The Fairy and Christmas tree. – By Chris Kringle
Like all good modern thinking managers Santa Claus sat down with all his staff to agree the quotas for the end of year Christmas tree sales targets. After some negotiations and general exchange of views, the figures were agreed, and everyone set of to achieve their own targets.
By the end of November a number of the goblins, elves, and gnomes had already achieved their targets and were well on the way to considerable bonuses. All the rest who had not quite yet met the final target were still on plan to hit it by mid December, all that that is except for one fairy.
This fairy was way short of the target, and Santa had noticed that she was often late into the office in the morning, looking a little worse for way, and then disappeared after only a few hours. Santa had heard rumours that the fairy, could be found partying most of the day, and all the night away, at Devils Dyke, a club in the forest which had rather a poor reputation. Santa had a word with the fairy and hoped his little pep talk would help her focus on the sales targets with a little more energy and vigour.
Mid December, and all had now achieved their Christmas Tree Sales targets, with the exception of the fairy. So Santa thought it was appropriate to sit down with the fairy and have a formal review. Now Santa had been on a number of management courses, so he decided to apply some these new approaches.
He explained to the fairy that they had all agreed the targets and that everyone else had already met there individual quotas. His also went on to say that it was important to meet these targets as it affected the bottom line, and that whilst he may be an open minded employer, he was not a charity. He also pointed out that he understood that everyone had to maintain a healthy work life balance, however he felt that some work needed to take place for this balance to become effective.
To help the fairy further he redrafted, what he felt, was a more realistic sales quota for the next 10 days, explaining that even if the targets were not quite achieved it was important to strive to succeed, for both her own self esteem, and for her reputation. Santa then thought it was appropriate for the fairy to spend a few moments reflecting on these discussions.
He was very pleased when after a shortish period of contemplation, the fairy indicated that she wanted to say a few word.
He was however surprised at the response from the fairy. She spoke quite slowly, eloquently and very graphically; explaining what she thought of Santa and his sales targets, how she felt about working for Santa̢۪s company, and then before running out of the room, she went on to describe exactly what she thought he should do with his Christmas Trees.
Now Santa liked to consider himself an enlightened manager, always prepared to listen to staff's thoughts and keen to try to embrace all new ideas. It is for this reason, that he decided to implement the fairy̢۪s suggestions, right down to the letter.
This is why at Christmas, when you visit almost any house across the country you will always find a fairy on top of a Christmas tree.
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