Do you work in an office where they allow pets? I’m not talking about the odd mouse or rat. I recently met a chap who worked for the French edition of GQ and said their Parisian office was overrun with rodents because the staff at its sister magazine, French Vogue, mostly lived on a diet of nuts that rolled around loose in their desk drawers.
I mean dogs, largely. Companies are reportedly under growing pressure to allow staff to bring their dogs to work, partly as a perk to encourage people back to their offices, but presumably also because nearly everybody in Britain has bought a puppy since the start of the pandemic and they now face abandonment issues. Both the puppies and the humans.
Lovely, on the one hand. What could be jollier than a spaniel pottering about the water cooler? Dogs in the office supposedly reduce stress, boost team morale, increase productivity and encourage employees to become healthier, since they might offer to take Fido out for a walk from time to time.
On the other hand, may I remind everyone about the sad tale of Alan the dachshund? He was the Tatler puppy that became trapped in the revolving doors of Vogue House and sadly suffocated despite the attendance of three fire engines and several burly men in uniform. His owner had gone out for lunch; a fashion assistant was taking him out for a stroll; and Alan leapt towards the revolving doors on a retractable lead – our office that afternoon sounded as if it were holding a ritual wailing ceremony. Team morale and productivity was, I would say, extremely low for weeks.
Also, what happens if you allow dogs into your office and you end up with a colleague’s flatulent labrador underneath your desk? I’ve worked with worse creatures, and there might be the odd occasion when blaming the labrador would be useful, but it could become trying. What about allergies? What if you quite like one of your colleagues, but then they bring their dog into the office and you realise they talk to it in a silly voice? “Hello, is that the HR department? I’d like to make a complaint about my colleague Jeff who says ‘Who’s a good boy, then?’ 958 times a day.” What if your colleague has a badly behaved dog that leaps onto your chair every time you go to the loo, and when you come back, Jeff looks at you reproachfully and says, “That was Bigglesworth’s spot, wasn’t it? Down you get, Bigglesworth. Who’s a good boy, then?”
And where does it end? Let dogs in and you may end up with cats. Imagine: you’ve nearly finished an important PowerPoint presentation for the CEO.Seconds before the meeting, Cindy Clawford strolls across your keyboard, tipping a glass of water over in the process, and deletes everything. It is exactly the sort of behaviour that cats go in for.
You might end up with something even worse than a cat. Gavin Williamson should never have been trusted, quite frankly, because he kept his tarantula, Cronus, in a glass tank in his Westminster office when he was chief whip, despite a House of Commons ban on pets. Although at least he declared him. In 2007, a Google employee in New York smuggled his 3ft python, Kaiser, into his office because he “didn’t want to be away from it during the working day”. The trouble was, Kaiser escaped and was lost for three days. On the whole, I think I’d prefer the French rodents.
A pushy princess and the unwise sport of ski-queue jumping
Following last week’s column about how much I loathe skiing, a friend tells me a very good Alpine story about a member of the Royal family. Some years ago, this princess was skiing in France, but decided that she shouldn’t have to queue for the lift along with everyone else. Off she went, gliding to the front of the long line of morning skiers who were waiting patiently for their turn. “Ahem,” came a cough from behind her, whereupon the princess turned to see King Harald of Norway looking extremely miffed and pointing her towards the back of the queue.
A cautionary tale for anybody jetting off to the mountains soon: you never know who you’re going to bump into on those lifts.
It’s important to dress up when you’re going to the theatre
Are you a parent? What did you wear for the birth of your child? If you’re a woman, the answer is probably not very much. If you’re a man, perhaps pyjamas or whatever you managed to fling on before hurrying to the hospital. How about black tie?
Two friends have recently had their second child, and Hamish wore black tie for the event (as he did for the birth of his son a few years ago), because he believes that meeting his children for the first time “deserves a degree of formality”. The photos are quite magnificent: in one, taken shortly before his wife, Dominique, went down to theatre, Hamish’s black tie pokes over the top of his scrubs. In another, he’s beaming at his tiny new daughter as if she’s just come off stage at Glyndebourne. It’s a very joyful sight: congratulations to them all.
