Now, being the feckless type, I've not been working in an office environment for very long, so I am still learning the intricacies of office politics and machinations. One thing that has struck me recently is the strange phenomenon of the 'thick report syndrome'.

This syndrome is a bizarre aspect of office life that dictates that no matter what you put in a report, your superiors will only ever be impressed with the thickness of the report, rather than what it contains. If you slave your guts out to produce an amazingly concise and pinpoint accurate report that happens to be 4 pages long, they will quickly leaf through it - taking in the points, but all the time thinking 'this guy must have just churned this out in 15 minutes - he's obviously wasting his work time surfing the internet for unicorn porn.'

Whereas if you take a few of the key points and string them out over 50 meaningless double spaced pages, full of totally pointless charts with lots of bright colours, they will make little purring noises and offer you the last chocolate biscuit.