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Saturday, April 2, 2011

April Fools Day............

Some of you may know that I have recently had a new manager at work. This is not unusual since this is the fourth manager we have had in 3 years, they tend to last about 8 months, then we have a few months without one and then we get a new one. Anyway, this one has been very difficult to work for, really autocratic and totally unrealistic in her demands although on a social level she is pleasant enough.
On Monday she sent an email out to say the National Financial manager was coming down yesterday and there would be a big budget meeting until 5pm and it was compulsory to attend.
On Tuesday she sent us an email reminding us that on Fridays we are supposed to wear our company shirt and that we are supposed to do this in future and if we dont "be prepared to explain!"
On Wednesday she sent an email saying that we must send a list of all the items we wanted in our budget for the year. She sent this list back to us 4 times for changing!
On Thursday she sent an email saying that we must send reports for all the projects we are involved in, make sure our POE's were up to date and be prepared to present in the meeting!
By this time of course we were fed up, but the worst was yet to come.
On Friday she informed us that the meeting had been changed to a conference centre at a shopping mall close to the regional offices. (This venue is often used for meetings so we didn't think anything of it, but were unhappy because it is quite far from our office, I did wonder why they were hiring a venue for a meeting that we could have stayed at the office for.) We were told to be ready to leave at 12. At 12 Vijay our programme manager phoned down and told us that we had to bring prices etc of the stuff we wanted in our budget, so there was a mad rush to get everything ready.
Then we left the office and met up where we were supposed to meet up. Of course management were not there! We eventually contacted Vijay who said that we must meet at Entrance 10, which of course just happened to be on the other side of the shopping centre, and about 3 floors up. So off we trekked across the mall, and up the last 2 flights only to get a phone call demanding where we are. Everyone was waiting for us where we had started off from. By this time I, for one, was hot, thirsty and totally annoyed. We managed to find a lift and made our way back to where we had started only to find that the venue was not booked. By this time I was fed up and ready to pack up and go home. Especially since it was break-up day and my sister, nephew, daughter and parents were out having lunch without me! Anyway, eventually our manager admitted that it was all an elaborate hoax and we were actually having a team building at the adventure golf! The whole thing had been to see how compliant we were! (I was a bit annoyed about that since it felt a bit like being a puppet on a string!)
Anyway, the day didn't turn out so bad after all. We played a round of putt-putt, had some pizza and drinks and lots of laughs. Our team, which included our manager) even won a bottle of wine each for being the team with the highest score. Pity it was the booby prize, lol.

6 comments:

  1. seems like a ridiculous wast of a lot of man hours. They could have done the surprise without all the needless jumping through hoops.

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  2. Oh my goodness, what a hectic week and then all that treking around before finding out there was a little fun in it after all.

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  3. Thanks for the comment on my blog, Tracy...glad you managed to enjoy your day in the end!
    Alison xx

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  4. Oh my goodness - what a waste of effort! Glad you managed to salvage something from it at the end though. Thanks for the comment on my blog :)

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  5. Oh dear.... Sounds a bit of a rotten April Fool to me! I'm glad you got some fun out of it in the end though :-)

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  6. I don't like that kind of fooling! Sounds awful! Well at least some mini golf was involved...I guess. lol

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