The World Bullshit Record

The World Bullshit record has been well and truly smashed at a conference staged by Frisbee Digitally Tracked Logistical Interface Solutions, a logistical interface company from Maidstone which specialises in digitally tracked solutions.

And if you don't know what logistical interfaces are and what solutions exist for them, then rest assured that none of the company's six hundred-plus staff is any the wiser either following this one-day event which set a new standard for corporate bullshit.

Employees who may have been hoping at last to find out just what it is that their company does were instead treated to a series of 'presentations' from various departmental heads in which the emphasis was - in their words - on 'fun rather than facts'.

Modular work environment

"It's a chance for everybody to let their hair down and put day-to-day pressures of the modular work environment behind them," said Miranda Roots, Assistant Director of Mercantile Compliance, who admits that she doesn't know what her job is either.

"Our staff work very hard all year round, doing whatever it is that they do, so this is an opportunity to take our foot off the gas for a day and show that Assistant Senior Upper Managerial Directors and associated pay grades are real people too and know how to have a good time.

"That's why our presentation consisted of us dressing up in feather boas and florescent wigs and miming to Abba songs."

Inter-Relational Policy Decisions

Nobody knows what this is for

Mike Frangipane, Head of Domestic Inter-Relational Policy Decisions, echoed Miranda's sentiments, adding: "Team bonding, goal setting, table-top brainstorming, high growth, contingency planning, outcome focus."

He went on to reel off about a dozen other meaningless phrases which he plucked at random from a corporate memo.

Amongst the many fascinating events that took place throughout the conference was a group session in which staff were instructed to write arbitrary nouns on a piece of flipchart paper, several briefings in which persons of diminished personality read PowerPoint slides prior to handing out printouts of the same which were too small to read, plus a team bonding exercise involving glue, glitter and coloured streamers.

This turned out to be the only high point of the day, but only because it ended in a fight.

Favourite choice of knitwear

The day's events culminated with the results of the annual staff survey which revealed company employees' favourite colour (blue), favourite TV programme (Strictly Come Dancing) and favourite choice of knitwear (cardigan was narrowly beaten into second place by balaclava helmet).

And if there was ever any doubt that the whole event was anything other than a dreary, frivolous, childish, crass, pointless, unproductive, ridiculous, unprofessional, silly and entirely unnecessary exercise in pissing money up the wall, then one only had to study the reactions of the majority of attendees who responded to this extraordinary festival of absurdity with a dead-eyed stone-cold silence.