My office at petticoated.com is on a mezzanine level, so that I can keep an eye on things, and make sure that the staff are not spending too much time around the tea urn. Spinner, our latest staff member, seemed to have fitted in well, but I was surprised one morning to see Pansy Frills and Spinner carrying in a large table from a store room, and laying out and unrolling all kinds of plans and charts upon it. They worked on these for about three days, whilst I did nothing to interfere, and then asked if they could convene a staff meeting in my office.

When everybody had gathered, Spinner placed an extraordinary pile of folders and papers on the desk, and began:

'Miss MacDonald and others, thank you for coming. This year, Britain finds itself on the threshold of a new century, not to say a new millennium. I believe we must ask ourselves, are we prepared to meet the challenges that lie ahead? Lydia Christine Polytechnic, the Peter Mandelson Professor of Change in the Department of Women's Business and Management Studies at the University of Humbug - I mean Humberside, has found, following a three year study commissioned by the current government in 1997, that we live in a world of very rapid change. Moreover, we now inhabit a global marketplace. No longer can we afford to be 'Little Englanders'.

I smiled at his Freudian slip - and a very pretty, lacy one it was too.

'How, then, are we to face the challenges of the future? One word describes and encapsulates the approach parameters that I believe we should be setting, and that word is...quality. We must not be frightened of change, but must adapt quality assurance procedures, and competency certification, which will ensure that we are fully aligned with best overseas practice'.

'Best overseas practice?' I interrrupted. 'Aren't things bad enough already?'

Spinner looked at me with the furrowed brow of incomprehension, and then continued his presentation:

'I believe that we can put together a quality management package which will make petticoated.com one of Britain's new centres of excellence. We must do our utmost to attract the best and brightest young minds in Britain to work with us in Grimsby. Because in the modern, post-structural network which is today's global economy, education must be seen as a life-long process...'

'I don't want the best and brightest young minds. I just want people who know what they are doing. That quality is much rarer'.

Spinner swallowed hard, but went on:

'Miss MacDonald, as part of our total quality approach to the restructuring of petticoated.com, we have prepared an architect's blueprint for a complete redesign of the office and shop floor network complex...'

To my amazement, he unrolled a large sheet of blue paper in front of me, and with a circling and twittering pencil, began to point out the most salient features of his proposal.

'For a start, we propose to increase the size of Miss Gribble's kitchen area by fifty per cent, and to provide her with a small parlour where she can rest between meals or tea breaks'.

'Right, that's it!' cried Miss Gribble, slapping her hand on the desk, and smiling in triumph. 'You can count on my support!' And with that she jumped up and left the office with a clatter and a raised fist. Very shrewd pair, Spinner and Pansy Frills.

'A partition will be constructed here to allow more space for the printing presses and ink vats, which will necessitate moving the tea urn a little closer to the typists' desks...'

To tell you the truth, I didn't think it would be possible to move the the tea urn any closer to the typists' desks, but I didn't say anything.

'We also feel that with the increases in circulation over the past year, a forklift facility...'

'Hold on Spinner! I cried. What's this?'

Spinner took a deep breath. 'In order to accomodate this new area', and he pointed to an oval drawn on the plan,  'it will be necessary to reduce the size of your office by approximately seventy five percent, Miss MacDonald. I am afraid that this rather overlarge desk will have to go'.

'But what is this oval bit at the side? I don't understand'.

'That - ahem! - is the indoor putting practice green'.

' What?? At the expense of my desk?'

'Miss MacDonald, we have, as you are aware, an increasing number of readers in North America and Japan. I think that we need to make provision for their particular cultural and recreational requirements if we are to be a main player in the new globalised marketplace of the third millennium'.

It was then that I remembered seeing Spinner and Pansy Frills arriving that morning each with a long leather bag, and each with the shiny head of a brand new putter protruding from same.

'Sorry Spinner, I detest golf, probably because it's a Scotch game. I like the countryside, I like the climate, I like the cuisine, and I like the clothes. But that's it. I have never swung a club or hooked a fish, and I never intend to. Do you have anything more to propose to me?'

'I think we need to bring the titles of the staff members - sorry, I mean the 'human resources' - into line with the streamlined business nomenclature of the third millennium. I understand that Miss Gribble has long been referred to as the 'tea lady?'

'Yes, that is correct, I replied.

'I think that for quality assurance purposes, she needs to be titled the liquid nutrition supply manager. Marcia, Angela, and Julie are to be the document preparation managers. And Pansy Frills will be the photographic and illustrations manager'.

'Instead of the picture clerk?'

'Miss MacDonald, I think it's a great pity, but I don't believe you have quite come to terms yet with the twentieth century, much less the twenty first. I have drawn up a fifty seven point question sheet for each staff member to complete, in order to assess their different core competency parameters. Moreover, in order to encourage a less elitist management structure, I propose that we have weekly meetings in which all staff can interface on a person-to-person basis'.

'I've seen people interfacing on a person-to-person basis, and  I couldn't afford the lager bill. And pray tell me, how would you assess Miss Gribble's 'core competency parameters?' Food and drink preparation obviously aren't amongst them'.

'I'd like to see you say that to her face', interjected Marcia.

'Marcia', said I evenly, 'I have agreed to provide a modest scuttle of coal in winter so that you will not have to carry your own. The working conditions here are so utopian they would make Arthur Scargill flush with embarrassment. So please be grateful, and do not complain'.

Marcia simply raised her eyes to the ceiling in cynical resignation.

'Well, I have one more thing to show you. In conclusion', stated Spinner in a tone of almost religious awe, 'I have prepared a...mission statement!'

I could glimpse Angela sighing, and covering her face with her hands in pained embarrassment.

He read from a sheet of pale blue paper, 'Our mission at petticoated.com is to promote the loving and beneficial application of petticoat discipline to the male members of the household unit, and to encourage the idea that the problems of society, both private and social, can best be minimised or solved by the female being in complete control of the domestic environment. To this end, we will produce a monthly journal which will promote these ideas in a thoughtful and tasteful fashion'.

'But Spinner, don't you think we would be better off just doing it? We know what we are doing here. And I think we should try to give our readers the best service we can. Your mission statement works against that'.

'But how can it?' asked Spinner querulously.

'Mission statements have only ever had one effect, which is no doubt the effect that they are supposed to have. They are not a statement of service. They are a substitute for service. In the past, if somebody complained about bad service, a business had to do something about it. Now they just shrug their shoulders and point to the mission statement. Let me put it this way: which businesses have the most wheedling and servile mission statements in the country? The banks. I rest my case - a mission statement entrenches poor service forever'.

At that, Spinner sighed, rolled up and refiled everything, and left my office in something of a huff, followed out by a now blushing Pansy Frills. Marcia and Angela had urgent work to attend to, and finally I was left with Julie Anne.

'I don't believe it', I said. 'What is happening around here?'

'Perhaps what is needed is a bit of TQM', said Julie.

'Total quality management? That's just the sort of worthless, destructive rubbish I'm trying to keep out of here!'

'No, no, not that', said Julie Anne with a soothing smile. 'I meant thorough quashing of males'.

'Yes, you're right! Fancy proposing to take my desk away...I like big, roomy, drawers - and no giggling!' I said, looking at Julie Anne sharply. She curbed the impulse somehow, but I could see her lips quivering in a desparate attempt at self control. 'Putting practice indeed! It'll be knickers before knickerbockers for those two by the time I'm finished!'

In the end, it was dear Marcia who found out the truth. I knew that something strange must have happened, because Spinner and Pansy Frills are very nice and sensible people at any other time.

They had attended a modern management seminar.

Now, for anybody to attend anything called a 'seminar' is risky. But for males to attend a seminar on management is absolutely fatal. By the time they left - and these things cost an arm and a leg you know - their poor male egos were so filled up with incomprehensible jargon that  it took the girls and me a whole week to 'deseminar' the two of them. Thankfully, things are now back to normal.