Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Air
Question: What are the three most critical factors in Problem Management?
Answer: Communication. Communication. Communication.
It’s enough to make you want to slit your wrists, isn’t it?
Stella beamed at us, happy and proud like she’d just discovered radium or successfully used a potty for the first time.
I said, “That’s wrong. The correct answer is snappy stationary. Load up on gel grip pens and spiral bound notebooks with chunky rubberised covers. And while I’m at it – don’t skip breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day.”
Of course her answer is also right. I just find it difficult to accept moronic platitudes from a jumped up junior manager in a Teflon power suit, waving the answer to all the world’s problems on a single sheet of A4 like she was Neville Chamberlain.
She was on a management seminar yesterday and spent this morning downwardly cascading the key points to an indifferent audience of Terry, Mike, Ash, Zippy and me.
When she wasn’t downwardly cascading, she was in the toilets upwardly disseminating the contents of her stomach. She wasn’t the only manager to turn up worse for drink.
Even Bill Surname, Chief Executive Officer, normally the epitome of sobriety, showed up looking green and sweaty, the human equivalent of a bag of old grass cuttings.
He knocked out a half-hearted email about fighting the good fight and never surrendering and was spotted twenty minutes later being helped into a taxi by Charlotte, his loyal PA, a big woman with a loose grip.
Poor Charlotte: a life long sufferer from irony deficiency, fifty years young and never intentionally kissed, nobody to wash her milk bottles last thing at night or butter her toast in the morning.
An odour of wine breath prevails throughout and rumour is we might finally be getting a new air conditioning system. The last one gave up the ghost six years ago with end of the century anxiety issues.
Answer: Communication. Communication. Communication.
It’s enough to make you want to slit your wrists, isn’t it?
Stella beamed at us, happy and proud like she’d just discovered radium or successfully used a potty for the first time.
I said, “That’s wrong. The correct answer is snappy stationary. Load up on gel grip pens and spiral bound notebooks with chunky rubberised covers. And while I’m at it – don’t skip breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day.”
Of course her answer is also right. I just find it difficult to accept moronic platitudes from a jumped up junior manager in a Teflon power suit, waving the answer to all the world’s problems on a single sheet of A4 like she was Neville Chamberlain.
She was on a management seminar yesterday and spent this morning downwardly cascading the key points to an indifferent audience of Terry, Mike, Ash, Zippy and me.
When she wasn’t downwardly cascading, she was in the toilets upwardly disseminating the contents of her stomach. She wasn’t the only manager to turn up worse for drink.
Even Bill Surname, Chief Executive Officer, normally the epitome of sobriety, showed up looking green and sweaty, the human equivalent of a bag of old grass cuttings.
He knocked out a half-hearted email about fighting the good fight and never surrendering and was spotted twenty minutes later being helped into a taxi by Charlotte, his loyal PA, a big woman with a loose grip.
Poor Charlotte: a life long sufferer from irony deficiency, fifty years young and never intentionally kissed, nobody to wash her milk bottles last thing at night or butter her toast in the morning.
An odour of wine breath prevails throughout and rumour is we might finally be getting a new air conditioning system. The last one gave up the ghost six years ago with end of the century anxiety issues.

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