The “Meeting”

Happy New Year peeps, all the best for 2011 and so on and so forth. How’s it been so far? Mine’s been expensive and work-wise it’s been a bit dull. No New Year shenanigans to report from anyone here - quite tame and low key by all standards and it’s taking some time to hot up again in the office. People are still away, half asleep or not bothering to do any work this week as they struggle to get to terms with being up at 7am again and having to wear something that isn’t their dressing gown or eat 5 meals a day in front of the telly. As you know I was in last week so I’m not suffering from the same symptoms but I will admit to not bothering to do any work. I’ve got little to do but even that has become a chore.

I know I know I’m never happy. I’m too busy and then I’m not busy enough! Actually I am enjoying these few days of peace as the proverbial will hit the fan next week with more shat coming in for us to do. Plus Moody officially leaves on Friday. Unofficially he’s off on holiday and then coming back for 3 weeks to do a handover to CJ and his replacement. By ‘handover’ read throwing it all into a room with a live grenade, shutting the door and walking away. CJ is freaking out to say the least. I hope to be able to sit back and watch the explosions with very little chance of any shrapnel injury.

I had a meeting with CJ and Moody today – it was our weekly catch up with the lady from IS. She’s pretty tiny but she’s also quite strong willed and feisty and I can imagine she gets what she wants all the time. She’s also very nice to boot so I like working with her as she is normal, competent and friendly – a rare combination in this place. She has this amazing skill of speaking at length and very coherently about anything whilst simultaneously creating these mad doodles on her note pad. She is the kind of person who likes to draw as she explains, so people will become boxes or bubbles and then their actions will become arrows or wavy lines, when you look back at it it makes no sense on it’s own but its helped her explanation. It always fascinates me and I must look like a right weirdo staring at her as she sketches the Eiffel Tower whilst chatting about various accounts. Tiny is also good at putting Moody in his place or cutting his rants short which is always welcome in a meeting that is already running over an hour.

Moody seemed quite chilled, probably because he knows he is buggering off soon and he had a kind of half smirk on his face every time he mentioned off loading something on to CJ. This resulted in a lot of sighing and “oh’s” from CJ’s corner – I don’t think she is in the least ready to take on his work and will either flounder or burst into flames when the time comes.

CJ was doing that speech marks thing she does in meetings. Actually she does it all the time, even in every day conversation not about work. I was noting down what words she used them on:

“uniquely”

“contract”

“stand alone”

“consultant”

“size” (when talking about the company)

“out of control”

So CJ you’re saying that it’s not really unique, the contract doesn’t really exist, you’re lying and it’s not stand-alone it’s something else, the consultant is imaginary, the size of our company is – well what the feck are you saying about the size of our company? That makes no sense in that context?! What I do know is that we are out of control though so get rid of those damn speech marks. She also used it when saying a company name – er so that company isn’t real then? We are doing business with them and spending an awful lot of money you know. Stupid cow. I think it’s become some kind of nervous twitch with her, her hands just jut up into the air and out come the fingers. She also dips her head when she does it and pauses slightly before saying the word.

“So this…”contract” has to be signed before….”year end”…”

Yes it does. All of what you have just said is fact so why with the BLOODY SPEECH MARKS?!

Maybe she used to work for the News of the World prior to this job? If we have a birthday card for her go round then I’m going to put in it “Happy Birthday” CJ and see if she comments.

Nothing else of note to report, things continue as normal(ish) and the cleaners still continue to be baffled by my hat Kirstie made me.

That is all.