Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer
manage verb (SUCCEED) to succeed in doing or dealing with something, especially something difficult.
Over the years I’ve had the dubious honour to have the word Manager in my job title. I’ve managed productions, projects, budgets, teams of people, and their expectations. While managing to keep plants, fish, a cat and myself alive, for varying lengths of time, I’ve also managed to stay out of debt, rehab, jail and serious punch-ons.. I don’t know everything, but I reckon I know a thing or two about management.
In many companies, the convention remains that good news always goes on the notice board, and from time to time, the Manager is called upon to deliver bad news to a group of people. Lets say the news is that due to circumstances that are truly beyond your control, the gig has been cancelled and that the entire company’s contract (including yours) will be terminated two days hence. There is no good news in this story and people will rightly be shocked, feel shafted and be pretty shitted off. As the deliverer of these bad tidings, you will be perceived as the instigator (which you may well unwillingly be) and thus the target for the sum total of the shaftee’s rage and wrath. As a ‘big M’ Manager, your job is to suck this up, thats why they pay you the big bucks, but good management will see the situation cut and cauterised in the shortest time possible. The trick here is to employ the Kiss Punch Kiss Method (KPKM) to avoid being punched in the kisser further down the road. You will need to buy a packet of Fantales, and schedule two appointments. The first appointment will be with all of the people you need to sack and you’ll want to book it for 3pm in the afternoon, when collective blood sugar is at an all time low. The second appointment will be at your local waxing establishment, for a gender non-specific Back Crack and Sack Wax (BCSW) and that should be around 4pm on the same day.
When you see that everyone is gathered in the meeting room, walk in, throw the packet of Fantales on the table, and wait – thats the first Kiss. The gathered will descend on it like grateful diabetic wolves. Once everyone is happily gobbing away, enjoying the sugar hit and comparing movie stars, call attention and throw your bad news Punch. Keep it short, key points only, three sharp jabs at most. Allow the hits to land, but not for too long, and then while the caramel mouth guards still render them mute, it is important to make eye contact with everyone in the room, tell them you will speak with them all personally tomorrow, declare an early mark (the second Kiss) and leave immediately for your next appointment. The imminently unemployed will all then go to the pub, and bitch about you while they get drunk, secretly stoked to be sinking piss during work hours. Your ears will burn until they pass out, but by the time you see them in the morning, the initial Knee Jerk Reaction (KJR) will have passed.
Don’t get me wrong, even though you’ve given everyone a lolly and the afternoon off, when (if) they arrive at work the next day, you will be obliged to offer your sincere ear to the venting of your soon to be exemployees, which will test the seal of even the most shit-proof jacket, so you will need to be psychically prepared. While the disgruntled are processing, you’re headed for your BCSW.
For those who have never engaged in the delicate art of having all the fur removed from their body by way of hot wax and fabric strips, its exactly as much fun as it sounds. On entering the small flouro lit cubicle, a lady called Lin-Darleen comes in and tells you to get your gear off and your ass up on the plastic coated bed. The unspoken arrangement is that Lin-Darleen will systematically coat every hair below your neck with hot wax and rip it out at varying speeds and associated levels of pain – like bandaids, the slower wax is ripped off, the more it hurts. Some waxers know this and work with alacrity, others also know this, but don’t give a fuck and will inflict whatever pain they want in their own sweet time. Thats the fun of the depilatory lottery.
So you’re up on the table, sticking to the plastic, and Lin-Darleen has worked her way down your patches and is about to slather a paddle pop stick full of hot wax on your asshole, before she rips it off with her latex gloved hands. There is literally no standing on ceremony during this procedure, the dual purposes of which are to render your pucker hair free, and to provide you with a window to your own humility. Take a moment to be really present in the feeling. As far as happy endings go, you will happily hand over your hard earned cash for services rendered, purely because they have ended, and you and Lin-Darleen will never speak of it again. You will walk away from this appointment with pins and needles all over your skin, a tingling, tacky date and a deeper understanding of the perimeters of your pain threshold. This will serve you well in the days ahead.
On arrival at work the following morning, let it be known that each outgoing employee will be allotted personal meeting time with you, to share their thoughts and feedback on the most recent turn of events. Obviously, there is a good chance that most of them will be hung-over, if not still drunk, and although operating at less than optimum capacity, all will be displaying classic symptoms of the victim of a “Fuck and Dump” who has successfully rebottled their sorrows, regained consciousness and instinctively come out of the corner fighting, in order to salvage some skerrick of “Yeah, well I told them… have you got any painkillers?”
As you sit through this interminable revolving door of anger and recrimination, there will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, Manager. Arrange your best active listening face, button up your shit proof jacket, and cast your mind back to Lin-Darleen.
