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He may live a champagne lifestyle, but poor old James Bond has also put up with a lot of torture across the years, hasn’t he? From Sean Connery being strapped to a gurney with his nethers about to be cut with a laser in Goldfinger, through the fourteen months Pierce Brosnan spent in a Korean prison in Die Another Day, to Daniel Craig’s whipping in Casino Royale (which still makes every man I know cross his legs in sympathy), Bond has really run the gamut of imaginative torture techniques. I know this because I briefly dated a total 007 nerd a few years ago, so I’ve seen all the films at least once. However, there is one form of torture that none of the Bond villains thought to inflict, which I reckon would have had him singing like a canary in no time. What is it? The company annual conference.

It’s a simple enough formula. Take a load of people who would all rather be somewhere else, lock them in an airless room in some corporate hotel, and bore them to tears with mindless PowerPoint presentations for a couple of days. After the first morning, I think most sane people would be prepared to confess to almost anything if it got them out into the fresh air, and I doubt even Bond could stomach the entire thing without giving in.

The company I work for, Next Generation Retail Solutions, or NGRS for short, is typical of the breed, except they like to inject an extra sting in the tail to keep us on our toes. Our annual conference takes place towards the end of January each year, immediately after the annual ‘restructure’, which generally involves laying off a set percentage of the workforce. The supposed theory is that we go into the New Year leaner and meaner, but I think it’s a psychological trick to make sure we’re so grateful to still have a job that we don’t risk it by asking any awkward questions at the conference.

If there’s one good thing about the annual meeting, it’s that they always try to liven it up with some kind of theme. This year, it’s Pixar movies and the conference catchphrase is To Infinity, and Beyond. The execs must have nearly wet themselves with excitement when they came up with that little bit of hyperbole, as they’ve clumsily shoehorned it into every presentation so far. On top of the slogan, every presenter has had to dress up as a Pixar character that they feel reflects their role, or what they want to say. Our new CEO kicked things off this morning, predictably dressed as Mr Incredible. Unfortunately, he’s quite a diminutive guy, so he didn’t really carry it off, despite the padding in the suit; the most speculation during the first coffee break had focused on the prominent bulge in his groin and how he’d achieved it, rather than any of his ideas about the future direction of the company.

He was followed by the head of HR, who’d decided to come as Bo Peep from Toy Story. Her explanation was that she saw the HR department as the shepherd to the ‘flock’, namely us. She was evidently tickled pink with her choice, waving her crook excitedly at the screen as she talked us through the latest restructure. Unfortunately for her, the ‘flock’ took exception to being compared to sheep and there was a deafening silence at the end of her presentation instead of the usual polite applause. Needless to say, the lunch break that followed included a lot of sarcastic remarks about how ‘sheepish’ she’d looked when she realised her tactic had misfired.

We’re now listening to the new head of sales, who has evidently spent a fortune on his Buzz Lightyear costume, because it’s hands down the best we’ve seen so far. His arrival on stage was also the most dramatic; the lights were dimmed apart from one spotlight, and Queen’s ‘I Want It All’ had thumped through the loudspeakers as he emerged from a cloud of dry ice, fist-pumping the air and yelling, ‘To Infinity, and Beyond,’ like a deranged person. The sales team had obviously been primed, because their whoops and cheers almost drowned him out. If you ever needed confirmation of which department has the most money to spend and the most cavalier attitude to budgets, that was a clear demonstration. From his dour expression, I don’t think the CEO was at all pleased about being so comprehensively upstaged.

‘Tell me something, Athena,’ my colleague Claude whispers in my ear as the head of sales rants exuberantly about his new go-to-market stradigy. ‘What is it called in English when a group of men sit together and do this?’ He curls his hand into a loose fist, holding it above my lap and moving it expressively.

‘A circle jerk?’ I offer, trying not to giggle.

‘Oui!’ he agrees. ‘C’est exactement ça, n’est-ce pas? These people, they are all jerking each other off in self-congratulation. And why do we need a “go-to-market strategy” in the first place? I don’t know about you, but I’m more interested to find out how we are supposed to find new ways to tell our customers the same old thing. “Put this product here so the customer can find it.”’

‘To be fair, it’s never quite the same thing though, is it,’ I tell him. ‘If I hadn’t just spent the last however many years telling people that shoppers expect olive oil and vinegar to be next to each other on the shelf, I’d agree with you, but the science is always evolving.’ I glance at the stage where the head of sales is still strutting around like he’s discovered the origin of life. ‘Maybe that’s why we need go-to-market strategies.’

Claude laughs softly. ‘Oh, yes. Now we have advanced tools driven by AI that can tell our clients they’re going to sell more ice cream on sunny public holidays. How on earth did people figure that out in the olden days?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps they read it in the tea leaves. Anyway, what do we think of our sales guy’s theme tune? “I Want It All”?’

‘Typical sales bullshit, non?’

‘But it also directly contradicts Athena’s first rule of corporate life.’

Claude sighs. ‘Do I want to know?’

‘Nobody can actually have it all. Of course, women have been told that for ever by misogynistic men, but it applies to everyone, doesn’t it? It’s literally why concepts like choice and compromise exist. This thing or that thing. Not both.’

‘It’s just a song,’ Claude murmurs. ‘I don’t think you’re supposed to take it as a rule for life.’

‘It’s still peddling a fantasy,’ I reply. ‘Take our head of sales, for example. He thinks he has it all because, as well as bigging up his supposedly stellar results in previous companies, he also made a big deal about being a family man in his introduction. Then, and this is the clincher, he boasted about his golf handicap. What does that tell you?’

‘Umm, he likes really boring sports?’

‘No. It means at least one of those things is a castle built on the sand, and I’m going to bet he’s not half the family man he thinks he is.’

‘Because?’

‘Because he’s being the corporate bigshot all week, probably staying away from home a lot, and at least one day of the weekend is lost to golf. So, he’s only spending one day a week with his family at best. His children probably don’t know who he is, I expect his long-suffering wife hates his guts and, if she has any sense at all, is shagging her personal trainer senseless.’

‘That’s a little harsh, Athena. People do manage to have successful careers and happy family lives too, you know. It might even happen to you one day.’

I sigh. ‘Maybe, but it still seems like a fantasy to me. Anyway, even if he’s everything he says he is, which I doubt, he’ll still probably fall victim to Athena’s second rule of corporate life.’

‘I’m a little scared to ask what that is.’

‘Nobody is as indispensable as they think,’ I tell him. ‘How many years have you worked here?’

‘Five.’

‘And how many changes of leadership have you seen in that time?’

‘This is the second.’