Bingo, Balls and Bloody Tesco.

Have I mentioned that I’m working my notice?  Maybe once or twice.

Now of course this has not affected the level of professionalism, dedication and commitment I exude at all times….much.  Well it has a bit, and this was demonstrated on Thursday when I attended a meeting in Sheffield.  Firstly, I was quite impressed with myself that I could motivate myself to go, and not delegate it to someone who gives a sh…I mean one of my guys who would benefit from the learning and development opportunity.

You see, there we have an example of the first thrust of this here blog post.  Corporate bull$hit.  Please do pardon my French but it is called for I feel.  The business world it seems is littered with people who have been brainwashed into using it, or even more scarily, actually use this stuff and believe it.

Looking back at my notes from this meeting, it seems I didn’t make a great deal of them, as I got bored relatively early on, which in any other circumstances would have been risky, as the attendees where chock full of cheese.  We had to do that cringeworthy round the table introduce yourself thing, which inevitably turns into a battle of the job title.

There were a couple of MDs (one of them mine), many Heads of (yep, regrettably I had to cough to one of those), and many other job titles that I still don’t know what they mean.  Most like I, just said our name, job title and company, but there is always the odd one or two who launch into a ten minute monologue on their responsibilities, experience and how they were a prefect at school.  You see now why I was bored so early on?

So rather than watch the powerpoint slides I started to capture all the bull$hit bingo terms that I heard.  There were many of the common ones that I hear all the time….

Model, best fit, and my personal favourite, synergy!  One of the guys was obviously a serial meeting attendee, and revelled in the concept, insisting on capturing the “Expectations” of the meeting before we started.  My contribution of “Finishing early enough so the M62 isn’t the bag of spanners it is at rush hour” didn’t make it to the flip chart though.

I see one entry on my notes underlined and ringed a few times.  It is a new entry in my dictionary of dreariness.  Are you ready?

Glide Path.  Yep, you read that right.  What the bloody hell does glide path mean?  I know what he wants it to mean, but why not just say it??  It was right up there with another classic, Helicopter View.

In terms of popularity, there was no competition, it was the term “piece”.  In nearly every sentence you heard it.  How?  Like this.  How do we tackle the “insert any topic here” piece?  Have we thought about the “insert any topic here” piece?  To me this is like someone dragging their nails down a blackboard.

It was like living in an episode of The Office or Reginald Perrin (for the older readers).  I do feel like I don’t belong in this universe of Austin Reed open necked shirt wearing, ego waving, sanctimony, but alas I must as I have a mortgage, kids and an addiction to expensive holidays.

So we move onto the end of the week, and the World Cup started.  We are “beaming” matches throughout the office for all staff to enjoy.  Beaming may be over egging the technology, but it sounds impressive when explaining this to people.  In truth, we have scattered a few tellys, and a couple of projectors around the place, securing the best stuff for the area close to my desk of course.  There is no point in managing the IT department if you don’t get any perks is there?

So on Friday we watched the opening game, (whilst obviously working a full speed as well).  A good game, and it whetted the appetite nicely for our opening game last night.  After the usual over the top build up by the media, the millions spent on advertising cheap beer and crisps by the supermarkets, the country wakes up this morning to a massive hangover, and a sense of deflation.  Only a 6-0 win would have matched the expectations of the nation, and 1-1 draw leaves everyone feeling a little let down.

You can never enjoy watching England to be honest.  However I thought there were a lot of positives, and I’m sure we will get better as we go.  Frankly the next two games should be formalities and should give us some confidence for the next phase.

Now, what would one of these be without a bit of a rant?  Luckily it just so happens I have one.  Saturday afternoon saw us at Tesco, against my better judgement.  I had done the “big shop” late on Friday night at our local 24 hour Asda, and it was a dream.  It was basically me and a load of people with the munchies or who had run out of beer, and it was great to hold up about twenty people with just two items whilst I checked out a full shop!

Anyway, back to Tesco.  We needed ” a few bits” which is female talk for stuff we could do without, but absolutely won’t.  We had a hand basket, and all the checkouts were crammed full of England tops buying cheap beer and crisps, so we went to one of those self-serve things.

My God, what an abomination.  It took us about twenty minutes to check out a dozen items.  The assistant patrolling the area may have well have just done the whole lot for us as she was over every other item, entering her password.  It took her a while to believe that I was over 25 for the alcohol purchase, but other than that we couldn’t find Lemons on the alphabetic list of fruits (so that went in the bag for free), and nearly every other item became an “unexpected item in the bagging area” or just wouldn’t scan.

Technology at its best!  I left with high blood pressure, a desire to never darken Tesco’s door again, and a free lemon!  So, I’d call that a result.

Till the next time…..