Another Funny Story from Jason
I am a total lame duck in my current corporate job. I'm officially laid off (voluntarily) starting July 1st -- so that I can concentrate on writing screenplays in preparation for film school, working on the band stuff, and making money through graphic design and photography and videography. But I still need to support my boss, and this is a stressful time for her as we are merging with another company and we have multiple meetings with the company we're merging with.
So I'm at one of these meetings, trying to "act engaged" but truly not caring about what people are saying. (Think it's hard concentrating and caring about financial database schemas when it's part of your job -- try caring when you know you're never going to work with them again!) It's a very large meeting, probably about 25 people stuffed into this conference room, another 6-7 dialed in via a conference phone.
I'm kind of zoned out, thinking about the amount of money being spent in salary on this one meeting. Let's see, average salary of 80K a year means basically $40 an hour, times the 32 people who are spending their time here. That's. . . $1280 being spent on this one meeting. . . is this meeting worth that much money? Probably not. OK, definitely not. Anyway, this is what I'm thinking about when I realize that people are looking at this diagram that has been scrawled on a white board behind me. . . and I realize that I'm probably in the way to some extent.
Trying to be polite, I shift my chair to the left, so that I'm out of the way. Unbeknownst to me, the cord connecting the conference phone to the wall is UNDER MY CHAIR, and my shifting motion unplugs it. . . Noticing this, I try to smoothly replug it without anyone knowing. Of course as soon as I plug it back in, there is an incredibly loud "BEEP" emited by the phone. And then the leader of the meeting says to the phone, "Hello, are you guys still there?" No answer. I've disconnected everyone and brought this high powered meeting to a screeching halt.
"What happened?" just about everyone asks. Turning a bright red, I sheepishly admit that I unplugged the phone accidentally. When we try to dial the phone back in the conference call, we are locked out. 10 MINUTES go by trying to undo my one act of supposed politeness. . . oh well.
4 Comments:
they probably raised my APR another percent to recoup money wasted by your trying to be polite..
Man! You're almost as smooth as i am. I knocked a picture off of the wall at someone else's house. Oh so suavly I bumped it with my shoulder and down it fell, being dashed to pieces upon the floor. Who am I? Guess who's house I was in! :)
At least a mistake in your job only costs money... In my line of work, mistakes can cost lives...
Okay, that was a little too heavy. I can definitely relate to being the person in the awkward position, however. My well-intentioned acts of politeness generally have similar consequences.
Wow, that was heavy, and actually it's not the first time I realized that! We've often said at my job how good it is that it's not life and death with the mistakes.
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