Recently I had the opportunity to attend a corporate event. I wasn’t sure what the occasion was but found out that the event was a mass companywide video conference call. Technically it wasn’t a conference call because the little people like me didn’t have a camera pointed at us. I suppose it was really just a live broadcast of our executive VIPs standing in a conference room in front of the staff at their local office while the rest of us looked on adoringly.
There was a bunch of hoopla surrounding the “state of the company.” Its strong (applause), we made more money this year (applause), the future is bright (applause), the need for our product is growing (applause), and consumption is rising (applause). The people in the conference room the executives were in were all clapping at the appropriate opportunities.
After a while I noticed that the people in our little remote viewing room (where we were not wired so that we could participate) were also going through the motions and clapping with the projected images on screen. I looked around. Everyone was staring in rapture or something close to it at the speaker rambled on. The company is in a great market position (applause), our competition is not doing as well as we are (applause), and did I mention the future is bright (applause)? This went on for an hour or so. It seemed like an hour anyhow. When I checked my watch it had only been eight and an half minutes (applause). I started to look around me. Was I the only one that thought the clapping was absurd? Last month four of my coworkers left the company. Their spots were not filled and I took on a portion of their work load (applause). I looked toward the back of the large conference room where we had all gathered. The usual tables were there. But there were no bottles of water, nothing to drink (coffee, soda, pop, coke, pepsi, royal crown, dr pepper, tab, sprite, gater-aid, sugared, diet, or even a zero calorie equivalent). There also were no snacks. No crackers, donuts, pastries, fruit, or yogurt on ice. I drew from this that either they did not intend for this to be a long meeting, that they did not budget snacks for remote offices, or that the big wigs on stage didn’t think of things like this. I looked. The speakers all had water bottles.
I had sort of tuned out the speeches on the screen and got lost in my own thoughts for a while but I couldn’t escape the incessant clapping. It bobbed its way into my thoughts and through the fabric of my daydream of sitting outside at a nice coffee house rather than in the stuffy room that just kept getting warmer every minute. A dose of caffeine would have been welcome, (applause), (applause), (applause).
A Cheese Danish would have made the morning almost fantastic. Leaving that meeting would have made the day just right. I heard something that got my listening again (applause). As a result of the strong year and overall capital performance the company has opted to borrow a large sum of money (hundreds of millions of dollars) to add to investors’ influx of cash (applause) to buy something that someone else decided they no longer needed or was no longer useful to them (applause). I should note that the last part of that was my interpretation, not the party line.
They then explained that this would further enhance the company portfolio (applause) and further propel the continuing growth of the company (applause). All I heard was that someone else was going to get richer and I would have to work harder over the holiday season. Again. As everyone stood clapping I looked over my shoulder. There still weren’t any donuts on the table in the back of the room.
I looked to my left and noticed Jimmy, the Senior Business Intelligence Manager, smiling approvingly and smugly. I guess he wrote that report too.