Take your dog to work and see productivity rise

Take Your Dog to Work Day is blurring the line between homo sapiens and the animal kingdom, writes LUCY KELLAWAY

ON WEDNESDAY, for one day only, several thousand of the unemployed and unemployable will make their way into UK workplaces. Most will have exceptionally low IQs and will be capable of following only the simplest instructions. Many also will have halitosis and be inclined to behave with inappropriate friendliness or sudden hostility.

The occasion is Take Your Dogs to Work Day, an event that its organisers promise will raise morale and productivity – and money for the charity behind it.

The scheme is a considerable improvement on Take Your Children to Work Day, on which it is modelled. In that scheme, pretty much everyone loses. The children lose because an office is a boring place for a 10-year-old: there is only so much colouring-in that even a docile child is prepared to undertake.

The parent loses because having a restive child at their elbow when they are trying to fill in their expenses can be stressful.

And colleagues lose because they feel obliged to stop by and ask: “How old are you?” And: “Are you having a good time?”

These are questions from which interesting conversations seldom follow.

By contrast, at least the dog wins from a day in the office,which will almost certainly be greater fun than a day home alone.

There could be problems if the dogs start fighting or mating by the water cooler, but the charity has answers to this, too.

On its website is a video you can download telling you how to help your dog settle into office life.

It suggests that you must prepare the previous day by finding somewhere comfortable for the dog to lie and then tells you to walk the dog round the office, introducing it to colleagues. This is nice – so nice that one wishes employers took equal care when introducing new employees to the office. Only too often, no one has bothered even to find a desk or a working computer.

Indeed, what troubles me most about Take Your Dog to Work Day is that it is evidence of a blurring of the line between homo sapiens and the animal kingdom.

Here is what one US worker writes in her blog about bringing her mongrel to work: “I’m more productive when Benny is in the office, because he has a calming effect on mommy. A quick Benny hug melts away all of my stress.”

According to a press release put out last week, owners have started calling their dogs the same names as their children. Rex and Rover are out and Alfie and Rosie are in. This is the real problem with dogs at work: the dogs may know their place, but their owners do not.

I have a ferociously intelligent and unsentimental female friend who holds one of the most senior jobs in the British media. She behaves perfectly sensibly with her children, but with her dog she becomes a drooling simpleton. “Ooh, Alfieee,” she croons, as the dog yaps and runs around. One does not wish to see one’s colleagues demean themselves in this way.

A further difficulty with dogs at work is that they are out of tune with the ethos of the modern employee. For a start, they are loyal, and this trait went out of fashion in the 1980s.

Secondly, they aren’t very clean and hygiene is in, as I reported last week.

The cat is a much better model for the fickle knowledge worker. They will rub around your legs if they feel it is in their interests to do so, but then sod off as soon as it suits them. They are self-starters with a can-do attitude.

Other pets are also better suited to office life than dogs. Take Your Snake to Work Day would strike a chord: in many workplaces the snake would fit right in.

Bring Your Parrot or Mynah Bird to Work would be good, too. To be able to repeat exactly what other people have said is a skill that can get you a long way.

Hamsters would also fit in nicely; perhaps too nicely. The way they run around and around on a wheel might strike rather too many chords for some.

The most suitable pet, though, for the contemporary office is the goldfish. It is not just that the goldfish is no trouble and can be easily flushed down the loo when it dies, but more relevant still, the goldfish is apparently outward-looking but can’t remember anything for more than a second or two.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers a year ago has made goldfish out of all of us: we are forgetting the lessons as quickly as we can.

Aside from animals, there are two other groups I would like to see coming into the office. The first would be a Bring Your Husband/Wife/Girlfriend/Boyfriend to Work Day. This would enable hardworking couples to spend some time together. It would also rekindle the spark in a flagging relationship.

One’s partner can seem so lacklustre sloping around the house in pyjamas: on the job, they suddenly seem powerful and appealing again.

Still better would be a Bring Your Parents to Work Day. It would be good for the parents to see what return they have got on their investment in time and money. It would be excellent for the employee too, as parents know how to produce the sort of unqualified praise that bosses almost never provide. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009