The bear market in management bullshit is over. Last week, I came across two signs that managers' brief flirtation with being sensible – which started the day that they watched staff of Lehman Brothers leaving the bank with their stuff in boxes – is now finished. It is time to be sillier than ever before.
A friend who works at a large, multinational company tells me that he arrived in the office the other day to find a bottle of water had been placed on his desk – and on every other desk in the 11-storey building – alongside a little card displaying a series of yellow blobs from the palest lemon to the deepest ochre. This represented the colour of urine depending on how much water had been consumed and was meant to tell employees whether they ought to be drinking more. Dehydrated workers were less productive, the card warned.
This is the most extreme example I have yet seen of a HR department infantilising the workforce and meddling in matters that should not concern it. In my experience, even the youngest child has a perfectly good way of working out whether it is dehydrated – which does not involve going to an office loo with a yellow colour card. If it feels thirsty, it demands a drink.