There are around 20 employees who have management status at Any other Business.  By and large they are specialists in their own field or run specific projects that their directors can take credit for.  The majority of them see their job and the company for what it is and have adopted a healthy scepticism regarding much that happens above and around them.  In addition, the majority of managers respect each other and support each other, knowing that such support is unlikely to come from the relevant director.

Managers know that asking a director for support/assistance/advice is like saying, 'take this project, which I have been working on for the last two years, which is beginning to become established as a well-respected piece of work, tear it apart, put it back together (minus a few essential components - x, y, z) and then make some suggestions for improvement ('why don't you add x, y, z?  It would be so much better?')'.  Managers know that work and directors do not mix, not unless they have the masochistic perversion of re-doing their work time and again.

To say that managers weren't ambitious would be wrong.  They know the value of their work and know that they would be marketable elsewhere outside AoB.  This means that once they have completed a project or learned as much as they can from being there, they will successfully apply for another job in pastures new.  This makes for a fairly refreshing atmosphere, given that managers tend not to try to advance themselves within the company.

There are, as ever, exceptions to this.  Firstly there is Wales.  He works for Pricilla and he is just dying to move up the internal ladder.  Whilst he, like the rest of the managers, have worked out that the directors don't actually do an awful lot, instead of regarding the directors generally as a herd not to be respected, he wishes to join them on easy street.  When he first arrived at the company he set himself up as the office joker, complete with comedy blow-up sheep (well, he is from Wales, you know), a few failed attempts at internal promotion later, and with the competition gaining employment elsewhere he now sits at the right hand of his god (next to the Rolex).  He is now serious - even scowling at 'lesser' members of staff for no reason.  He has perfected a sycophantic cackle whenever his director utters anything that could be wildly construed as being humorous.  He is back biting and is beginning to show signs of that skill that every director needs - being able to pass someone else's work off as your own.

The other two exceptions are Ireland and Watford - two poison dwarfs who both work to the Baboon Arse.  Ireland is highly ambitious and from day one was taking credit for others' work.  Since being at AoB, she has blagged trips abroad and managed to get the company to pay for her to have driving lessons.  She has a love of self-tanning lotion, but appears to apply it randomly, so there will be huge streaks of orange then patches of white - and not even in those hard to reach places - sometimes one side of her face will be orange and the other will be off-white.  She draws her eyebrows (dark orange) onto her head at extraordinary angles and often resembles a vulcan.  Since starting at the company, she has given herself two promotions - this is achieved by simply going to the person who orders business cards and asking them to change her title on them and somehow or other everyone starts to believe that she has actually been promoted to a Senior Manager.

Watford loves makeup, the same way that Ireland loves fake tan.  It is applied liberally with sometimes startling results.  Watford has hauled herself up from a position among the support staff to management status.  She has managed to do this slightly more legitimately than Ireland - i.e. the promotions have actually been approved however she has only been promoted because of her persistent complaining and gnawing away at Marge (at the right time in the cycle).  She too believes herself to be a Senior Manager - mainly because she is older then everyone else, however she doesn't have the balls to actually go ahead and change her business cards.  'She doesn't have the front', would also have been a phrase to use, however seeing as she is probably the most well-endowed woman in the company, it doesn't seem appropriate somehow.

That's the managers dealt with for now.  Next stop, support staff.