What Did She Say?

The other day our Director invited a number of us for a coffee session: it's a semi-informal Q&A with missing supervisors, so he has a remote chance of hearing something like the voice of the people. Which in The Retail Bank is very faint. The employee satisfaction figures had tanked so bad they weren't being circulated and he wanted some idea why – gee, d'ya think that's because they took seven months to re-organise us? At one point, however, Herself The Lovely One Whose Very Passing Makes Men Sigh, an intelligent, hard-working, sensible and no-nonsense early thirty-something, said in context that she “felt very cocooned in the brand”.

I swear. I am not making this up. I couldn't. I don't use language like that. “Cocoon” is a noun naming the silk casing round a grub silkworm and a “brand” is a set of tradesmen's marks on packaging. It's also a carefully-constructed (well, sometimes) fantasy in the minds of... well, consumers, media types and a handful of corporate managers. Fantasy. Not reality. So when Herself The Lovely One Whose Very Passing Makes Men Sigh said she “felt cocooned in the brand” she's saying that she is living inside a fantasy about what our mutual employer is like. Except she can't be, because she's way more practical than that. I think she was saying, in my language, that she felt as if she belonged in the company and it felt like a reasonably secure place to be working. But what she said “cocooned in the brand”. Which carries a whole other set of meanings whether you meant them or not. Even to the person saying the words, no matter what they thought they really meant.

The photograph? On my way into work the previous Friday, I passed this ice-sculpture being installed. Don't know why they were installing, but I do know that everyone who passed it took photos.