When you are in a crisis meeting, and a consultant or project manager says ‘We desperately need an intervention from ABC - now !’, do you ever find yourself idly scribbling the lyrics from Interpol’s ‘Say Hello To the Angels’ on your pristine pad of white paper ?
This is a concept This is a bracelet This isn’t no intervention
Two hours later, in the same crisis meeting, when the same consultant or project manager forcefully asks ‘Is Freddie Geekmeister from Advanced Technical Support engaged ?’, are you ever tempted to reply ‘No. As far as I know, Freddie Geekmeister is currently a bachelor of this parish’.
When the ratio of the combined letters of the To: and Cc: distributions lists divided by the number of letters in the email is high, do you ever find that the relevance and worth of the actual content is correspondingly low ?
When you say to someone, ‘I got your mobile phone number off your .signature so thanks for that and they reply ‘You’re welcome’, are you ever tempted to reply ‘Well actually no I didn’t because you don’t have a .signature so I had to ask 8 different colleagues from 3 different companies which wasted 37 minutes before I finally tracked you down’.
And when the crisis meeting finally draws to a close, and the project manager spontaneously asks you to read out aloud, to all 17 attendees, those three, crucial, important, decisive actions that he has seen you jotting down on your A4 pad, which will immediately rectify the situation, do you ever find yourself in a mild state of panic ?
Or is it just me ?