A Sustained Corporate Battering

Concerns are growing for Christian Pyle, Senior Business Partner at Frisbee Digitally Tracked Logistical Interface Solutions, following a series of social media posts which indicate that he has dangerously low expectations in life. Over the past few weeks he has tweeted that he was 'looking forward' to a meeting on business continuity, 'excited' by a new office layout and 'thrilled' to be taking part in a financial strategy exercise.

"We've been worried about Christian for some time now," his wife told us as she choked back the tears. "He used to treat all this mundane bullshit with the contempt it deserved, but since he's been working at this new place he's changed. I don't know how, but they've got to him."

Much to the relief of his family and friends, Mr Pyle has now agreed to see a specialist and hopes are rising that his self-esteem can be restored to its previous levels. And Mr Pyle has welcomed the idea, if a recent post is anything to go by in which he writes that he is 'thrilled' and 'excited' to be embarking on this 'fantastic new life-actualisation opportunity.'

We invited business psychologist Dianne Headshrieker to give her verdict on some of the posts that Christian has recently uploaded...

"Initially it appears that this individual is being sarcastic. Certainly that's what most normal people would think, but the key to interpreting the real meaning behind this is recognising that this person is not normal. This is a man who has taken a severe, sustained corporate battering; someone who has had the joy systematically knocked out of him to the point where the prospect of a day spent talking about stationery is genuinely the highlight of his week. The author of this message has been reduced to a near-vegetative state in which he will begin to salivate at the mere mention of a hole punch, and where the prospect of a discussion about envelopes is enough to send him into paroxysms of ecstasy."

"Quite why so many people post pictures of noticeboards is something that is still not fully understood. In this case the hashtag might indicate some principal that the author is wishing to illustrate. However, it's more likely that this individual is desperate to be 'included', to be part of 'the team', and in order to achieve this they have chosen to sycophantically heap praise on something which is uninspiring and commonplace, without considering whether such adulation is warranted. They have also failed to consider the possibility of there being a right way and a wrong way to spell the word 'noticeboard'."

"Three exclamation marks - I feel we are getting close to the point of breakdown. The company's original post is a bland and soulless aphorism which, even if it were used in some sort of context, would never approach any recognisable measure of sincerity. Nevertheless, this individual not only believes it but appears to have interpreted it personally. He is the staff member who is valued, he is the person that his masters wish to ensure is happy. The implication that this is only in order to make him more productive is not acknowledged. The line between sycophancy and gullibility is a fine one, and in this example it seems to have been crossed, I fear irrevocably so."

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Takeaways Hit by Persistent Squirrel Abuse

Many animals have been observed using tools in order to accomplish everyday tasks. For instance, the woodpecker finch uses a cactus spine as a spear to impale larvae, elephants modify branches to scratch themselves with and pandas can use power tools. But so far squirrels have proven to be unique in that they are the only animals that have been observed to use the internet.

Typically, squirrels use services like hungryhouse, Just Eat and Stuff-My-Face-Please to order up takeaways from local companies. They have a particular fondness for curries, with lamb pasanda being the number one choice. By and large, however, most businesses find their custom unwelcome.

"It's a real pain," one delivery driver told us. "The alarm bells start to ring when the address appears to be in the middle of nowhere. You end up walking through some creepy old woods, with these excited little shapes scurrying about on the edge of your vision and the feeling of beady little eyes all over you. When you get to the right tree, you ring the bell and a furry little bastard scampers down and sits there expectantly, cheeks puffed out in excitement, and you just think oh shit, not again.

"The worst thing is they expect to get away with paying you in acorns."

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Hypnotic Wipes to Tackle Information Leakage

New data protection laws mean that any workers with access to sensitive personal information will be required to have their memories hypnotically erased upon moving to a new place of work.

"Every time somebody leaves an employer we run the risk of a massive data breach," said Emma Cryption from the Information Commissioner's Office. "Whether through carelessness or deliberate action, there is an ever-present danger that personal information, your personal information, could fall into the wrong hands. We can take measures to ensure that printed matter never leaves the workplace, we can ensure that passwords are updated and networks remain secure, but we've never been able to wipe the information stored in people's heads - until now."

Although traditionally considered unreliable, recent breakthroughs in the field of hypnotic suggestion mean that it is now considered a feasible way of preventing both conscious and subconscious information leakage. New legislation will soon make it mandatory in many professions and the Information Commissioner's Office is keen to provide reassurance.

"It's perfectly safe," said Mrs Cryption. "Admittedly, the techniques in use are very new and still a little rough around the edges. It's not as precise in targeting specific memories as we would like and occasionally other information can go missing, but there's really very little that can go wrong. In fact, as part of the ongoing trials I myself have been getting 'hypnotically wiped' every Friday evening for the last few months and apart from forgetting my PIN number, my passwords, my wedding anniversary, my mother's birthday, my email address, my husband's name and where live, there's really been no problem at all."

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Space Junk

"I don't think it's wholly unreasonable to expect spacemen to stop dumping their garbage in my back garden." So says Alexander Cravat, who is fed up with astronauts on the International Space Station discarding their rubbish on his property.

"It started six months ago," said Mr Cravat, a self-employed weasel stuffer from Essex. "Each morning I wake up to find piles of trash heaped up against the fence. At first I thought it was the local kids, but then I noticed stuff that you wouldn't expect to find in ordinary household waste. Things like empty oxygen cylinders, burnt-out circuit boards, tatty old star maps and an inordinate number of Twix wrappers. That's when I thought to myself 'Hello - that's bloody spacemen, that is'."

Mr Cravat has now filed a legal claim to recover the cost of cleaning up the mess, including £12.99 for a new brush. He has also asked the local authority to bring a prosecution for fly-tipping, but a spokesman for the council was reluctant to offer much hope of success.

"The problem we have is in uncovering hard evidence that astronauts were responsible," he explained. "Mr Cravat has shown us several items that he claims can only have come from the International Space Station. We have passed these to our technical advisers but their view is that a dry cleaning ticket for a space suit and a battered Haynes Manual for a Soyuz capsule are circumstantial evidence at best."

Nevertheless, the council's environmental health department has sent an investigator to try and catch the culprits in the act - although at the moment he's in hospital with concussion, after being hit by a superheated baked bean can that had reached terminal velocity as it plummeted to the ground from low Earth orbit. Or, at least, that's what Mr Cravat believes; the local police have been unwilling to rule out the possibility that it was hurled from the top deck of a bus.

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Ladder Ordeal Enters Sixteenth Hour

Concerns are growing for eight employees of a Leeds packaging firm who have been stranded at the top of a series of moderately-sized ladders since yesterday. Their ordeal began partway through a two day course in ladder safety, consisting of two modules - the first dealing with descent, the second tackling ascent. An administrative error led to the modules being delivered in the wrong order, resulting in most of the group getting trapped on the top rungs of their demonstration ladders, without having received the proper training to get back down again.

Concerned colleagues have been supplying them with sandwiches and hot drinks while options are considered for returning them to terra firma. We understand that the fire brigade have now been called and a trained ladder specialist is currently trying to talk the stricken trainees down by shouting encouraging instructions through a megaphone.

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