Notice

23 7 8

by deframj22

by deframj22

Fellow teammates,

There will be an "All Hands" meeting on July 10 at the Grace Hotel in Fairview. All engineering and technical personnel are expected to attend.

Selected speakers will present and demonstrate various topics, including revised Standards and Methods, Materials Inventory, a new phone system, and an improved GIS mapping system. A full schedule will be available soon.

The meeting will convene at precisely 10 AM. Coffee and pastry will be available. The hotel will serve lunch at 1 PM.

Respectfully submitted,

Raymond Stiles, C.E.

So, we had our "All Hands" meeting, as the memo from our Chief Engineer announced. It was even more boring than expected. It was a good thing I filled up on the free coffee beforehand.

I must admit it was fun reuniting with co-workers from other offices in the company. We chatted and traded anecdotes before the meeting began.

At precisely 10 AM, Mr. Stiles kicked off the meeting – 5 hours of relentless boredom.

A guy named Sal Samson gave the first presentation. Sal suffered from the misfortune of having a permanent facial expression as if he had just sucked a lemon. And his talk was equally sour. Everyone had to sit through slide after slide of engineering revisions detailing the most minute changes ranging from #4 vs #6 copper ground wire to using 5/8" lag bolts instead of the customary 1/2" bolts.

Then came the customer service presentation. A mousy woman with a monotone voice explained in painful detail the automated phone system, or, as she called it, the "robocall," short for robotic phone call. Just what every customer wants to hear. And neither did we.

We had to endure endless details about a new, nearly one-million-dollar computer system we would use in a few weeks. And like the three different systems before it, it would probably become extinct before every engineer and technician got to use it. The new program had a few bugs that needed correcting before the official launch, like how to keep it from issuing 100 T-Brackets when the engineer only requested one. But one never dared to say there was a "glitch" in the system. I was chastised long ago for using such foul language. It would have been more acceptable if I said that I f___'d up.

All this and more took place before lunch – lousy sandwiches, tiny bags of chips, and near-rancid potato salad. During our lunch break, I approached my supervisor with a topic burning away at me all morning. I had given it plenty of thought weeks before, but it began to gnaw at me now even more. And I knew it wasn't the potato salad churning in my stomach.

I politely said hello and made some small talk. "That new computer system looks impressive." (I didn't mean it.)

"We shall see," he said doubtfully.

Then I said, "I want you to know I'm retiring."

He stared at me for a second, and said, "Come on, the meeting isn't all that bad. Is it?"