John Linton
I, generally, have always been someone who starts the working day early and, like many other people, find that it's easier to do detailed work early in the working day rather than later. Having come from a large corporate background for the first twenty plus years I've had to work for a living I became familiar with many of the more ridiculous US corporate concepts of 'getting the most out of each individual's working day". This included surreptitious attempts of extending the 'working day' by holding various pointless meetings before and after "normal working hours".
Those dummies who passed for managers in corporate life in those, largely and thankfully forgotten, days apparently had no faith or belief that the average professional working person was largely dedicated to making the most of their work tasks both to increase their own likelihood of greater remuneration and career development/promotion and (Heavens to Betsy, Paw!) because they actually enjoyed what they did.
I thought I'd entered a time warp earlier this morning and had returned to 1972 (except no-one was wearing flared pants with clashing coloured shirts and ties and there wasn't a sideburn in sight). There in the meeting room were the jugs of orange juice and the plates of slightly stale croissants and Danish together with the undrinkable 'coffee' simmering and spluttering on the side table. Not only that but there were 7, repeat that SEVEN (and that excluded the PA busily passing out plates and napkins), people from the supplier already in the room munching and slurping away as if they had recently been released from Guantanamo Bay.
Maybe this large multi-national's remuneration policies were so niggardly their employees had to take every opportunity to get something 'free' out of their employer; even if it was inedible or undrinkable for all but the most jaded of palates?
I had thought I was being courteous by actually visiting them as I was only one person and my experience dictates that the streets of North Sydney are so dangerous that our suppliers, and potential suppliers, are compelled to send their personnel out in groups of at least three to discuss anything. I had also expected the meeting to take 10 - 15 minutes as I've never found any topic that needs more than that time to be fully exhausted.
I have no idea what the actual cost of that meeting was and I have no idea why seven people attended it - other than somehow free stale pastries, orange juice with a high sulphuric acid content and undrinkable coffee was an inducement to get in to the office earlier than usual. Only two people made a meaningful contribution to the discussion (which out of politeness I allowed to go for 25 minutes) and I was one of the two. All I wanted to do was to buy a base service at an acceptable cost - it could have been done by email but the supplier wanted to have a meeting which, out of a need to make a decision, I agreed to.
I suppose it's all a 1970s 'hangover' when you add in the 'acre' of reception space, the ugly, but doubtless expensive, "art works" and the "security guards" who looked like they belonged the other side of the locked doors at the closest high security prison.
I didn't get a reasonable price and won't be dealing with that supplier any further. As I walked back to the Exetel office I couldn't help thinking that prices from such companies would be a lot lower, and they'd make a lot more money from those lower prices, if they could just grasp that more than 30 years have passed (with all that implies in terms of the benefits and cost reductions that are now available) since the ways they are still doing business were affordable.
These companies spend such an obviously huge amount of money on people and facilities that are just absolutely not required that I can't begin to think why the people running them and therefore authorising these expenditures still have jobs.
But they do, and the cost of providing a simple service reflects the inadequacy of the management of those companies which 'marketplace rules' have somehow allowed to survive in their personal time warp.
A depressing start to Monday.