Thursday 2 September 2010

A New Home in the Sky - The Meeting Room

In direct contrast to last week, the sun is fairly pouring through the strangely blue-tinted windows of Throwback Towers today, so much so, that GD decides that we will have our team meeting in the 'Cathedral Suite'.  It is arranged that we will meet there after our post-prandial pootle around the retail district. 

On the way there, we are accosted by Possibly-Genuinely-Stranded-Girl who puts on a charming performance - including a plausible story of a lost purse and repeated requests for our email addresses so she can arrange to pay us back if we give her some money ("even 20p would do!").  I fork over a quid and you might be forgiven for thinking I have just saved her life, so effusive are her thanks.  Scam?  Not sure, but sufficiently entertaining and just plausible enough to be worth a quid of anybody's money (are you taking note, St Peter?).

Anyway, after the pootling about, we arrive at the Cathedral Suite.

This is the door.....


As you can see, the meeting room is spacious and fully air-conditioned....
 
 
 
With none of that nasty carpet that covers the corporate land like some kind of evil beige moss...
 
 
With ample seating for all our meeting needs, large or small....
 
 
 
We are here to talk about the new additions to our team that are arriving tomorrow from the land of Offshore.  Offshore is that nice place where all the Call Centres are these days.  Offshore is where you can get three highly-trained Klueless Decision Support System techies for the price of one Brit.
 
We're not worried about our jobs though, as the viscissitudes of IL-4 mean that the Offshorians are not allowed to access the super-secret stuff - only we Brits are.  Gotta love that implicit corporate racism.
 
We talk seriously about these things for just long enough to say with a clear conscience that we've been having a proper meeting then we degenerate into the usual mixture of buffoonery, gossip, nostalgia and making up fantastically exaggerated life-stories for people we know (a favorite passtime of ours).
 
This gives us an idea:  we decide on the way back that we will introduce Spare Change Guy to our Offshorians as a former member of the team who has quit the corporate rat-race after a particularly stressful week on-call.  We'll big him up as being the guy we still go to when we hit a real problem ("he's forgotten more than most of us will ever know about Klueless").  I'm sure for a couple of quid SCG will play along.

9 comments:

  1. That's hilarious - if you really do that I want to hear all about how it goes :)

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  2. Stunning place for a meeting - too bad you can't use it all year!

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  3. I would enjoy any meeting in a place like that too! :)

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  4. i think there is good evidence that many huge corporations get their decisions direct from Mad Cat Lady from The Simpsons

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  5. Great place for a meeting. Entertaining post.

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  6. Bug - We didn't tell our Ofshorians the Spare Change Guy was a team member in the end - we're all talk!

    NanU - You're right, we will need to scout out a suitable location for winter meetings.

    DFTP - I wish that Cat Lady was making the decisions, things might be more organised.

    ER - Thanks, it's a beautiful calm spot in the busy city centre.

    Hunam - It's the ruins of Coventry Cathedral.

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  7. Update: GD Possibly-Genuinely-Stranded-Girl has been downgraded to Fake-Stranded-Girl-Who-Will-Get-a-Slap-If-I-See-Her-Again: GD saw here running the same scam the next day.

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  8. now that's a proper meeting place! and I'm thinking there could be a half decent living to be made in acting needy! especially round your neck of the woods!

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