In the Exit Row

It’s the second half of Team Dinner (First Half here). After a round of musical chairs, you realize that you’ve been seated next to the only two people at the table who are part of the technology practice, and you’re like

When they tell you that they are vegetarians, or, worse, vegans, you’re thinking

The conversation begins peacefully. They start talking about their kids, how travel makes it so difficult to see them womp womp womp. When they ask you if you have a wife, you say no. When they ask you if you have a girlfriend, you think to yourself,

But, you’re okay with that because the waitress is HOT. But, it’s going to be difficult as fuck to circumnavigate what is essentially a table full of cockblocks. You just want to push everyone at the table away like,

You’re good though, and you coyly excuse yourself to the restroom. No one notices, because they’re too busy discussing how inaccurate House of Lies is. You don’t want to let them know you’ve had more fun in the past few years than Don Cheadle in HOL and have crazier hotel stories than Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda. Stories that would make most people at the firm go

You catch the waitress by the restroom and make a joke about how boring this dinner is and if she could please spike your next glass of wine with GHB and take you home. She finds it funny and gives you her number. When you remain cool and composed on the outside, but inside, you feel like

It’s back to the table now and the partner is talking about himself and everyone is smiling and nodding and encouraging him to talk about himself. When you’re just eating your steak (while the vegetarians order plate after plate of vegetables and pasta so bland it would make even the most indiscriminate 4 year old cry), you look at everyone around the table like,

Just when you think the meal is finally over and you realize its 8:30PM and you’re both wasted and sending “Where are you?” booty calls far too early, the waitress asks if anyone wants dessert. While most of the table gives that limp dick “… maybe…” response, the two fatasses at the table look at each other like,

and it’s on. When dessert arrives and even though no one really wanted it, everyone springs for it like,

The check finally comes and the partner takes it with that Big Man On Campus grin. Everyone smiles and thanks him soooo much for dinner, but you know the only person paying for it is the client and you think to yourself,

Now, the team dinner HAS to be over, but someone mentions “that cool new bar” in town and you realize, holy-fuck-this-shit-won’t-ever-fucking-end-I-just-want-to-go-home-and-Keep-Up-With-the-Kardashians and you’re like,

What Should We Call The Night Out? We’ll find out tomorrow.

This is too much fun.

Children are going hungry all over the world. Unethical food practices are driving public consciousness on food sourcing. The cost of food in some regions of the world is rising at an alarming rate.

But when your team lets you know you’re going to a Michelin rated restaurant for a team dinner, you’re just like…

It’s not that you don’t enjoy eating everything – you would just rather be working out, dating, writing, or getting jerked off by Edward Scissorhands. Regardless, team dinners = leaving work early, and when you get to leave the office before 7PM, you’re like…

After hailing a cab and stuffing 4 corporate issued black nylon briefcases in the trunk, you get closer to your manager than you ever wanted to as you squeeze into the cab like

The team awkwardly chooses its spots around the table. Just as you decide that you’re going to make an attempt to get the know the partner instead of being an alcoholic recluse, the sycophant manager squeezes in between you and the partner like,

Dinner always begins with the same boring-ass topics. “Do you prefer having two phones?” “Are you an SPG person or a Marriott person?” “How many kids do you have?” Meanwhile, you’re just sitting there like,

Luckily, after someone finally pretends they know a thing or two about wine, Dionysus delivers his sweet goods to the dinner table.

When at first, someone says, “Oh, I don’t drink” you look at them like,

…. and decide it’s going to be a long, long night of,

Get ready for it. And the second half, tomorrow.

If you have found this post, you have reached your last resort. Please don’t panic. It’s Monday. You may be suffering from travel malaise, you may have partied way too hard this weekend, and your Serotonin Industrial Average may be reaching 2008-level lows.

Your friends are moving in together, getting engaged, married, or are making equally similar temporal and regrettable life decisions. To you, life both simultaneously feels like it’s passing by way too quickly yet it has been 10:00AM for several hours.

This is the Monday Survival Guide. Follow with care and carry on. And if you don’t think you can survive, always remember that the words “food poisoning”, “Chinese takeout”, and “both ends” in a carefully conceived sentence are as undeniable as John Travolta’s homosexuality.

5 Hour Energy

Got that 2:30 feeling? Me too. I’ve had it since 4:30AM, when 3 alarm clocks woke me up in a cacophonous symphony so horrendous, only a show featuring Creed, Nickleback, and that Adam Lambert girl on the same stage could compare.

I’m one trip to a Dwyane Wade away from 5 hours of revitalization. At least, without a “prescription”.

RSS Feeds

What better way to look like you’re doing something than to open up an email? Not just any email – a blog post within an email. I don’t know why it took me a year to figure this out, but setting up RSS feeds in Outlook is some real inception shit. Gawk at gossip, or giz on new technology.

Plus, you’ll have the inside scoop on why Facebook’s stock is trading down. Because Zuckerberg did too.

Podcasts

Remember those 4 years when the only things you learned were: 1. The best teams to use in FIFA 2. The easiest way to make a quick buck was by going to experiments at the psychology building (and telling them you didn’t feel comfortable after 5 minutes and collecting your cash) and 3. Girls will always believe that you actually just opened that toothbrush?

That semester when you immersed yourself in another country’s culture by studying abroad in an English program in a building full of Americans while living in another building full of Americans? When you drained your parent’s checking account by 1.43x the normal amount, while posting enviable facebook statuses and using that skydiving photo as your profile picture?

You didn’t learn shit.

Luckily, NPR and TED have you covered, to both pass the time and let you sound somewhat intelligible at cocktail parties. Even if you made some Major mistakes, by the name of Finance and Marketing.

In the Exit Row

I never miss an opportunity for shameless self-promotion. Click Archives above and have your pick.

Congratulations, you’re almost there. Do your best to avoid telling the next person that says “Happy Monday!” to Kennedy herself/himself and have a great day.

 Happy Monday! 

-CXO

It happened amidst one of those powerful brainstorming sessions. One that reminded me of my value to the firm and my contributions to the client.

The manager leaned back in his chair and dictated a slide to me, putting his thoughts to my paper. His organized and methodical use of present tense verbs and actionable actions exited his mouth like verbal diarrhea. A stream of consciousness. Jack Kerouac, On the Slide.

Ignoring, for a moment, the fact that Mavis Beacon taught him typing, leaving my existence in that team room largely superfluous, a more important question occurred to me.

Why?

Why did nothing I was typing mean anything? Why was Powerpoint telling me that these words did not exist in the English dictionary and yet I carried on? Why, do we, as consultants and as business professionals, use words, terms, and language that really, just don’t make any sense?

(Will someone please write shit down? I’m thinking out loud.)

1. Everybody is Foreign

Don’t mistake this point for Xenophobia. Xena the Warrior Princess was one of my favorite daytime television shows. I mean, she could kick my ass, but I kind of liked that.

Consultants come from everywhere [in India] and consultants consult everywhere. By developing a language of complex sounding words, second and third derivatives of the English language, we have managed to create a universal language. Think of it as the Esparanto of the 21^st century. It doesn’t matter if English was your second language. Consulting becomes your first.

2. We Are Justifying Our Cost

There’s a moment in your career as a consultant, when you realize what your actual billing rate is. Most are shocked by the numbers. The immediate reaction is a combination of awe, disgust, and “am I really worth that much?” (Or, “why I am I not getting more of that?” in my case.)

Consultants maintain an inadequacy complex. Our work can only get so hard and our analysis so deep, so we overcompensate by being flashy. Sound familiar?

3. We have Nothing to Add

Somebody once said to me, “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say it all,” so I told him to shut the fuck up.

Now, what if it just so happens that you don’t have anything nice to say, but nothing to say or add at all (with the exception of some awkward moments and the general disdain of everyone around you)? Add in some connections and the opportunity to get paid? You get into consulting, or make a TV show, of course!

So there you have it. Sometimes it’s best not to ask questions you don’t want the answers to. In the meantime, I will be performing the work that an iPhone can do, while watching the hottest scenes from Xena.

Add value. Ad Nauseam. 

-CXO