Meeting from Hell

1-29-16

The trip begins today!

Ok, it isn’t like a huge expedition. If anything, it is the very definition of whirlwind. The good news is Ken is home today so he will be able to gather the last minute items and that way when the boys walk in the door they will simply set down their backpacks and head out to the car. Perfect all around, really.

Yesterday at work I found myself challenged. I opted to buckle to my coworkers’ requests to come to the company meeting. I had decided about 6 months back that I didn’t need to attend these functions. They are a complete waste of time and resources and really, as much as my company is good to me, I also don’t feel the need to mingle with most of these people.

The gathering of employees takes place in our larger warehouse and the good news is that they provide food for us while we are held captive. I was not feeling optimistic about the food choice as anything labeled Hawaiian food doesn’t automatically mean good. Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised even to the point of declaring multiple times yesterday how phenomenal the food was. Seriously, I want to find out the place they ordered from and go there right now. Excuse me while I wipe the drool away.

It didn't look like this, but this looked nice and festive!

Ahem, so anyway…yes, the food was amazeballs, but (sorry, side note, did anyone else know that amazeballs is in the Word spellcheck as a real word? When the heck did that happen?) that, sadly, was the highlight of the function. The employees took their seats and the meeting did start promptly at 11:45 and they indicated that they had a lot to cover but assured us we would be done no later than 12:30.

A heavy agenda to me means really pertinent information. This should be things that perhaps have not been, or really are inappropriate for a mass email. Maybe this would be information on pay raises or a new building in the works. I should have been at the edge of my seat, listening expectantly to the wise words from my senior staff.

Yeah, um, clearly this was bullshit.

15 minutes. Yes, you read that right, 15 minutes, were spent on a fucking slide show. It was a bunch of pictures of our facilities. Mind you, it was all warehouses. They look very similar to the one we were SITTING IN WHILE LOOKING AT PICTURES OF WAREHOUSES!!!! How is it that this took place? How was this approved as a topic? How is this a good way to spend time? And if that wasn’t enough, they also had to put in little stupid jokes. Bad puns, photo-shopped images, and all around, it was just a bunch of people who want us to laugh because they are VP’s, dammit, and we should be so happy to be in their presence.

Not an actual photo I had to see yesterday

As if this wasn’t bad enough, there was a teaser listed in the agenda. It indicated we would have an extra day off. This has been a topic of discussion for years now, what with our company being rather stingy at our holidays, specifically between January 2^nd and Memorial Day. We don’t get ANY holidays off. No MLK, no Presidents, not even Good Friday. Mind you, many of these employees have kids, all of whom get off about 3 weeks worth of holidays and Spring Break during those months, but sure, yeah, let’s keep the entire staff on site with no vacation for 5 months. Like that is really good for morale, especially when there are actual Federal holidays during that time in which we can’t mail things, we don’t get checks, and overall, a good chunk of our customers are closed. It is absurd times a million. So the news that perhaps a new holiday was in the works should have been exciting.

I knew it would not be what we had hoped. I just didn’t know how right I was.

The day off program was a full slide of the breakdown of requirements that would just get your name in the proverbial hat for a potential of a day off. I wish I could find the list of rules in our public drives, but sadly it has not been posted yet. You had to have no absences (this included sick days, even if they were using sick time), and no late days, and there was something about no write ups. In addition to that, there was something about no accidents in the warehouse and something about your work performance. I think there was a goat sacrifice, too, but don’t quote me on that yet since as I pointed out, I don’t have the full list in front of me. It was truly remarkable at how complex and detailed it was, and it ultimately just said that if you somehow qualified for the drawing, only one person out of 459 employees would get said day off. I can assure you, I filed all of this under “not in a million years so I won’t even bother with learning the real rules”.

I think next time I attend a meeting I will need to live tweet the shenanigans. I can post every bad joke, every “look at me” moment senior management seemed to roll out. It would be an interesting social experiment, but then again, I don’t know that I have that kind of strength to even get remotely excited about this prospect. Thankfully, I can mostly say I am busy and not ever have to go again.

But did I mention the food? Holy crap! So dang good!