Finally, we come to the third tier(s) of Any other Business; the Support Staff.  The jobs these people hold cover the receptionists, PAs to the Directors, administrators, officers, executives and co-ordinators.

Any other Business holds on to its receptionists like Liz Taylor holds on to husbands.  The permanent receptionists that have been recruited in the past have tended to be sour-faced old hags whose resentment at being employed to do feck-all drips down the telephone line to external callers and displays itself in the form of a mild panic attack when asked to do something other than answer the phone or open the post.  Fortunately for AoB's public image, it seems to have dispensed with any pretence that this post is anything but waiting out time on death row and now recruits bright young things whose only thought is to earn enough money to go travelling.

Each director has a PA.  All of these are female and the cannier directors have employed people who are bright, friendly and popular.  This means that whatever the general feelings of disrespect or resentment that may be harboured towards the director, the PA is so well liked that people generally tend to co-operate - firstly because the request is usually given in a charming and, if necessary, apologetic way and secondly because if the required information isn't handed over there is always a sense of guilt that the PA will get it in the neck from the director.  This scenario is particularly true of Pricilla, Baboon Arse and the Duchess.

'Administrator' has been given as a title to those people who work pretty hard however, they don't qualify for management status because their directors don't quite understand what they do.  It is a serious failing of AoB that it doesn't take IT seriously - it thinks that computers are 'easy' and has a sneaking suspicion that anyone involved in them as a job is secretly having a lot of fun.  This accounts for two administrators - the website administrator and the PC and Network administrator.  Anyone who thinks being shouted at by someone who has no idea what they've asked you to do and why it is impossible (website) is fun, or anyone who thinks it is fun to have dimwit directors, who refuse to take any training, call you over to their machine because they cannot understand the basic principles of 'word', would have to be part of the senior management team at AoB.

Other administrators include those people who work extremely long hours, often away from home, organising events and conferences or run small projects or cover the more junior side of finance and administration.

The term 'officer' was introduced by Cruella who was too important to have a PA, a breed whom she believes to be too lowly to be associated with such a grand person as herself, but basically describes a PA who does other things for her (i.e. her work).  The term has since been coined by others to describe someone who they think is 'above' a PA, but won't pay as much as a manager.

Executives are the same as administrators, but the Baboon Arse has introduced this term to his team to make sure that everyone knows that they are more 'important'.

Co-ordinators are the same as officers and usually work to a manager, rather than a director.  Managers aren't allowed to have PAs, so some partly fulfil this function, while the majority are just 'lower-key' versions of the managers they work for, without so much responsibility.

The majority of this tier of staff are good natured, have a good sense of humour and have the capacity to drink like fish.  As ever, there are a few exceptions - a few are described below.

If anyone were in need of a PA it is Tango.  However, her PA happens to 'work from home' a few hundred miles away - a cushy deal which has been bestowed to AoB from one of its previous Head Honchos.  This PA will be known as Tango-Too - as she too loves the sunbed.  Tango2 used to be the old HHoncho's PA until she decided she wanted a taste of the Goodlife, so she re-locates to the west country and a post is created for her.  She occasionally manages to make it into the office, when she treats it like a social club which has re-opened just for her.  She will wiggle around on too-high heels, kissing people like they are long-lost relatives 'mwoar, mwoar dalling.  How ARE you' (now let me tell you about me).  She has managed to retain her 'London' salary; so nothing dodgy going on there then.  Incidently, old HH will feature in a separate chapter, 'Monkey Magic'.

One of the officers deals with personnel and administration in a post which was created a year ago.  It isn't a full time job, so the person in this role tries her hardest to make herself as busy as possible.  Almost no day goes by without an all-staff email being circulated from her asking staff to fill out a desktop health and safety form, a personal contacts update form, do you want an all-staff birthday card form, do you use the database form, are you visiting a doctor form, you've been off sick form, are you taking any holiday at xmas form ...etc. (none of these have been made up).  Each email is invariably flagged and has a red ! mark next to it and woe-betide any member of staff who doesn't complete and return any of above forms.  In addition to thinking that she is the only person in the office who is busy, she also cannot properly perform the aspects of her job she was recruited to do, for instance, telling someone in their induction that they were ineligible for financial assistance with any eyetests because they were already wearing glasses - presumably if they'd worn contact lenses, it would have been fine.

One of the biggest chocolate teapots at Any other Business is a Co-ordinator.  In her time she has been PA to most of the directors who, as soon as they had worked with her for a while, cleverly found a way to re-structure their department so she was out on her ear.  She has a first class honours degree and phd in spreading poisonous gossip, much of it untrue.  A number of years ago, Any other Business had the ideal opportunity to rid itself of this person, when she was taken to an IT and the majority of staff gave evidence against her on the grounds of unprofessionalism and bullying.  Sadly, AoB was too chicken to act on the findings of the tribunal and kept her on.  She now sits in an office, out of the way of everyone else, where she can make her personal calls and emails, shop online and stew to her heart's content.

Over the course of this story, other personalities will come to light.  However, this covers the majority of staff for now.

This chapter is about the Baboon Arse (see Chapter 1, under Background continued).  Here, there will be an updated list of the Barse's phrases du jour

"Get outta town" - usually uttered in response to a staff member stating something they have achieved (personally or professionally) or having had a good weekend/night out

"Top drawer" - about anything he considers to be, or he supposes others to think is, excellent

"Do-able" - instead of 'possible'

There are around 20 employees who have management status at Any other Business.  By and large they are specialists in their own field or run specific projects that their directors can take credit for.  The majority of them see their job and the company for what it is and have adopted a healthy scepticism regarding much that happens above and around them.  In addition, the majority of managers respect each other and support each other, knowing that such support is unlikely to come from the relevant director.

Managers know that asking a director for support/assistance/advice is like saying, 'take this project, which I have been working on for the last two years, which is beginning to become established as a well-respected piece of work, tear it apart, put it back together (minus a few essential components - x, y, z) and then make some suggestions for improvement ('why don't you add x, y, z?  It would be so much better?')'.  Managers know that work and directors do not mix, not unless they have the masochistic perversion of re-doing their work time and again.

To say that managers weren't ambitious would be wrong.  They know the value of their work and know that they would be marketable elsewhere outside AoB.  This means that once they have completed a project or learned as much as they can from being there, they will successfully apply for another job in pastures new.  This makes for a fairly refreshing atmosphere, given that managers tend not to try to advance themselves within the company.

There are, as ever, exceptions to this.  Firstly there is Wales.  He works for Pricilla and he is just dying to move up the internal ladder.  Whilst he, like the rest of the managers, have worked out that the directors don't actually do an awful lot, instead of regarding the directors generally as a herd not to be respected, he wishes to join them on easy street.  When he first arrived at the company he set himself up as the office joker, complete with comedy blow-up sheep (well, he is from Wales, you know), a few failed attempts at internal promotion later, and with the competition gaining employment elsewhere he now sits at the right hand of his god (next to the Rolex).  He is now serious - even scowling at 'lesser' members of staff for no reason.  He has perfected a sycophantic cackle whenever his director utters anything that could be wildly construed as being humorous.  He is back biting and is beginning to show signs of that skill that every director needs - being able to pass someone else's work off as your own.

The other two exceptions are Ireland and Watford - two poison dwarfs who both work to the Baboon Arse.  Ireland is highly ambitious and from day one was taking credit for others' work.  Since being at AoB, she has blagged trips abroad and managed to get the company to pay for her to have driving lessons.  She has a love of self-tanning lotion, but appears to apply it randomly, so there will be huge streaks of orange then patches of white - and not even in those hard to reach places - sometimes one side of her face will be orange and the other will be off-white.  She draws her eyebrows (dark orange) onto her head at extraordinary angles and often resembles a vulcan.  Since starting at the company, she has given herself two promotions - this is achieved by simply going to the person who orders business cards and asking them to change her title on them and somehow or other everyone starts to believe that she has actually been promoted to a Senior Manager.

Watford loves makeup, the same way that Ireland loves fake tan.  It is applied liberally with sometimes startling results.  Watford has hauled herself up from a position among the support staff to management status.  She has managed to do this slightly more legitimately than Ireland - i.e. the promotions have actually been approved however she has only been promoted because of her persistent complaining and gnawing away at Marge (at the right time in the cycle).  She too believes herself to be a Senior Manager - mainly because she is older then everyone else, however she doesn't have the balls to actually go ahead and change her business cards.  'She doesn't have the front', would also have been a phrase to use, however seeing as she is probably the most well-endowed woman in the company, it doesn't seem appropriate somehow.

That's the managers dealt with for now.  Next stop, support staff.

The basic structure of Any other Business is essentially simple to understand; at the top there is the head honcho and his deputy, then several directors in charge of directorates, beneath them there are managers and then there are the support staff.

Head Honcho is new - he's been around for less than a year.  Unusually for his breed, he knows his stuff, he works hard and commands the respect of others within the company who hold the same work ethic.  We'll call him Harold.

The Deputy, on the other hand, has been around for years and years - infact she has been deputy to 3 different Honchos.  Deputy is a slave to her hormones and colleagues have been known to plot her cycle on a calendar and have learnt when to steer clear and when to ask for that all important pay rise.  She tends to favour the more disruptive members of staff over those that do the work  She is mad for a laff with the 'galls' and doesn't understand why they won't confide in her.  She has been known to do strange and embarassing things when drunk.  We'll call her Madge.

So far, so good.  A clear deliniation of responsibilities and importance.  Now we move on to the Directors.  These are a highly ambitious breed and therefore are each jockying to appear to be more important than the next.  Each director will have several knives sticking out of their backs at any one time as they have to constantly strike up allegiencies to do another one down.  One of the ways in which a director will measure their own importance is by the number of staff they have under them.  The number of staff usually has a direct impact on the amount of work that director does - more staff, less work - although they do get to take credit for a wide variety of other people's efforts.

The directors then, in order of 'importance'.  The Duchess is in charge of offering advice to business on the way it interacts with its clients.  Much of her day is taken up with meetings where she can pick up other people's ideas to pass them off as her own.  One of the more Machiavellian directors, she will also spend time speaking to the others to see who's hot and who's not.  When not 'working from home' in the local swimming baths, she will aslo discuss at length her divorce and evil ex-husband.

A man to whom many chapters will be devoted is the director affectionately known as 'Baboon Arse'.  He has an eye for the ladies and thinks he is VERY intelligent which makes him VERY patronising to everyone he talks to.  He also thinks he is VERY funny and is a really FUN boss to work for.  He will do his own share of ass-lickan however and his ambitions know no bounds.  In a way he is a lot like David Brent.

The next director is the legal eagle.  He has a penchant for showing off his Rolex and will roll up his left shirt sleeve to display it to its best effect.  He and the Duchess appear to genuinely co-operate with each other, making this a fairly unusual partnership.  He tends to get quite stroppy if he doesn't get his own way and has been known to have little trantrums.  We shall call him Pricilla.

The next director deals with finance and administration.  He can be a good bloke and be supportive of more junior members of staff, however he is prone to the green-eyed monster which brings out a vindictive streak in him.  He too has an eye for the ladies, although this doesn't extend further than buying them drinks.  In this story he will be known as Cerano.

Director number 5 is Cruella - in charge of external relations.  She loves animals and hates children.  In fact, each year the office Xmas card is a donation to a donkey sanctuary.  She is a rampant vegetarian who has been known to eat suckling pig.  Her approach to external relations is basically taking credit for other people's work by promoting it externally - if it gets recognition, it was down to her, if it doesn't then that person's hard work was, frankly, not up to the job.  Essentially lazy and work-shy, she is however a great self-publicist which has enabled her to last as long as she has.

At number six is another new member of staff - a bumbling professor-type, in charge of advising on money matters.  Too new to have established a proper profile, he will be known as Brains.

Finally there is the director in charge of overseas relations.  To say she is 'sunbed friendly' would be a gross under-exaggeration she is so orange that her name shall be Tango.  She looks like she has collided with a gravy lorry.  Her working day consists mainly of complaining how busy she is and 'popping out for a fag'.  She is mad for overseas travel so will manipulate any opportunity so that she can pop off to Amsterdam, Austrailia, South Africa etc. with the Head Honcho of a neighboring organisation.

That takes care of the prominent directors.  Lesser minions will be covered at a later date.

Imagine, if you will, a tall, windswept building in the middle of the metropolis.  Worker ants toil here everyday while others amble around outside, shopping, eating, drinking, scoring drugs at the local needle exchange or taking in some culture at the myriad of theatres and music venues that surround the focal point of this story.

Within this tower, two floors are dedicated to the advancement of business - in all its guises.  To this end a company, Any other Business, employes the good, the bad and the ugly to do its bidding - sometimes with hilarious consequences, often leaving some of its employees with jaws bouncing on the floor in frank disbelief at the lack of professionalism and parity displayed both internally and externally.  It could be described as a Mockery of a Sham.