Insight

I got into the office smiling, totally unaware of what lay in store for me. First it started with the tea lady who missed a step and poured a hot cup of black coffee on my trousers. I had yelped in pain, jumping up from my seat and had hit a colleague’s laptop right off the desk onto the floor and none of us needed a diviner to know the screen had cracked.

The problem was that it was that system that had the financials that my colleague had been working on for the presentation to be held that morning to the board at 9.45am. The time was 8.30am and there was no way in hell we could put it together on time on another system, considering it had taken 4 days to put the numbers together. Of course, the presentation went pear-shaped. My boss, Keith, tried the best he could to improvise after explaining to the board the unfortunate incidence. While a very tiny part of me was happy that he was under fire, since it’s not like he’s a nice guy, I felt really bad for him at the moment. The board had shredded him. Somehow, these old men in horn-rimmed glasses and pot-bellies appeared to expect him to have every detail of the financial reports, which was about 15 slides, all in his head.

They shredded him…and he shredded us – but I had had enough for one day…