You won't be surprised
Dec. 6th, 2002 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susandennisTo learn that Mr. Important just dropped by to say he had been called into another, very important meeting, and was going to have to postpone ours by a 'couple of hours'. I told him that I have a hard stop at 11:30 but I'd be glad to be there until then. (He was in a rush so I didn't mention that my hard stop was the free pizza lunch before my afternoon off.)
One of the IBM locations I worked at was run by the guy I actually worked for. He called me in one day and said... 'is it me, or is this business about coming to meetings 5 an d10 minutes late, just an ego trip for these people?' I allowed as how it wasn't just him. So he gave me the go to lay down the law. And like the rules Nazi, I am, I went into a frenzy of delight.
Calendar integrity was the rule of the day. If he was in a meeting and someone arrived late, they were simply asked to leave. We generally had to call in a special cleaning crew to vacum up the humility. If he wasn't involved, the meeting owners were directed to levy fines, hand out their own humiliation or do whatever it took to get people there on time.
It only took about 3 weeks. It was hilarious. I was also impressed at the creativity people then had to use to find other ways to prove they were important.
When I worked at Microsoft, no one gave a shit. If someone scheduled a meeting for 10 a.m. the next question was '10 a.m. real? or 10 a.m. Microsoft time?' The latter generally meant anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes after the stated time.
One of the IBM locations I worked at was run by the guy I actually worked for. He called me in one day and said... 'is it me, or is this business about coming to meetings 5 an d10 minutes late, just an ego trip for these people?' I allowed as how it wasn't just him. So he gave me the go to lay down the law. And like the rules Nazi, I am, I went into a frenzy of delight.
Calendar integrity was the rule of the day. If he was in a meeting and someone arrived late, they were simply asked to leave. We generally had to call in a special cleaning crew to vacum up the humility. If he wasn't involved, the meeting owners were directed to levy fines, hand out their own humiliation or do whatever it took to get people there on time.
It only took about 3 weeks. It was hilarious. I was also impressed at the creativity people then had to use to find other ways to prove they were important.
When I worked at Microsoft, no one gave a shit. If someone scheduled a meeting for 10 a.m. the next question was '10 a.m. real? or 10 a.m. Microsoft time?' The latter generally meant anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes after the stated time.