Wednesday - One of our knive's is missing

Another team leader meeting in the board room for added secrecy and away from attentive ears.

Jez must be slipping. It took him all of four minutes before he made a crack about Jo. Tracey had booked some holiday - her second already in the year and he'd commented that she was almost away from the office as often as Jo. I did the rightful thing and defended my team member.

"In the past twelve month's Jo has only been ill twice. Which is less than Steve in your team. She's improved a lot since our last little chat," I said, stating absolute facts that negated the reputation that had dogged Jo.

Jez appeared stunned as if I'd just hit him over the head with a giant mallet. But to be honest I've had enough of the snidey character assasinations that were so persistent in the office.

As Ted told me when he was my Mr Miyagi for that week last year, if you tell people something is true often enough, eventually they have no choice but to believe it.

"To be honest with you," I continued in the meeting. "Jo isn't a career person, she only wants to make some money so that she can go out and enjoy herself at the weekend."

Anne, who had left the womb aged 57, looked as me as if I'd just started talking in Mandarin. The concept of not living for work so totally alien to her I might as well have suggested that some people like to chew off their own heads.

"But she works really well when she's here," I continued. "But she's starting to feel that people are getting at her and this is affecting her work. I wouldn't want to lose her from the team."

Anne thought for a moment before speaking. "If someone can't take the strain they shouldn't be in this job. We need to start weeding out the shirkers that are dragging this department down. Don't be taken in by Jo.We can't continue to support people who just want to take from this company and don't want to give anything back. Be careful with your dealings with her, Luke. People like that are always judging others by their own standards and accusing colleagues of their own behaviors."

Quite. I thought.
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