They looked at him and maintained their silence.
Guy was used to this. No one ever wanted to be the first to introduce themselves in these integration meetings. He was trained for it though. The professional ice-melter, that’s what his line manager called him.
‘Shall I get us started?’ He laughed, playfully mocking their reticence.
‘I’m Guy Proctor, Head of Wellness, and I’ve been with MacroTech for – ooh – must be twelve years now.’ He feigned shock.
‘Crikey!’
He gave another forced laugh. When no-one joined in, he extended an arm, inviting the woman sitting to his right to speak.
She shuffled; arms folded.
‘Claire Smart, Office Manager.’ she murmured. ‘With JBS for twenty years – before MacroTech bought us.’
Glances were exchanged. Guy’s smile wavered.
‘Well, thank you Claire. Welcome.’ He moved on to the man next to her.
‘And you are?’
‘Er, yes, my name’s Craig… Craig Scott.’ He giggled self-consciously. ‘I’m a new Customer Service Administrator. It’s my second week at MacroTech.’
‘Wow! Two weeks?’ Guy threw his arms out. ‘Welcome to the MacroTech family!’
Craig giggled his thanks. Guy moved on, the ritual repeated until all attendees had made their introductions.
‘Wonderful,’ said Guy. ‘Now, the point of this meeting is “integration”.’ He wrote the word in giant letters on a flipchart.
‘Integrating JBS with MacroTech, getting to know each other better, so that you guys …’
He unconsciously gestured towards Claire.
‘…can see that we don’t all have horns…’ His smile stretched to breaking point.
‘…and that we’re all one big happy MacroTech family.’
Half the room nodded. The other half, the half that had recently learned of their acquisition by the multinational, remained unreceptive.
‘Now, to get us started I want us all to play a little game. Can anyone guess what it is?’
No one could.
‘It’s a trust exercise.’
Claire imagined falling into the waiting arms of her new colleagues. Naturally, they dropped her. She groaned involuntarily.
‘Now,’ Guy said, turning away from her. ‘We’re going to go around the table, and I want you all to tell us about your biggest…’
He paused, holding his breath for comedic effect.
‘…regret.’
After exhaling loudly, he looked at the man sitting to his left.
‘Now, who’s going to start? Steve?’.
Steve stammered. Claire felt relieved. They were going to other way around the table, so she would be last to confess. That gave her plenty of time to conjure up an innocuous answer.
Steve, on the other hand, was panicking. The question had woken him from a daydream. Without the time to think he simply blurted out the first answer that came to mind. It was the wrong one. The truth.
‘I think it would have to be the way that I treated my first wife – when we got divorced.’
The others fell dead silent. No-one was expecting this level of intimacy.
‘It was rough,’ he continued. ‘I abused her, emotionally and-’
‘Thank you Steve,’ Guy quickly interjected.
‘Now, who’s next? Julie!’
Julie, a no-nonsense divorcee, was inching her chair away from Steve.
‘Your biggest regret?’ Guy asked, nervously.
Julie shrugged. ‘Well, I didn’t study very hard for my GCSEs?’
Guy breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He thanked Julie then moved on.
The confessions that followed were equally banal and by the time they reached Craig, the new Customer Services Administrator, Guy’s blood pressure was normal.
‘Biggest regret, newbie?’
‘Well, this is a bit embarrassing,’ Craig said, the giggling subsiding. ‘But there’s only one I can think of.’
‘That’s fine.’
‘Well, a couple of years ago, at my sister’s wedding, I got really drunk.’
‘We’ve all been there,’ someone said.
‘Thank you Crai-’
‘Yeah, but, I mean, I got really drunk, so’s I couldn’t remember anything – talking mullered. Next day I went round to my Mum’s for Sunday lunch and she wouldn’t talk to me.’
‘Erm… why?’ Guy was compelled to ask.
‘Turns out I got a bit lairy, then got caught short – I needed a pee – but rather than go to the toilet, I did it up against a radiator – and it was one of them old cast-iron ones – and it cooked my piss!’
Titters across the room. Craig continued.
‘Apparently it stank the room out so badly that they had to evacuate the wedding reception. Whole night ruined. They’ve not spoken to me since.’
After the room had calmed, a deflated Guy turned to Claire.
‘I regret missing that wedding,’ she said, crying with laughter.
Editorial
This is another true story, I’m afraid, and one of my favourite anecdotes from time spent in corporate working life. More than once during writing I imagined Reece Shearsmith in the role of Guy. It’s certainly the kind of sketch you might see in The League of Gentleman.
You could (justifiably) argue that the character of Steve doesn’t need to be there, he doesn’t really add much, but this is how it happened in the meeting and so I decided to keep it in. It doesn’t detract from the tale (and it helped with the word count.)
Oh, and the punchline didn’t happen, I’ve made that bit up. In reality I was sat where Claire was positioned, at the end of the line. However my answer was much more banal – it was the same as Julie’s, (I was still reeling from the one-two combo of wife beating/pissy radiator confessionals!)
Pl@tpav - Telling Stories 