Pynchon

I was going to write about the Staff Conference.

Once a year the MD feels the need to indulge his Bill Gates/Richard Branson fantasies. He does this by means of the Staff Conference.

A venue is hired that is far too big for the purpose. A multi-media/corporate event company is hired to give the Staff Conference a glossy sheen; all big screens, graphics, fancy lighting and music. All holiday is cancelled, as attendance is compulsory (one guy on Lorraine's team had the day off with a migraine - good man; I might try that next year). The Company closes down for the afternoon, with the exception of a few skeleton staff (people fight to be one of the skeleton staff) and we all normally sit in abject boredom to hear the plan for the new year. It's always the same.

It's a bloody disgrace and a scandalous waste of money. The MD is not a big cheese. He is a crappy bit of cheddar found underneath the fridge. The Company is not a big deal. We are not Microsoft or Virgin. With the amount of redundancies that have taken place over the past two years, they could quite easily host the conference on the first floor of the building we work in. It would not be a big squeeze. The Staff Conference must cost thousands upon thousands to put on, including flying various people from the small offices we have abroad. It has already been announced that the pay review this year will be cost of living (2 to 3 percent, I reckon), but that there will be the possibility for a 3 percent bonus to be paid at the end of the year if "targets are met". Yes, we have all heard that before.

Paradoxically, I quite enjoyed myself this year. Some of the speeches were hilarious, but I did sit on my hands when the applause was being handed out.

The Human Resources boss lady hosted the event. (I like her a lot. She is a decent human being who knows everybody's name and talks to everybody.) She did the opening blurb about "change" and "evolution" and the "next step". She used various John F. Kennedy quotes and compared the MD's leadership with Kennedy (yes, I know, she did - I kid you not) and made an analogy with the position that Kennedy was in when he committed the States to get a man on the moon by 1969 (he made the speech in 1961) to The Company's position in the market place.

Utter toss.

The MD took to the stage. He knows how to give a good speech. He carried the hall, despite outrageous statements like

1. We are the market leader in our product! (No, we are not. There is another Company that is a lot bigger than us. Everybody knows who they are, but their name is never mentioned. Let's call them the Candyman Corporation. Say their name 5 times and they will appear and steal all your customers. I hear that somebody once surfed their web page and spontaneously burst into flames.)
2. Since the launch of our new product, support calls are down by 50%. (Rubbish. If anything support calls have gone up 50% since the new product has gone on the market.)
3. The old product (which is the one I support, practically on my lonesome) will be phased out by the end of the year. (Really? I don't think so. I think that they have been making that particular claim since the day I joined the company, 5 years ago.)
4. The Industry just loves our product. (Nonsense. How come we keep being threatened with legal action, have been bad mouthed publicly by big players in the Industry press and have had to change our name a couple of times because the previous names were mud?)

There were other things. I forget them. After his work of fiction of a speech, the MD handed the platform to various other speakers.

The Development Boss made a speech. He started with a sound clip of Billy Connolly, which was supposed to be a transcript of a meeting with the MD. It was full of swearing, effing and blinding and was very bad. It was terrible and not funny. Hell, I curse. I swear a lot, but I would never consider doing it at a formal meeting, from the stage, in front of a large group of people. The Development Manager came across very badly. Used car salesman. Fat, sweaty, gob shite. Smarmy git.

The Sales and Marketing Director made a speech. I could say it was bad, but that would not even begin to cover just how bad it was. He pretended that he had just could back from a trip to the future. (On the screen there was a mock up of the guy sitting in H. G. Wells' time machine.) He described the Utopian future that awaited us. Everybody was happy. Negativity was a thing of the past. He made jokes about how he did not look any older in the future...

The speech was a stinker. The speech was a catastrophe. It was a clunker. Death hung in the air over the audience. Dogs started howling in the street outside. The Pope awoke suddenly from a dream about the Anti-Christ. There was an eclipse of the sun. A two headed goat was born in a petting zoo just outside Birmingham. A Japanese bloke sitting at the back of the audience tried to kill himself. Paris Hilton had a number 1 single. Weapons of Mass Destruction were found in Tamworth.

Awful. Just awful. (I'll say one thing, though. When I got back to the office, and was telling the story of the speech, I was in tears of laughter.) I've never liked the Sales and Marketing Directory. He is a cunt of the highest order. Rude and arrogant. One day I will tell you the story of how he (and remember, this is a man with no knowledge of the computer side of the business)decided that the server room needed to be reorganised because of a customer visit and some people - better heads who should know better - decided to go with it because they didn't want to stand up to him. We ended up losing access to all of the modems for 3 days, but we had a lovely and pretty server room. I've never liked him, but the speech was that bad I felt sorry for him.

Poor bastard. A genius like Eric Morecombe would have died with that speech.

The rest of the afternoon went by in a bit of a blur. I think we were all in a state of shock. You know that I collected by 5 year service award, along with about 12 other people. When I/we were making our way to the stage they played "Superfreak" by Rick James, which is the song that M. C. Hammer based "You Can't Touch This" on. Good song, the Rick James one. There's a clip on You Tube here. I can't think why they chose it with reference to us, though.

I'm tired now. I saw "Notes On A Scandal" today, but I want to think about it a little and will write tomorrow.

Labels: Movies, Work