The Absurdity of Corporate Work

The other day I got an e-mail from An Important Guy at My Company. He wanted to call a forum to look at our revenue performance. We already did regular meetings with details on our main revenue streams. He decided it wasn’t enough. He wanted the scoop on the remaining (and dying) 5%!  Cool!

My boss and I had a short call to discuss these requirements. Except we didn’t so much as discuss as we psychoanalyzed the 3-liner e-mail. ‘What do you think they want to look at’, my boss asked.  I regurgitated the contents of his e-mail. ‘No, no but what do YOU think this is about’. I repeated the email, this time a little hesitant? Look, I only knew the The Important Guy at My Company by his name and title. I’d seem him loiter about the office campus a few times. It wasn’t enough to unravel the deeper thinkings of his mind. It would be much safer to let my boss decide what the The Important Guy at My Company wanted. ‘…you know they want a tighter control of the ship.. yada yada yada’. I nodded, of course, that’s what this is about. Well, good now we knew what he wanted, we could give him that. Not quite as I would soon find out because then my boss asked ‘What do YOU want to use this forum for…?’ I was told to think over it and reconnect a couple days later.

A couple days later we re-engaged. I told my boss confidently ‘We want to use this forum to tell the Important Guy at My Company all we’re doing to improve the topline; you know bring him visibility, get his buy-in..that sort of thing.’ Boss wasn’t impressed. We already did that apparently in some other meeting. He told me to think some more. So I repeated what I’d said in different words, but this time I was met with even more skepticism. This back and forth continued a few times, till it got exhausting so he told me ‘We’ll use this to get his endorsement. Impress him. We’ll tell the Important Guy all what we were doing and how it improves topline…’ I was then asked to prepare a short structure for the forum and have it run by the boss’ boss.

A couple of days later, my boss and I met with my boss’ boss where we proceeded to discuss what all should be discussed in the forum. ‘Alright’, he said ‘But we already discuss a lot of these things in other meetings. Think about how THIS meeting can add value on its own.’ Three meetings later, and we still didn’t know how to add value to this meeting. Anyway, after some discussion, we decided we’d be able to bring some tangential value, because even though all these things were discussed in other forums, we were bringing a more holistic pov which was the great need of the hour. So I was given the green signal and told to meet with the Important Guy’s Underling to discuss the forum content.

So then I met the Important Guy’s Underling. He  told me to e-mail him the structure and he’d have it run by HIS boss. So I emailed him the structure. I haven’t heard back from him yet.

To-date I have had 4 meetings in preparation of the meeting I am supposed to have with the Important Guy. I have wasted quite a few brain-cells trying to de-code what the the Important Guy wanted, what my boss thought he wanted, what I should want, what my boss thought I should want and then what my boss’ boss thought we should want. I have yet to do any real work for the meeting and I am ALREADY OVER it. And that, in a nutshell is the absurdity of corporate work.