'Cause his world is built round punctuality

[austin_dern]

I got news through my brother about some of what just happened on Friday. It may seem silly that I find out more about the company I work for through my brother, but he's the most direct means of communication there. After my employer missed meeting me, he sent text messages to my brother asking what happened, which was funny since my brother had no idea where I was or what was going on, other than that I was trying to meet him. My employer thought I was meeting the other two people who were going up at the office rather than his house, because that was how he interpreted the most recent set of e-mails. In any case, my employer's voice mailbox was full, as always, and he wasn't answering the phone for me, and I don't have any means of sending text messages except to mongologue and I always forget that.

However, it turns out that the client meeting was not one that we should have gathered at 10:00 to head up for; it was supposed to be at 10:00, so we would have been horribly late. But that's all right because while I was on time for meeting at 10:00, my employer wasn't because he thought the meeting was at 1:00 and had gone out to take care of other things during the morning, so the time that he didn't see me anywhere was not the time I was there not seeing him. He apologized profusely to the client, who wasn't put of by any of this. Where the two guys from the office who were also going up ended up I haven't yet learned.

So: I went to the wrong place at a time that would have been wrong even if everyone else had gathered there. My employer went to the right place at the wrong time. Other people went to somewhere I can't identify but did not make the meeting (which they'd have been able to carry out on their own) for no reason yet obvious.

And somehow, despite all of this, the company has not yet been abducted by squirrels.

Trivia: In 1891, the Army, Navy, and Marines of the United States employed 39,492 people. The Pennsylvania Railroad employed over 110,000. Source: The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea, John Micklethwait, Adrian Woolridge.

Currently Reading: 11th Month, 11th Day, 11th Hour, Joseph E Persico.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I do appreciate when you do send them, but I understand the lack of it. I never sent text messages to people on cell phones until I had one, it's one of those things where the asynchronicity minimizes it. (When I'm at the computer, It's so much easier to talk to people presently on the computer, even now.)

Your work stories have me wistful, for the contrast with my workplace where management once told me that my not-plain white T-shirt, worn under a chef jacket, was too colorful.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't mean that I don't think to send you something, even though with Web Site Number Nine temporarily inaccessible it's hard to just run across a good riff to mail out. I just forgot what to use for the e-mail address or web form or whatever it is to send you a text message.

I have to admit I've never had anyone remark on what I was wearing at work, although at my current office I'm the only person who regularly dresses in slacks and an actual buttoning, collared shirt. I feel as long as I'm not providing them actual economic benefit I should at least dress up.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Well, at work, a formal one-ninth of my review had been inclusive of an 'appearance' grade, though that's gone topsy-turvy now. that includes uniforms as well as grooming, though the standards for the latter are easily met when hair goes under a baseball cap.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, I suppose you do have a job where if customers get a glimpse of you they have very firm ideas as to what they should see.

The whimsical part of me wonders about trying different shades of off-white under the vest to see how far you can get before triggering a comment, but there's no way that's worth it.

[orv.livejournal.com]

This would actually have been par for the course at many of the companies I've worked at.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I do have my doubts about, well, every organization of people, actually.