Do Me a Favour!

Once upon a time cell phones were the size of house bricks and just as heavy, the cutting edge computer technology of the day ran on a 386 processor (for non geeks that probably wouldn’t power your average calculator these days) , people wore different coloured fluorescent socks as a fashion statement and porn was still paper based. I don’t miss any of these things (well possibly the socks….) but what i do miss from the nineties is that immortal phrase ‘can you do me a favour’
The wheels of commerce and big business back them weren’t keep oiled and running by process, quality assurance, change control or any sort of work flow system it was all down to who you knew not what you knew and that immortal phrase ‘can you do me a favour’
Rather like cigarettes in post war Germany favours were the currency of the workplace, the only difference is that a half pack of lucky strike might have got you a night of passion with a local fraulein back in 1946 (according to my Grandad) whereas asking for THAT sort of favour in the office is going to get you at best slapped (at best it’ll get you what you asked for but as its highly unlikely outside of a smutty movie plot line I have discounted that option!) and at worst frog marched up for an interview without tea and biscuits with the thought police. Favours used to make the world go round.
But that was then and this is now and to get anything done here these days I need to have ‘engaged’ with about fifty different people of which 49 don’t have a clue what I am talking about and care even less (the fiftieth is me!) and receive their approval for what I am requesting. Once I have jumped through these burning approval hoops I can then approach the team responsible for carrying out the work and raise a work request usually only to be told that there isn’t the ‘headcount’ to carry out the work anyway and it’ll have to wait 6 months. 6 months later and I am finally able to collect my new post it pad from the stationary cupboard (which is jealously guarded by the secretary pool, to approach without permission means a swift and brutal death, usually administered with a hot nailfile)
To use this same example but to go back in time ten years I would simply have got up from my beige plastic office chair, adjusted my chinos and sauntered down to the secretary pool after smoothing down my wavy floppy hair. After some mild flirting with the aforementioned secretary pool (gloriously decked out in chunky plastic jewellery, big hair and lace) I would have taken 2 packs of post it notes, a new pen, some blutack and one of these newfangled mousematt contraptions.
Some things are best left in the past, wavy hair, plastic jewellery, fluorescent socks and 1945 to mention a few but change isn’t always good and sometimes we need to look back as well as forward for inspiration. Rather like the Peoples Judian Front (splitters!) the cult of the favour is still being kept alive in the hearts of the few biding its time out of sight of authority and I think its high time we stopped worshipping at the alter of process and sign off (a statue of a bespecled bean counter waggling their finger disapprovingly) and went back to the old Gods of common sense and good ol’ favours.