Pep Talk

My eyebrows have been slowly eroding as I've aged. I've pencilled my (pale blonde) brows in for ages to make them less-invisible, but at the rate they've been disappearing I'm going to be free-styling a pair of surprised granny arches by the time I'm 45. That's how it all starts, you know: from the time you first free your brows from the bounds of reality it's a dangerously short slope to a poodle perm and white orthopaedic sneakers. Or so I've heard.

I look terrible in purple, so I decided to give one of these new-fangled eyelash-growing potions a try. Not on my eyelashes - my glasses already have the permanent appearance of a patio door in a daycare - but on my brows. In retrospect, I'm not entirely sure how I thought it was going to pan out - the stuff makes lashes longer, so what exactly did I think it was going to do with my brows? Offer tax incentives to lure them back from whatever more southerly climes they've migrated to?

I need longer eyebrows like I need more luxurious knuckle hair. What am I supposed to do with longer eyebrows, style them? Add brow trimming to the already exhaustive - and still sprouting anew! - list of personal grooming I'm expected to keep up with? There has got to be a better way to keep myself on this side of the support hose and Scotch mints crowd. If only there were administrative options one could pursue...

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"Listen up, people: we don't need the same personnel stretched thinner over more ground. What we need is to take the learnings from our gap analysis and do some strategic recruitment. I would like to see each of these roles filled within this quarter. In the meantime, we need to develop our team-building approaches and better our management strategies to improve retention - I want our turnover rates down at least 50% over the next year.

Folks, BROW & Co. cut too deep in the 90s - no matter if it was right or wrong, those pencil-thin margins were just a sign of the times, everyone was doing it - but it is clear we never fully recovered from that. We have a lot of work ahead of us if we want to maintain the growth we're trying to achieve now. From here on our goal is sleek and streamlined, appropriate for a company of our vintage, and never again a slave to the whims of fashion.

Together, I'm convinced we will be able to keep this old gal out of velour tracksuits for a long while yet. Keep up the good work everyone."