The boyfriend and I managed to escape to the mountains for the weekend, but not without Work trying to big-foot all over our plans.
I had uploaded what I thought to be my last job for the week around 4pm on Friday. I received a curt "thanks" from the boss and as far as I knew I was done. According to our wildly inaccurate company calendar, my next deadline wasn't until Tuesday and that job was already nearly finished. So off to the mountains we went.
Because I'm a masochist, I checked my email Saturday morning. The panic had started about 8pm Friday night. There were emails from 8pm, 10, 10:10, 10:35, 11:01, 11:37, 4am(!), 6:15, 8:13, and 8:55. Each marked urgent with a cute little red exclamation point. It appears no one had bothered to look at anything I'd submitted all week until sometime Friday night and now there were emergency revisions, reorganizations and "re-thinks". There were also two new jobs that had somehow mysteriously "fallen through the cracks" and yet were still due Monday.
Now, my usual response would have been to fire off an email reminding everyone that I don't in fact operate a fucking drive-up window and operators are not standing by to take your call. But I have learned from past mistakes, so I did the prudent thing... nothing.
I figured a little fear would be character building for everyone involved, so I waited. After 12 hours of radio silence (and a couple of cocktails) I finally responded. I politely apologized for the delay in my response. More in sorrow than in anger I mentioned that perhaps if someone had bothered to give me a heads up DURING NORMAL BUSINESS HOURS, I might be in a position to be helpful. Bt they didn't, so I wasn't.
Now, the truth of the matter is that I know how these people operate. I had actually anticipated this and loaded up the laptop with all the current work. I could have easily accommodated everyone at the expense of my precious little free time in the mountains. But I chose not to. Partially, because I find the casual disregard for what I do offensive. But more importantly, there was a greater goal...
Avoiding the Monday strategy meeting.
The Monday strategy meeting is a weekly Bataan Death March. And I'm not referring to the two-hour gridlock I'd suffer through to get there. The Monday strategy meeting is a joyless endurance event, a time suck of epic proportions.
It wasn't always so.
Once upon a time these were referred to as Creative Meetings. A chance to get together and talk about the work and ideas and inspirations. And they rarely lasted more than an hour. But then the marketing people took over and anything creative was kicked to the curb. "Marketing" was invented for people who wanted to work in advertising but had no talent or creativity. Marketing people are perhaps the least imaginative people on the planet.
Marketing meetings are evidently judged by their length, and anything under three hours is considered a failure. And what do you fill three hours with?
Bullshit.
Marketing bullshit.
Three hours talking about "leverage","social engagement" and "digital integration". "Viability" and "benchmarking" and "brand extension". Things need to be "customer centric" and "game changing". They need to be "organic" and "trending" and... just fucking shoot me. What does any of it mean? Beats the hell out of me - it might as well be a three hour lecture in Klingon.
I want to make a set of Marketing bingo cards....
"Shifting the Paradigm?" Check.
"Crowd sourcing?" Check.
"Value added?" Check
"Synergy?" Check
"Granular?" Check... BINGO!
"Synergy" is so common, that would have to be the free space.
Every few weeks a new buzzword arrives on the scene to captivate the marketing people like shiny keys dangled over a baby. Lately it seems to be "siloed", something to do with "vertical integration". Like a silo. Or something.
At any rate, by leaving all these last minute "emergencies" unfulfilled over the weekend, the magic email came from the boss around 8:30 last night...
"I think it would be best if you just skip the meeting tomorrow. There's too much work due to have you wasting time driving in."
As the marketing folks always say, it's "win-win".
