How spooky is it when you find your department rapidly filling up with clones – of your boss? It’s all very well expecting us to imitate their body language during the interview but we didn’t know we needed the identical DNA before we got the job.
Bosses all know that teams are meant to be a ‘diversity of skills and personality types’ (er, you don’t want everyone crying behind their work station at the same time as there aren’t enough toilet rolls to go round). Except many managers don’t feel capable of making these subtle distinctions. They’d much rather employ staff with the same psychopathic tendencies as themselves. After all with the long hours culture wouldn’t you rather share evening meetings with someone like yourself who's quite happy to practise urinary retention and share half a Wagon Wheel?
In one recent job my line manager saw it as her mission to clone herself lest a tragic accident made her incapable of holding any of her eighty-six ring binders. Admittedly no one quite shared her dress sense, although a tendency to look as if you were attending a wedding reception circa 1987 was slowly becoming de-rigeur. But when it came to being perfectly humourless and to facing off colleagues with meaningless processes and procedures she must have felt great pride in her recruits. And many of them, I slowly became aware, had developed a penchant for cat calendars and soft toy kittens and would often be found together enjoying the latest cat diary. Needless to say those of us not of a feline inclination were glad to feel ostracised and soon found ourselves working elsewhere.
On the other hand I once worked with a colleague I had a great deal – too much – in common with. We would spend whole afternoons rapping about films and literature rather than devising ad campaigns for Southern Gas. It wasn’t good for either of us and he was sacked shortly afterwards.
Just another lose-lose corporate situation. Though, quite honestly, are any of us still counting?
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