Thursday 24 May 2007

Coincidences

I am currently reading the ballerina Irina Baronova's autobiography, and am enjoying it very much. Now, the man and were talking about coincidences last night. Coincidentally. And here's the thing: we're planning a short holiday in July to Byron Bay. He suggested I look up ballet classes in the area (probably afraid I'll refuse to go if I can't get my ballet fix!). So I did, and the first thing that came up was a page about Irina Baronova - apparently she's settled there! I'll have to look her up and ask her for a few pointers.

Thursday 17 May 2007

Going Postal

I have some more words/phrases for youm courtesy of my lovely job:

Customer-centric
Articulate the value proposition
Generate excitement, passion and motivation to do business (perfectly acceptable, language-wise, but wanky nonetheless)
We’re doing x through our transformation piece
Building business value

Maybe I should start a regular column dedicated to corporate bullshit. In the absence of in-house lexicographers to chart these new terms, which are multiplying at an unnatural rate, turning up all over the place, a whole new independent language could evolve and we’d suddenly find ourselves completely unable to communicate with the outside world.

I wish I'd had the balls to come in extremely late today. Both my bosses are away – one’s out of mobile phone range, and the other is in a time zone that’s 2 hours behind here, so it’s doubtful they’d ever find out. Yet, here I am. I only arrived my usual 5 minutes late despite the best efforts of Sydney public transport to delay me.

It’s quite tiring travelling in to work every morning. It’s not so much each individual journey that is tiring, but the combined effects of knowing you have to battle the bodies to get on your bus/train every morning. Buses drive past you, full, all the time, and when you do get on one, you’ve got to squeeze on and dangle from the hand rails, trying to balance with your bags while not slamming into anyone. The trains are the same. This morning I actually had to pull my stomach in so that people could get past – and I’m NOT that fat – whilst my bag was repeatedly jerked back and forth by the passing passengers – sorry ‘customers’. It’s so unpleasant, and at the end of it all you are sweating and your hair has turned into fuzz. At least it’s colder now so I can keep it tucked under my jacket hood.

God, it’s appalling to me when I think that unless something happens, I will be working full time now until I reach my sixties. Relentlessly boring jobs with long hours make people ugly and stupid, and I wonder what I’ll be like at the end of it. I’m already beginning to dislike the person I’m becoming. I feel like I’m losing myself, like I can’t even hear my own thoughts any more over the din of work.

I wonder if it’s possible to love other people fully when you’re a work drone. If you have less personality than before, how can you love your nearest and dearest as much? I mean, surely it’s the personal, individual part of you that is responsible for love. I can honestly say that my day-to-day job is much more real to me, much more immediately significant than my poor parents and brothers, many thousands of miles away. And even though the Man lives with me, my head is still in another place on week nights, even when I don’t have ballet. By the time I’ve managed to get home, all I want is time to clear a few things up, maybe snatch a bit of reading or television time and then get to bed early enough that I won’t be exhausted half way through the next working day. I know that he hasn’t done anything especially interesting as he’s been at work all day too, so I can hardly be bothered with any in depth communication with him. I mean, I try sometimes, but it’s not like I really care. Isn’t that awful? When we have so much history together, so much that is special and removed from our employers.

Maybe the memories that make me are slowly but surely being replaced by machine-like tendencies, to better serve the company. Eventually I’ll be nothing but a machine. When I read biographies of dancers I often find myself thinking what incredibly interesting lives they’ve had. Then I remember that my past is fairly interesting too (not as much though, of course!) but I forget that sometimes because I’m now becoming so boring. It’s like I’m living somebody else’s life.

So, will I still be doing this boring crap when I’m sixty? I have just the tiniest stab of empathy for those people that ‘go postal’ and turn up to work one day with a gun. There must be a lot of North Sydneys in this world.

Tuesday 15 May 2007

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?