Let's Take This Online

I need a new career. I have known this for a long time, but I still don’t know what I should do. Here are some thoughts:

Newspaper editor
Veterinary assistant (main duties: pet the cute animals)
Dance, music, chocolate, or ethical cosmetics shop owner
Arts administrator (whatever they do)
Web designer
Small aircraft pilot
Journalist
Baker
‘Avon lady’ for Lush

I am completely unqualified (both unqualified and Unqualified) to do any of these jobs. (Except for the last one, as you know!) So I guess I’m stuck being the Keeper of the Keys to the Stationery Cabinet. Plan B is to achieve fulfilment through my personal life and hobbies instead.

My company had its Sales Kickoff last Friday. I don’t know if other companies do this. I have very little experience of anything really so I just go along with whatever comes up and assume it’s normal. The kickoff was a day offsite at a conference hall-type place; there were exhibitions displaying our wares and ‘workshops’ (sessions spent in an auditorium listening to some guy while trying to keep warm) throughout the day. I learned as little as I could and didn’t get sick, which was my achievement for the day.

Actually I started listening at one point when I realized there was valuable fodder for my register of corporate bullshit talk being flung around with rampant generosity. I kept thinking, “if only I could be bothered to get my pen and paper out of my bag”. Eventually I did, when I realized the next tea and biscuit break wasn’t coming anytime soon, but by that time the bullshit-fest had slowed and I only got a few gems.

Here are some of the words and phrases I have compiled during my time here:

Productize (v)
Diarize (v)
Interface (v)
Open up a dialogue (v)
Let’s take this offline (phrase)
Partner ecosystem (n)
Specific verticals (n pl)
Going forward (v. present participle)
Give (someone) visibility of (something) (v)
Learnings content (n)
The evolution of the (company) story

It’s sort of breathtaking to hear this stuff in use. I do wonder how it is that a large band of adults can all quite happily go around talking like this with no-one smirking. I watch them carefully to see any signs or irony – a wink perhaps – but there is none. The mask never slips, if it is a mask. I wonder what happened to these people between school and now – something that happened to them and not to me – to turn them into the kind of people who talk about …… without wincing, and who actually think that going to work and talking about variables is ‘exciting’. I mean I just don’t get it! These are the same kinds of people who acted up at school and would never do their homework, and had no interest in learning whatsoever, while I was the goody-two-shoes. Yet now they’re the ones who are so into working hard and improving the business, upholding the Establishment and all that. Are they really sincere in this whole ‘This business roll-out (what’s a roll-out?) is so damn thrilling” attitude or is it some 1984-style conspiracy of ‘if we talk like this maybe eventually we’ll con ourselves into believing it?’ I mean, wouldn’t they just rather read a book? Go the movies? Go swimming?

There was a lot of use of the word ‘exciting’ on Friday but the most exciting part of my day was when I sneaked out for an hour and read my book by the back entrance to the station.

One last thing. Why has Blogger suddenly stopped allowing me to italicize things?