Finance: The Trader - Team trauma dampens Norman's conquest

BY FRIDAY evening I am running for the door.

My main concern is putting as much distance as possible between me and my colleagues. I don't want to see hide nor hair of them again until Monday morning, and not even then, especially if it means cutting short my recurrent dream about dinner with Ewan McGregor.

You can understand, then, my dismay when Norman announced at the end of Thursday's morning meeting that he was hosting a team barbecue lunch on Sunday, and he hoped we would all be able to attend.

Now, when your new boss tells you he hopes that you will be able to attend something, what he really means is that you will attend. After all, as it says in chapter three of whichever hot-off-the-press management theory book is on Norman's bedside table (no, I don't know why it's always chapter three, either), team building is crucial, and team events are the key whether the team likes it or not.

"I suppose we should be grateful that it's only a barbecue, and not one of those hideous survival weekends where you all get left on some sodden Scottish island with nothing but a tin of beans and a plastic bag and have to build a raft," I said to Laura as we left the office on Friday.

"Perhaps he hasn't read that bit yet," she replied. "Anyway, I'll see you on Sunday."

Sunday dawned like a typical British summer day: grey, cold and threatening to rain. I hauled myself out of bed, cursing God, Norman and anyone else I could think of, especially when I realised there wasn't even time for breakfast. We'd been told to arrive at noon, and I felt sure our new honcho wouldn't understand the concept of "fashionably late". So it was one quick black coffee, two painkillers for the hangover, and straight into the car for the drive to Norman's.

I arrived an hour late, having spent nearly two hours going round and round an ever-diminishing piece of Surrey looking for the right private drive off the right private road on the right private estate. When I found the place, I nearly cried with relief, though that could have been the lack of breakfast making me feel delicate.

Norman turned out to be less cross than expected. He just said something slightly pointed about being glad I could make it, poured me a lemon barley water and disappeared into the garden.

I spotted Laura, hiding in a corner with the papers, and headed her way. "What's up?" I asked her. "Surely Normski's not actually cooking out there? It's been chucking it down for the past hour."

Laura laughed wryly. Nothing, it turned out, could deflect our Norm from a plan once it had been created. "You see," she said, "he's not only dull, he's terribly conscientious. He went out specially yesterday to buy the barbecue, and now he's set up a little tent-thing to keep it dry."

My curiosity roused, I stood up and gazed out of the window. Sure enough, there was Norm wreathed in smoke, standing under a vast piece of tarpaulin. A piece of tarpaulin vast enough, in fact, for the whole team to stand under. I turned to Laura, my heart sinking faster than the Tokyo stock market. "Surely he can't..."

Oh, but he could. No sooner was the chicken ready than we were all herded out of the lovely warm house to eat. No complaints about the food (a bit dull, perhaps), but being soaked from the neck down while we were eating it didn't add to the occasion. The only person who seemed happy was our host.

"Well," said Laura, "you could say it's been a success. It was, after all, about team unity, and we're certainly united in one thing now."

Yes, I thought, we all hate Norman...