Bob’s value at company reunions

Belgian work ethics work

Yesterday evening, for a short while, I was no longer Graham. I was Bob. Bob is a Belgian expression meaning a member of a group who go out socialising who volunteers not to drink alcohol in order to drive the others home afterwards. I was Bob for Kurt, who shares my house with me. It was no sacrifice, since I don’t drink anyway, and Kurt, with a few drinks in him, really is the life and soul of the party.

The occasion was a reunion of workers who had all worked for the same company. The name of the company was “Apem”, and it was formed in the early 2000s as an IT support outsourcer for, amongst others, KBC Bank and Insurance. The company operated on that and other major projects for about ten years before the company was wound down and the workforce went their different ways, and most of them still work in the IT sector to this day.

As an outsider to the commonality that links all those who were present last night, at a very elegant and amenable tavern in Bornem, I was able to step back from the hubble-bubble of chit-chat and discussion to observe the attendees. A question went through my mind: in any average company, there will be lifers, and people who join and decide it’s not the place for them and leave again, there will be grumpy ones who put up with the work and there will be avid ones who relish it, and there will be those who get promoted and those who hit glass ceilings, and so on. When you join up, you will often be made to feel who’s the boss, and either be inspired by that or put off by the established hierarchy. And, last night, none of that was evident. I asked if the list of attendees had been drawn up selectively, and was told that everyone who could be reached had been invited. Some faces, I was told, were inexplicably absent, but perhaps people were put off by the stormy weather we’ve been having since midnight last night.

The atmosphere was warm and inclusive. It made me think of a school reunion, except there was no rivalry to be sensed. One school reunion I attended back in 2020 felt a little like a job interview: so, Graham, what did you do with the 40 years since we last met? It would not have been out of place for our old headmaster to have been present, to quiz us on our successes, if he had not long since departed to his grave.

Apem’s reunion bore the similarity that, with a class reunion, all the attendees will generally have started their courses at the same age and in the same year, and will have quit the school within a few years of each other. The school is what binds them, if nothing else. So, school reunions tend to regurgitate reminiscences from school days. And Apem’s reunion was similar because it’s almost in the same manner that its workforce had been formed.

The VDAB (Vlaamse Dienst voor Arbeidsbemiddeling en Beroepsopleiding, or Flemish Job-seekers’ and Vocational Training Service) reached out at the time to anyone in the age bracket 18 to 25 who was interested in joining the newly incorporated Apem’s team. That means that this was a workforce—some 120 members—that, unusually, was created out of nothing, in one fell swoop, like a school class comes together all at once. Immediately, every man jack of them was allocated a company car—Citroën—bearing the company’s logo, a stylised version of the name with a rainbow linking its first and last letters. As a result, those attending last night were all of an age: about 50 years old. There was an open bar for wine, beer and soft drinks and a meal was included for 15 euros, for those who wanted to partake: chicken fricassee or Belgian carbonades—my own free dinner was the reward for my alcoholic abstinence. The service was swift, smiling and efficient, the hostess personable (half-Swedish, so we recounted tales of Gothenburg and the Swedish West Coast to gales of laughter) and the chatter was loud. This was a group of old boys and girls who were enjoying themselves, and even engaged in a bit of networking, because you never know what the future holds.

They were used to socialising with each other: they had all participated in works outings, such as to Walibi theme park, during their employment with Apem, and Friday night drinks were no oddity. This was a Belgian company that was not only proud to present the best of services to its blue-chip clients, but was proud to tell its workers that it cared. I don’t know if company reunions are that common generally. I know that, if there were one at some places where I’ve worked in the past, it’s unlikely I would be invited. Some turfed me out because they didn’t like me, some because I became superfluous to requirements and some I left of my own accord. But a reunion of any of them would likely include someone I wasn’t too keen on or who didn’t care that much for me. And that’s something that was not discernible last night. There was genuine camaraderie and bonhomie, even amongst people who hadn’t worked together for a quarter of a century.

Image: Apem’s rainbow emblem on one of the attendee’s shirt last night. © Kurt Gelens.

Apem is no more, but the Apem workers carry with them a sense of what makes a successful business, and that is in part happy workforces. It was palpable last night.

The father of another friend of mine in the village where I live owned a factory in the town when she was a little girl. When people came to work at his factory, he would ask them if they were a member of the trade union. If they said they were not, then he would tell them to first go to the local chapter and become a member. He would only employ unionised staff. Perhaps he recognised, as do many German industrials, that negotiating pay and conditions with a union can be a lot easier than negotiating them with individual workers. But there was something more to it than that: Mr Ceulemans was a committed, enlightened socialist, who recognised that a disgruntled workforce is not good for his business or for the country in which he wants to conduct that business.

As we drove home last night, I needed to enforce some work distribution directives with Kurt, who was by then as well oiled as the cylinders of his car’s engine. As the rain intensified, he insisted that I should not use the wipers so much as he had just treated his windscreen with Rainex. And I told him that Bob doesn’t drink because he drives, and that the passengers drink but don’t drive the driver round the bend.

Today, I’m Graham again.