Every other month I get on an early morning
plane to fly to Quelleville City. I'm doing it because I have to report the
status of work to my boss, who’s going to report the status of work to his
boss, the almighty CIO of the company, a one Monsieur Gilles Giroux. Monsieur
Giroux - or Gil how all his reports call him in one of the popular
North-American’s translation of “liberté, égalité, fraternité” - doesn't
have to report the status of work to anybody, and actually doesn't even need to
be updated on it. A silly old man, out-fashioned and funny looking, he has lost
quite a while back any touch for technology, if he ever had one. It is a big
company the one I work for, and my boss works for, and Monsieur Giroux, pardonnez moi, Gil works for, a media
industry flagship in the great country of ours. And if this is a flagship, then
I’m Admiral Nelson. In spite of all evidence to the contrary and regardless of
everyone’s opinions, including mine, the business community really thinks that
our company is one of the best on the continent. And someone fool themselves
into thinking that is one of the greatest in the world. For me, a highly
replaceable nobody in an IT team, one of many IT teams I should say, it’s a
wonder how this giant organization is still keeping afloat among the perfect
storms of the global economy, eaten from inside out by incompetency, political
in-fighting, clumsy executive decisions, and the terminal disease given by the
un controlled spreading of hundreds of contractors that are hired based on good
looks and decent command of English language (always in this order.) I have
been working with this company for over three years now, and every single damn
day, at some point in the afternoon hours, which tends to become vagrant
especially when it gets closer to Friday, I feel the same urge to grab a pen
and a piece of paper and scribble down my resignation notice. Signed: Admiral
Nelson. The only thing that stops me from doing it is the fact that my boss,
Pierre Chabreuil, is quite far of the immediate reach of my vengeance, located
in a small office in Montreal, working at the company's headquarters, while I trudge
my days in our Toronto office, lost in a tide of cubicles filled to the brink
by tens of unfriendly people I don’t know their names, their roles and in
general I have no damn clue of what a heck they’re doing there the whole day.
Today Pierre is chattier than ever. He just
returned from his three-week African vacation, where he partied and hunted in
private safaris that should have cost an arm and a leg, while looking with
equally compassionate eyes to lions, tigers, and locals. Based on people's
gossip, Pierre is married into a good Quelleville’s family, and the best confirmation
for me is the picture of his red Ferrari, hanging on the wall of his tiny
office with no windows, in a stance of la
vie à la légère, completely impervious to any work related problems. Today
he keeps telling me stories about rhinoceros and elephants and tigers with that
thin, light and still refreshing French accent that makes those ferocious and
miserable beasts sound smaller and a bit more dangerous that the neighbours’
cat. Even occasionally adorable. As for me,
my best bet is to exhibit sheer amazement at hearing those stories about
adventure and animal love (no pun intended!) in exotic places, and nothing
really stops me from standing up at times like in ovation, cheering lie a
satisfied audience for the quality of the show, clapping my hands in delirious
joy for Pierre’s vacationer accomplishments. But I get that far only in my mind.
And at intervals I stop short from breaking into a delirious laugh that would sound
more like a nervous meltdown. Pierre is my boss and I need to fake deep
interest in what he’s saying, especially if it’s close to his heart. I am sure
that by constant nodding, while keeping a stupid smile stuck on my face makes
me look good, and me harbouring a happy face will make him feel good with who
he is, what he represents and what he achieved in life. I really do my best to
make my manager’s day.
At some point during the one way discussion, I
remember about the purpose of my business trip. Yeah, the status of work, dummy! I feel preying like a hawk
hovering on the topic to dart to a weak spot, and I choose a moment when he
looks spent of too much talking or just bored with my dry presence – simple minded yeoman! - , and I start telling
him about the clowns he hired to work for the business intelligence project.
The damn greedy contractors with apparently no code ethic. A bunch of
incompetents faking the expertise, pretending they know everything and keep
logging hour after hour for make-believe tasks, charging us at skyrocketing
fees and delivering next to nothing. Those flimsy documents they walk us
through with the air of some brilliant scientists who just found the missing
particle of the universe, do not even get close to supporting a viable business
intelligence solution. What they deliver is just B.S. business requirements
documentation that you could very well use for nature calls in case you run out
of toilet paper. Of course I can’t use words like “clowns”, ”incompetents”, “bullshit”,
“make believe” or ”fucking turds.” I
have observed right from the onset of our work relationship that with Pierre I
have to be always politically correct and play fancy semantics like “his
deliverables may be a bit off the target, but he seems committed and we should remain
confident in his well proved expertise” when you want to tell him that some sucks
at his job.
Today I am even reluctant to open a subject
that in spite of his shell means bad news in the end, maybe because I'm still
under the spell of the African red horizons, with shadowy profiles of shaggy lions
cut on their canvas. But in the end I have to play my act. Like a skilled
gunman I put a positive spin on my projectiles’ trajectories to describe the
situation: “a tad of target”, ”need to focus a bit on”, “hopefully they will
recover in no time”, “they are indeed the best of breed.”
Pierre realizes in a second that what I’m
doing is touting a potential disaster, maybe even a sunk project that could cost him the next trip
to a Kenyan safari. With a face changed by the premonition of future vacations
spent in the Quebec's provincial parks, he charges like a hyena from its
hiding: “Why are you telling me these
things? Don’t you know how much Gil likes these guys?”
For a few good seconds his words cling in the
air like the heavy smoke of a cigar that tastes bad. The time gets suddenly
suspended, my thoughts get also suspended, my brain wants to move in a levitation
state, and the only things that keep pounding, alive, are the safari memories.
Then I return with a sigh to my physical existence. His statement and the
Ferrari on the wall combine into an explosive sweet-sour cocktail in my mind. In
a fraction of a second that lasts longer than a life time’s set of memories, I
reach out from my seat with the agility of a gazelle and I land a full slap
straight on his right cheek. Then I leave the office, slamming the door with
the strength of an enraged baboon, without worrying about my resignation
notice.
