a really nice thing to do. For some reason, it’s fallen out of fashion in recent years. So, we’re going to bring it back. You may not be able to smoke in the pub, at home, or in church, but we’re going to make our office a thick fug of lovely, lovely nicotine smoke.”
Leslie’s HR department will also keep a stock of pipes and cigars for those with more exotic tastes.
Finally, Smith, Gallup and Tolhurst Ltd will be getting a cake trolley.
“That’s just a no-brainer. Cake trollies are easy. You get a trolley. We got ours from the Oxfam on the High Street. Then pile it high with iced buns. We’ll charge 30p a bun and make enough profit to install a cigarette machine on each floor.
These innovations are just the beginning, in the coming months Leslie and her team will be introducing birthday celebrations with strippers and cheap spirits at lunch, secretaries for everyone, individual offices, alcoholism, beige, and a reinforced photocopier so that anyone can photocopy their arse without fear of damaging company property.
