In the workplace, I have just employed a cynical tactic that I first learned on Jimmy Nail’s Crocodile Shoes. Let me explain:
Jimmy and his Agent (I think) are listening to Jimmy’s demo tape which is to be played to Rick Spangle, head of FAB Records. Jimmy’s not at all happy. “Where’s the sax break gone? It’s crying out for it!”. The Agent says he took it out on purpose – and Jimmy is perplexed – for it is obvious to him that it should be there. The Agent asks Jimmy to trust him on this one.
Later we see them playing the tape to Spangle. Spangle says it’s a good song – but he thinks there should be a sax break. The Agent initially bristles, but then pretends to consider this…and then pretends to warm to the idea…and then he gets excited – “something like (murmurs the tune of the sax break that was taken out)…?” Spangle says “Exactly!”
A bit later, the real version is played and Agent is open-mouthed in wonder.
Agent says to Spangle – “you really do know how sprinkle magic dust don’t you?”
Spangle – “what can I say? I guess I was born with this ability.”
Everyone’s excited and on board. And it was all down to a little bit of sleight of hand by the Agent.
Now I am not saying I have done anything like that. I hate sax breaks! But at work I do sometimes leave out a little bit of something, so that the other party can participate by suggesting the missing piece. And then I say “that’s a great idea” and they feel ace. As a result, the thing you want doing gets done because it’s (now) partly the other guy’s idea! I tells ya – it works like a charm.
And it’s all thanks to Jimmy Nail.
Sniffity says
What happens when they don’t suggest the missing piece? Or suggest a piece which is much worse than the missing one?
Vulpes Vulpes says
Such as when the management donkey* you need to get past says your proposal is sound as it stands, and will, from that moment on, veto any change, even the (re)introduction of the USP you deliberately omitted from the initial proposal?
You need to have also adopted the success strategy called “know your enemy better than your pals” in order to deploy the strategy described, so that you only use it when you know it’ll work.
*for clarity, donkeys themselves are ace. I use there name here as a metaphor for stubborn behaviour. I am sure they will grin and concur, proudly.
Black Celebration says
You can still add the missing piece yourself if they don’t. This tactic just gives you a brief manipulation window to try for stronger support.
Moose the Mooche says
Brief Manipulation Window – that warrants both a TMFTL and a hurrrr.
Arthur Cowslip says
I like this! I do this a bit as well.
What also works is enthusiastically giving someone else credit for something, even when you know they didn’t really come up with the idea and they are just parroting back something you already said earlier.
The only thing that hurts is your ego, but it gets the job done. And you can always rewrite history and take credit later when it matters.
Black Celebration says
I think that works if your victim is vain but, yes, it can help get the job done. As does apologising for an oversight that really wasn’t your fault. If that is what it takes, and the greater good is achieved – then it helps everyone to move on.
Kaisfatdad says
You are an ingenious, sophisticated devil, Mr Celebration.
Isn’t Shakespeare also rather good at setting up scenarios like this where one character gets another to suggest something as though it was their own idea?
Shakey and Nailsy: birds of a feather!
Moose the Mooche says
Why yaboogaman my leige!
Black Celebration says
whyayefore art thou, though but Oz?
Moose the Mooche says
Cesare Borgia? Step off!!
Paul Wad says
A place I used to work demanded that all letters to clients must be peer reviewed. This one bloke used to infuriate me by finding a ‘mistake’ where they wasn’t one, so I started making a deliberate spelling mistake early in the letter for him to pick up on. He’d then usually leave the rest of my letter alone (unless there was something that actually needed correcting of course!).
But a variation on the Jimmy Nail scenario was when you were going for football* trials that are done over more than one session. Always do well in the first session, but never bust a gut. Instead, play better in the second session as the coaches will then note the ‘improvement’ and they’ll be much more likely to take you on. If you play to your maximum in the first session there is a chance you won’t do as well in the second.
*other sports are available
Moose the Mooche says
This is the way a lot of albums are constructed. Only a idiot puts the absolute A-game tune on side 1 track 1. Hold it back for track 2 or 3 at least.
There’s a thread in that… a really tedious thread.
Mike_H says
Not necessarily.
If you’re a brand new band setting out your stall, so to speak. If you don’t have a first track side one that grabs the listener’s attention, they may well not bother to listen to the rest.
Case in point: Ian Dury’s “New Boots And Panties”. First track, side one “Wake Up And Make Love With Me”.
Turtleface says
Hmm – but the rest of side 1 is fantastic as well.
Tiggerlion says
Things go awry mid side two when his Tourette’s takes over.
Freddy Steady says
Does it fuck!
Tiggerlion says
You put ‘they’ instead of ‘there’ in the second sentence!
Do I get a prize for spotting your deliberate mistake? 😉
Moose the Mooche says
Come to the Afterword to get peer-reviewed.
(hur)
Paul Wad says
That’s the trick you see. Now you’ve picked that up you’ll leave the rest of it alone and won’t re-write it unnecessarily.
A bit like a Red Hot Chili Peppers album. You put it on, decide track one is rubbish, turn it off and therefore don’t realise the rest is rubbish too.
Ahh_Bisto says
I don’t even have to play track 1.
I must be some kind of genius.
paulwright says
Oh don’t be mean. Not all Chili Peppers tracks are rubbish. Some are merely boring.
(and to be honest I like Under the Bridge)
Moose the Mooche says
I remember somebody saying “The moment the RHCP put shirts on, the world will wake up and realise they are just another band”
Ahh_Bisto says
..as performed by All Saints
Paul Wad says
I would have thought that if you like one track you’d like them all, because the bits I’ve heard over the years make me think they’re all the same song with different titles. The worst for that kind of thing was that awful Scouting For Girls album my wife bought. Every single track sounded exactly the same as the single that convinced her to buy it and the single was rubbish.
Along those lines, I listened to The Housemartins’ London 0 Hull 4 the other day, for the first time in ages, and I still chuckle at most of the songs starting with exactly the same riff. It’s a good riff though and a good album, so they’re okay!
Moose the Mooche says
That nearly happened with Me and the Farmer, before they decided to beef up the guitars and pinch the intro from the Buzzocks’ Boredom.
Freddy Steady says
Yes⬆️
I thought this years ago when it came out but had no-one to mention it to. Was serving in the RAF in Germany at the time and listening to the Housemartins was enough to have your sexuality called into question. Or at least…”Why do listen to that weirdo weirdo punky punky shite?”
Moose the Mooche says
The Housies were mysteriously popular in (West) Germany. Perhaps it was Terry Collier types like yerself.
retropath2 says
I like Californication and the one before it. Or was it after it? 2 of theirs, anyway. And the Under the Bridge song. The rest? Nah.
Locust says
Back when I was an unemployed teenager and had to take a crap barely-paid youth trainee job at a small publishing house on the verge of bankruptcy, I had a brilliant tactic to get me out of work quickly each day…until it completely backfired…
Every day when I got my first assignment (photocopying stuff, usually) I’d finish it and look around to see what else needed to be done, and then I’d do those two or three jobs as well. Then I’d go to my supervisor and ask for something to do, and she’d mention one of the other tasks I’d already done of my own accord. “I’ve done that too”, I’d answer, and again when the other jobs I’d finished quickly was mentioned. This would completely flummox the supervisor who’d planned for me to be kept busy by those four jobs all day, and I’d end up being sent home by lunch because they couldn’t think of anything else for me to do. Result!
First week, that was. Then they got together and decided “We must make better use of this efficient girl, so that we can take extended lunches and go home early instead of her”.
I ended up doing most of the work there, while the rats on this sinking ship was out trying to secure new and better jobs. That taught me to pace myself at work…especially at low paid jobs!
Moose the Mooche says
The only decent piece of advice I can offer anybody in the context of work is: Look Busy. In low-paid jobs this usually means grabbing a sweeping brush.
Mike_H says
On construction sites the solution is to wander around with a site drawing in your hand, occasionally stopping and looking at some feature, then the drawing, then again at the feature, mutter something inaudible and move on. Repeat whenever anyone who looks like management or client comes into view.
On one agency job that I worked, we were a bit short-handed but contracted to have several more people on-site. We were up to date with the program of works, however.
The site management were going to be showing the clients around the job one day and our boss wanted to give the impression we were fully-staffed.
Most of us were deployed on the ground floor of the building before the visitors arrived, to look busy, and as soon as the client had been past some of us were sent up to the next floor, with changes of any distinctive clothing, to look busy in poorly-lit places where our faces would not be recognised.
Moose the Mooche says
On closer inspection, the drawing you keep referring to seems to be a crude caricature of the site manager with a cock and balls coming out of his head.
Black Celebration says
Yes – my first ever task at my first ever job (in a supermarket) was met with admonishment from my 18 year-old Supervisor. I had just taken 5 minutes to do something that is a 20 minute job. Otherwise, the management will start to take the piss – he said.
metal mickey says
“I’m All Right Jack” managed to work an entire movie around that story…
duco01 says
There’s an old Hungarian saying (apparently): “A slow job takes a long time”.
Moose the Mooche says
hur
metal mickey says
A David Bowie LP review helped me get an “A” in my mock-English “O”-Level…
It was a review of the “Scary Monsters” album (in Record Mirror if memory serves, possibly by now-respected author Tim Lott), wherein beginning and ending the album with songs called “It’s No Game” made the reviewer liken it to the cyclical structure of “King Lear”… I knew nothing of Lear, but my exam essay gave me an excuse to mention “the cyclical structure of King Lear” myself, which got an nice red “excellent observation!” note from the marker, and an accompanying “A” mark… ha!
So, the lesson is, you can bluff quite a bit with very little judiciously-applied trivia…