by Ms Bizz

I thought my boss was kidding when he came in to inform me about the next round of "cost cutting" exercises! We had already looked at the usual: counting the pencils, reusing the envelopes and locating all lost paperclips. Of course, we are already travelling on our own time and going by whichever budget airline will give us the best deal. Punctuality is not one of their strong points however and he just dropped in casually that we needed to think about how to handle overnight stays if a flight was cancelled. Imagine my face when he semi-seriously showed me this 'mini motel' above. Its a kit you can get which allows you to basically set up camp in an airport!

I once saw a film with Tom Hanks in it and he managed to live in an airport for 6 months so I was a bit nonplussed by this and after laughing in his face I said," you can't be serious?" I still do not know if he really was, the cost consciousness has reached such a vicious level now and I suppose if it was my own business I too would be micro managing the Euros...but this is surely a step too far! The bean counters have a wicked sense of humour, especially at someone else's expense.

Wait till I tell all my friends at the next networking event. They will wet themselves and I'm sure come back with other horror stories of their own. As it is Chinese New Year I will end by using one of their sayings..."May you always live in interesting times". You got it right there!