The title is the conclusion I've come to about my place of work. Once upon a time I thought I was in gainful employment, working for a dynamic, forward thinking company which embraced articulate people like me, encouraged us to think freely, to innovate, to challenge and gave us purpose in our daily existence. This was largely true until about 2 years ago when we underwent a "transformation" which is business process bollocks talk for jazzing up and spinning what we called "re-organisation" and hence redundancies. I escaped the axe that time to be offered a new role which allegedly underlined our flexibility and capability to adapt in a changing business and increasingly competitive environment.
Sorry.....lapsed into some Corporate Gobbledygook Bollocks talk myself then.........(note to self : must remember to be human once leaving the office). I was shifted sideways is what I meant to say.........
Since then it's been pretty much all about being passed over whilst being told how good I am, or how effective I am or what a valuable employee I am (etc ad infinitum). It's a bit like getting a blow job and finding out its been given by Margaret Thatcher, makes you feel good at first but then makes you sick. Then of course, I went through my "darkest night" period toward the end of last year (see posts passim) as the full realisation of my impending career impotence struck home. There were some dark times I can tell you. However, things brightened up a bit, not by virtue of anything anyone at work did to help me, although my boss, The Schoolteacher, did try, but by the fact that despite everything we all adapt to our circumstances at the time. Some might call it a "victim" mentality, others might just accept that once you reach your mid-forties, society on the whole considers you to be past your prime, and consequently having less worth and less to offer of any use. This view is propagated by the media, employers and the government as a whole. Once you accept this, you learn to play the game differently and in my case I decided to shut the shop and do my job ADEQUATELY whilst ligging and loafing wherever possible. All my ambition was locked away in a drawer marked "Potential unused - do not open for foreseeable future". That's fine and now the summers here it should mean more working from home, hence more golf, hence lower handicap and hence a more relaxed and carefree Jack. The "dark night" of realization that career options at The Company are over, that others are still climbing the greasy corporate pole, giving the corporate blow-jobs, that youth is the key to success, that talking is worth more than doing, that the policy of "arslikhan" is what gets you ahead has led me to a mental dawn/twilight state. I still can't see much brightness career wise, no "summer day" again but I am happy to exist on the dimly-lit fringes of the "career day" so to speak.
So, having to attend today what can only be described as the single most condescending, shambolic, amateurish, patronizing ""team building" off-site I have ever had the misfortune of observing, really opens the wounds of spitefulness and petty envy that lurks below the surface of my tacit acceptance of my situation. We were in effect told that attendance was mandatory for the morning session, but that the afternoon session (ominously dubbed "the fun part" and consequently would not be anyone's real idea of fun, least not those with any semblance of lives outside of work) was voluntary. The afternoon session was a "magical mystery tour" on a hired Vintage Diesel train with Pullman coaches (I've no idea what this means). I would ordinarily enjoy a trip by train that was free and didn't involve The Trainline.com (see posts passim) as at heart I still have the 10 year old unsullied and unembittered boy hidden deep in my psyche. I would enjoy this with close friends or family, but not with some of the people it is my misfortune to work with. It's a sad indictment of my current situation that there isn't one person at work I would class as mate now that Mr Argumentative has moved onto greater Global glories and I no longer see Dee or Scary as much as I used to. No, they are at best "colleagues" or "acquaintances", but there isn't a single one I'd willingly have a beer with, or even share a meal with. So I decided last night that I would make my polite excuses and disappear after the morning session.
The morning session was as I have described it above. The presentations were started by The Shepherd, talking to his flock and making little jokes that he and his DR's (direct reports) understood from meetings of his power cabal. It wasn't funny, nor was it informative and it was light years from being 10 million miles from even remotely approaching inspirational. This was followed by my boss, The Schoolteacher, a nice bloke who struggles to finish sentences in his own head let alone when faced with an audience of 150 plus. Couple this with him having to present The Technology Plan for High-Tech Pipes, Tubes and Strings and you have the equivalent of having a presentation on The Structures of Safe Paving Slab Configuration presented by John Major. My friend, Private Godfrey tried to follow this with the role of her new "group", Operations. It was a valiant attempt but riddled with an inability to use the Technology at hand when trying to bring in a "video" to make certain points. Too many ummms and aaahs here showing a lack of presenting experience to this size of audience. Original yes, flawed ...yes, but she's new to this and maybe as she does more it'll improve. The others have no such excuse and several more painful and dull presentations followed, and only one redeemed itself by virtue of adding a very irreverent and funny Billy Connolly sound clip at the end. A rare moment of brightness in a sea of turgid drudgery. It made you want to play Russian Roulette with 5 bullets in the gun.
Lastly, the big promised Q&A session was trimmed from 45 minutes to 10 because the unprofessionalism of the presenters had caused an overrun. To cap it all the room was long and thin and the slides were shown on a projector at one end of the rectangle thus excluding at least half the audience from seeing the slides, rather than the more sensible option of presenting from the centre of one of the long sides of the room. Not a problem if the presenter is good, but such was the paucity of the information and interest level that the loss of any visual stimulation or guide made it as effective as Elton John's dick when being offered a chance with Madonna and Catherine Zeta-Jones in a threesome. What this amateurism tells me is that the Management Team of The Shepherd and friends have paid lip service to making the whole thing interesting and bearable. Which in itself is contemptuous of the audience you are forcing to attend. To me its simple. If you're going to do this then book the venue for the day before and "dry run" the presentations. Invite critique from your peers who are also presenting. Try and get some sample "floor" questions from the audience prior to the day to rehearse your responses and the way in which you respond. Look at how Question Time does things. You can work out the PA system, work out what keys to press to bring in clips and sounds, you can determine the best seating arrangements and the logistics of deploying floor microphones for the audience questions. Then take the presenting group to a Hotel overnight, discuss changes, agree schedules and rules on timings etc and then all get pissed to make everyone feel part of something worthwhile instead of them giving the impression that they are also there under duress. How difficult would that be, and how much more value to the audience would that give even if they just felt that some real effort had been put in on their behalf.
Of course that might be me just applying my additional experience gained ,by being 44 years of age, to my jaundiced view of this event. It is undoubtedly a streak of envy in me that these young bucks are valued more highly than me despite my somewhat selfish and undeniably arrogant view that I am better, more experienced, more practical, more worldly-wise and more intelligent than them.
But to paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies "I would say that, wouldn't I?"
Later, GrocerJack
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