Roadshow Crew: How Four Colleagues Outsourced an Entire Roadshow to One Woman Who Kept Typing On It! at Midnight

The Org Chart: One Worker, Four Spectators

Raymond: "Boss" / The Midnight Quick One Arsonist

Raymond is the only manager alive who has called a forty-one-slide rebuild a quick one. His instructions arrive between 10.45pm and midnight, like a vampire with a corporate card, and his thanks arrive at 7.52am, so the damage is always done in the dark and the credit collected by daylight. His signature move:

Need by 9am and no rush, one bubble apart, is not management. It is a man holding two opposite opinions and letting his staff guess which one gets them fired. In March the quick one was a font, by August it was the client's entire colour scheme, and he runs a night shift that he calls culture. By September even the event itself was a tweak:

A small tweak that moved an entire event, typed at 11.40pm by a man who was asleep by 11.45pm. Raymond does not delegate, he detonates, and then he goes to bed while the staff sweep up the glass.

Hui Min: The Doormat With an Exclamation Mark

Hui Min wrote more than half of everything in this chat and has not claimed a minute of it as overtime. She answers in two minutes, at any hour, to anything, including questions addressed to other people, and she agrees to tasks before she has finished reading them, like a golden retriever who has been handed a laptop. Her reply to that 11pm quick one:

Two minutes. She taught a grown man that midnight is office hours, and now the whole company runs on her inability to leave a message unread. Watch her take a job that was never hers:

Farhan was asked, Hui Min answered, and Farhan thanked her for doing his job, which is this company's entire business model in three bubbles. She is not a hard worker, she is a load-bearing doormat, and the whole building is standing on her. She uploaded this chat to watch her colleagues get roasted, when the person who trained the boss to send quick ones at midnight is her.

Farhan: The Noted With Thanks Vending Machine

Farhan is a vending machine that stocks one product and dispenses it whichever button you press. He has noted with thanks an agenda, an invoice, a birthday cake and, on 19 August, the news that the venue had cancelled the client's roadshow three days out:

The building was on fire and he thanked it for the warmth. Every action item handed to Farhan goes in, gets a polite receipt and is never seen again, which makes him less a colleague than a black hole with excellent manners.

On a big week he adds a praying hands emoji, which is the closest the man has ever come to an opinion. Not one action item has come back out of Farhan since March, and nobody has dared check whether he is a person or a very courteous auto-reply that learned to attend meetings.

Suresh: The Cult Leader of the Other Group

Suresh is not a colleague, he is a government in exile. Whenever a real decision comes near this chat, he walks it out of the room like a bouncer removing a drunk uncle from a wedding:

In April he built a smaller chat with Hui Min and Nurul, left Raymond and Farhan outside it, and has run the company from there ever since. When Raymond finally asked, Suresh produced the most beautiful lie in the archive:

A side thread for admin, run by a man who has never done any admin, holding every decision of the last five months. Suresh is the only person here who pulled off a coup and then lied about it to the deposed king's face.

Nurul: The Deadline-Eve Disappearing Act

Nurul appears in this chat the way royalty visits a village: rarely, briefly and mostly to be announced. Her auto-reply has a better attendance record than she does, and it has an uncanny instinct for the night before every deadline:

That is the most honest sentence anyone has typed in this company, and the boss read it and said nothing. Nurul has worked out what the others never will, which is that Raymond does not send quick ones to people who are not there. She did not dodge the work, she handed it to Hui Min without asking, and it is the most efficient crime in the building.

Episode One: The Quick One That Ate a Weekend

At 11.07pm on a Thursday in August, Raymond asked for the whole client deck, forty-one slides, to be redone by morning. What came back was a perfect cross-section of this company:

One worker, one receipt, one holiday and one forwarding address. Hui Min worked until 4am, Raymond surfaced at 7.52am, and at 9.03am he did the unforgivable:

He reversed five hours of a woman's night with a smiley, and she agreed to undo her own work with an exclamation mark, as if grateful for the opportunity. A quick one is not a task, it is a weekend wearing a lanyard, and Hui Min keeps handing hers over at the door.

Episode Two: The Night Hui Min Complained in the Wrong Room

On 2 September, at 11.02pm, the one employee who has never refused Raymond anything finally cracked, and she cracked directly in front of him:

Three minutes of silence followed, which in this chat is a geological era. Suresh, who owns the right group, said nothing. Farhan, unbelievably, said something:

Raymond read himself called extra by his most loyal employee and answered by handing her more work, like a landlord raising the rent on the tenant who complained about the damp. And Hui Min, caught red-handed, apologised in the wrong group and said yes in the right one inside five minutes, a prisoner who tunnels out and climbs back in to finish the warden's slides. Farhan, meanwhile, thanked everybody for the whole thing.

The Dishonours List

The Vampire With a Corporate Card: Raymond, whose quick ones are only quick to send.

The Golden Doormat: Hui Min, who answered everything, complained once, and apologised for complaining.

The Black Hole Courtesy Award: Farhan, who thanked a cancelled venue for its service.

Coup of the Year: Suresh, for overthrowing his boss and filing it under admin.

The Escape Artist's Auto-Reply: Nurul, back Monday since March.

Teamwork, Narrowly Defined: the whole crew, for delivering a roadshow the client loved and proving that one woman and four witnesses is all a company needs.

The Ruling

This is not a team, it is one woman running a roadshow while four colleagues take turns impersonating furniture. Raymond creates the work, Suresh hides the work, Farhan thanks the work and Nurul leaves before the work arrives. Hui Min, you uploaded this to see them roasted, but you are the reason every one of them gets away with it, and you will answer this report with On it!