The day of the Meeting...

Well, tomorrow is really the day of the Meeting.

In fact, I have two tomorrow.

This is a first. We've split things into two seperate entities. I, however, get to go to both meetings... Happy Days...

The Billionaire and his Chief Lieutenant are never predictable in these meetings.

It's a series of odd and unnerving presentations, questions that come out of the blue and just occasionally an absolute, stone cold, stinker, that you did not see coming...

Worst of all, they encourage a "make it happen, NOW!" culture.

Sounds ok, until you're sitting in a meeting and suddenly find yourself pushed into repainting by hand every single display unit in a blend of tangerine and mocha by 5pm that day... Or something like that...

So, I've spent the entire last week working from 7am to 10pm.

Worrying?

24 / 7

I've been through every presentation, I've sat and worried about every possible question, I've laid out my new suit and worried about what colour shoes...

All of this is ultimately pointless.

I've been going to these meetings for nearly two years.

The worst part? They turn on the tiniest thing... One mistake, one issue, one tiny microdot that I missed? It could turn into World War 3, for me...

If, if, it all goes well, by 1pm I should be free and clear... with another month or two before the next one... If it goes badly, I'll have an action list as long as my arm and we'll go back to the horror of waiting for the phone to ring or the email to arrive... Torture, death by a thousand texts...

Given all of that, why am I not asleep?

Too much, too wound up, too agitated...

But secretly, looking forward to it... Waiting, to buckle up, to lace up my sandals, to oil my sword and to get into the arena....

In my heart, I'm a gladiator... I want to pit my wits against the barbarians, I want to be faster than the tiger, I want to take down the chariot...

And that is why, one of these days, I'll be carried out of one of these meetings on my shield...

The Man Who Would not be Fired

No, not me.

But, equally, no, I have not yet been fired.

I was considering my Imaginary predicament, in which I work for a theoretical Billionaire and his Chief Lieutenant.

And something struck me. Most of my favourite blogs are the ones that are work related. Odd, I know, me, with a work fixation?

Anyway, yes, the blogs I read most often, which I will list at some point tend to deal with people's working lives. The storytelling is usually pretty good and I love watching a scenario unfold through someone elses words.

That's probably why I read so much junk fiction in my ever diminishing spare time. But, really I'm chasing characters and situations and puzzling over the whys and wherefores of each one.

It occured to me, gradually, that maybe that is what I should be blogging about.

I do spend some considerable time in work.

I do have some extraordinary stories of madness that goes on.

I would then have something about which I could write.

I may never win Young Scientist, for various reasons, particularly at this stage, the blatant Age Discrimination inherent in the competition, but even I could figure out the potential here...

By the way, how do the Young Scientists get away with such blatant anti ageist propaganda? Where are the Mid Life Scientists, the Aging Scientists, the Semi Retired But Still Do a Bit of Science In The Garage (Don't Tell The Wife) Scientists?

And why don't they win prizes and get to be on the front of the Irish Times with their braces etc?


Anyway, the story that fascinates me at the moment is the one of The Man Who Would not be Fired.

The Imaginary company I work for has many different locations, the Man (as he shall be known), runs a small and not very profitable branch, in fact, his branch is losing money hand over fist.

He, on the other hand, is a large and somewhat noisy individual.

I dread seeing his name in my Inbox, because inevitably, he will have written an epic email, full of posturing, demanding to know why everyone else has made a mess of something and deploring the fact that only he had the foresight, wisdom etc to notice this terrible error.

99.9% of the time, he is in the wrong, he has misunderstood the original instruction and quite probably, caused the problem in the first place.

It became a grim game in the Management Meetings, to watch this guy dice with death as he increasingly annoyed and frustrated the Chief Lieutenant.

Eventually, patience diminshed and the Axman was sent out to sort him out.

By which I mean, fire him.

Which he did, apparently. Well over a month ago.

However The Man, continues to work away. Only today I had four or five emails, which I was cc'ed on. In which, he deplored some error that everyone else was making, which was of course in fact his misunderstanding.

I asked around. Everyone thinks he was fired. In fact he has told staff in his branch, on a couple of occasions that today / tomorrow / last week was his last day.

In fact, we've even sent an interim Manager to the branch. And the next Management Meeting is on this Friday. But still I get mails, with discussion of future plans, laying out deals he wants to do for 2008 and agonising over how we are messing everything up and how he couldn't stand over it.

The urge to shout at the top of my voice "Fuck off, you were fired" is unbearable.

I am resisting only because my curiosity is getting the better of me.

How long can a man who was fired keep working for? It's like one of those Action Movies in which the villian keeps popping up from the bath, or climbing out of the meat grinder, or magically reappearing under the bed of the hero...

The Man Who Would not be Fired. He's an inspiration in some ways...

Pistachios and Porn

Well, that was the first title that came into my head...

Somebody pointed out that I don't blog anymore...

It's true...

The simple version is that I find myself crushed by the weight of expectation at work and deeply challenged by the weird rollercoaster that my personal life is on...

In fact, I don't really seem to have a life at the moment.

It feels like I live bits of other peoples.

I have a challenging job, I'm not a heart surgeon, nor do I regularly save the financial markets through some staggering work of non theft... In fact at the end of the day, my principle source of income is a very odd set of skills.

This gives me very little comfort.

I think I'm good at what I do, but what I do is terribly subjective.

At the end of the day, its cultural value is minimal, but the pressure is intense.

On good days, I can feel like I made some kind of a difference.

However, things have not been good in a small but highly significant part of the empire I am custodian of. Let's pretend that I work for a Billionaire, who had a pet project. His pet project is not going well. I have to fix it. There are phonecalls and a certain level of expectation. It's not entirely easy.

Now, every time my phone rings, it could be either the Billionaire or his Chief Lieutenant. They won't be happy, if history has taught me anything.

This places a certain anxiety around my phone. So, in fact, I really have stopped using it, I rarely send texts or make calls that are not work related.

All of this sounds unpleasant when I write it down... Maybe it is unpleasant.

It is coming to a head, there are two significant events in the next two to three weeks. And always, always, always, there lurks a fear that my skills will not be sufficient and that the mythical axe will fall and I will be cast adrift.

The problem is that I don't know what else I could do.

Nor, do I know how I would replace the income I get paid for the extensive, elaborate and torturous existence that I lead.

At one point, my theory was that I should become a taxi driver, as the worst things that would happen would be that

a) I would be stabbed and robbed
or
b) someone would puke on me

Neither of these carries anything like the weight of expectation that I struggle with now.

All of which takes us back around to the title of the post. I find myself on a Monday night, unable to sleep, wound up and home too late for dinner, so I'm eating pistachios and contemplating porn.

It occurs, that overall, I may not be leading the full and wholesome life I dreamt of as a child.