More Legs Better

The Team-Oriented Workplace

My local sports-centre has several job vacancies, some of which are for bar work. But they do not want 'bar staff'; oh, no. What they want, are 'bar team members'. There are also vacancies in security. But they do not want 'security guards'; oh, no. What they want, are 'security team members'. I doubt such titles were coined by English teacher team members; for a grammatical ear pricks up. I refer to ambiguity, the eradication of which requires a judicious hyphen. Even so, neither 'bar-team member' nor 'bar team-member' seem quite right. (You have twins? Are they two-year olds or two year-olds?) This is not an adjective-noun pair, fighting it out, as it were, but a compound noun, thus, 'bar-team-member.' (Or as the Germans would write it, barteammember). To dispel the ambiguity, we must call on a two-member hyphen-team.

My local Quid Mart, not to be out done, no longer employs 'staff'; still less, 'workers'; oh, no. What they employ are 'team players'. Also, the team players do not report to a 'supervisor'; oh, no. They report instead to a 'team leader'. The team players are remunerated at minimum wage; and the team leader, since he carries a crushing load of responsibility, gets 'alf a quid more. They may be drudges; but they are team-playing drudges. You can't stack shelves as individuals; you must form a team first, much like the Navy Seals. Stacking shelves, after all, is just the same as Black Ops; only less dangerous.

Nowadays pretty much all job adverts say some such; for example, 'we are a team-oriented environment'; indeed, 'team' is used with a pious or reverential imputation: team-playing is next to Godliness. Personnel departments - nowadays rebranded as HR - have a template for all job adverts, in which 'team-playing skills' are specified as an essential facet. But if they're essential for all jobs, then why must they appear in all adverts? Why not take team-playing skills off, and just assume they're required? When Stan Laurel places a newspaper advert, it says, much to Oliver Hardy's vexation: 'Persons who aren't interested need not apply'. (Now look at the mess you've gotten us into.) I propose putting the same sentence on all job adverts. So many applications from people who don't want the job! We're told to avoid clichés when applying for jobs; but job adverts are replete with them; 'team-playing skills' is as hoary as it is hackneyed.

I found a c.v. left carelessly by our fax machine: the covering letter announced (piously), 'I am looking for an opportunity to use my team-playing skills'. If I made the hiring decisions around here, I’d say 'En garde!' He wrote that sentence, not because he wanted to use his team-playing skills, but because he wanted a job; and to get a job, he had to jump on to the team train. A recruiter once said to me, 'I can’t see the word "team" on your c.v.' I may have cast my eyes to the sky. There was a good reason why he didn't find it: it wasn’t there. I should've said, 'give it here - I'll write "team" on it, if it'll make you any happier'. Writing 'team player' on your c.v. does not make you a team player. It does, however, make you a conformist, a follower, and a kow-tower.

A colleague had a well-known preference for solitary work. If he told you what he was up to, it was strictly on a 'need to know' basis. Even so, he guaranteed a superior product; he was among the best engineers I ever knew - I used to address him as 'venerable sage'. Without his input, the product would've been so much poorer. It is perverse to lay down criteria that filter out a good set of brains.

Our office resounded all day to the mantra: 'team . . .team . . . team . . .' I'd call someone and get their voicemail: 'Hi, this is Joe Dunderhead, team-player.' 'Hi, this is Fred Aventaclue, team player'. 'Hi, this is George Neverthinkformeself, team player'. By the secretary's desk a small bookcase contained useful volumes. 'Relevant technical books?' I hear you ask eagerly. 'About engines, say?'. Well, not quite. 'How to lead a team'. 'Effective management of teams'. 'The team-orientated work place'. And that biggy, 'Cross-functional teams', taking the ideology to a whole new level.

Whenever there was a problem, someone would say: 'We have to form a team.' These moments reminded me of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, in their (team-playing) juvenilia. In every film, there's a point at which Mickey Rooney says, 'Let's put on a show'. The camera then focuses on Judy Garland’s face, on which the excitement grows and grows, as Mickey Rooney expatiates on the costumes, the music, the dancing, until the poor girl is jumping up and down.

Like all sponged-up ideologies, the team obsession lacks all conceivable limits: teamwork is good, therefore more teamwork is always better. Whenever I'm confronted by a sponged-up ideology, whenever I'm told 'that's the way it must be', I tend to filter it through my own intellect. Well, when I ran this 'team stuff' through my own intellect, it asked me whether we played football or basketball. I said 'no, we design internal-combustion engines'. And my intellect replied, 'Hm', while placing thumb and forefinger on its chin.

My suspicion is this: those with no technical aptitude will find other ways to show how really, really useful they are - and this brings me my boss, who I'll call Joe Dunderhead. One time he'd just returned from this course about, unsurprisingly, 'team work'. 'It's definitely the way to go', he gushed. 'We're still not doing enough teamwork'. I was fairly successful, I think, at keeping away the derisive smile that tried to settle on my face. What our workplace desperately needed was technical know-how. The team, after all, must know the direction in which to kick the ball, and the skill with which to kick it. Here was my boss extolling teamwork, when he did not know how to use a voltmeter.

I overheard a colleague on the phone: 'To get a job around here, you have to say "team" as many times as possible at your interview. You just say, "Team team team team team team" '. At job interviews, supervisors like Joe Dunderhead would make a tick for each avowal, and gave the job to the most-ticked candidate. This 'team stuff' was indeed mentioned at my own interview. Someone, it may have been SS-Obersturmführer, announced: 'a PhD is not obtained through teamwork', turning on me his facially censorious rebuke. My position, is that when criteria shut out useful people, then managers - who after all put those criteria in place - are damaging the business they are supposed to be safeguarding.

From time to time the denunciation of political undesirables is necessary, for which sponged-up ideologies provide invaluable pretexts. Alan Usefulguy was among the best technicians I ever worked with, an unmistakable asset to our employer - and an equally unmistakable team player, if ever there was one; but he was also a political undesirable. (He had the great misfortune to be smarter than his own boss). How do you denounce a political undesirable? That is easy, there's a stock phrase: 'You’re not a team player'. I should say that, contrary to what the reader probably expects, I was never thus impeached; but I did behave from time to time like a dangerous counter-revolutionary. You see, there were several significant technical problems that I, erm, solved on my own. What team players do not do, is retire to a corner and then emerge sometime later with the solution to a problem which team-players have found intractable, notwithstanding their team-playing skills. Four legs are good, six legs better, eight better still; but two legs are sometimes annoyingly useful.

(c) cufwulf

cufwulf@aol.com