On the Back of a Fag Pack

Just to clarify: on this side of the pond, fags = cigarettes.

In Human Resources, we often laugh at the absurdities that occur throughout the business day. You need only look into any employee file to find scribbled notes on quarter-sheets of paper that say things like: "Give John a 3% increase," or "Jane missed work because of 'woman problems' today." Usually these notes are undated and indecipherable.

Since HR has developed as a profession, you find these absurdities occurring far less frequently, but they still occur. They are usually discovered when a large company acquires a small Ma & Pop establishment, where the owner's word was law - regardless of what actual laws are cast by the local regulatory agencies and governments. When auditing the acquired company's personnel files, you usually find all kinds of strange notes and other privacy violations. This usually occurs because the person that was doing the HR work at the acquired company has never formally been trained in legal compliance.

In the US, we have a euphemism for this kind of practice. We say that the agreement was made "on the back of a cocktail napkin." During a meeting today, I learned that the Brits have a different euphemism for the same practice - "on the back of fag packs"- or to translate for my US friends - "on the back of a pack of cigarettes."

The idea is obviously that whoever makes the declaration, doesn't care about a process. They simply just grab the nearest writing implement and the nearest scrawling surface - be it a cocktail napkin or a fag pack. The writing implement is always lost to history, but cocktail napkins and pieces of fag packs find their way into employee files and sit there for decades. Have you ever had an inkling to ask to see your employee file? You have the right.

P.S. By the way, that picture is an actual warning that is put on some cigarette packs in the European Union. It reads: "Smoking may reduce the blood flow and cause impotence" A colleague of mine that smokes jokingly told me one day while holding up his pack of cigarettes, "Dammit, I got impotence again."