Work Meeting

My work had a half-day meeting today. They served us breakfast. They served us lunch. And in between those, they talked to us about how to be more effective in our jobs.

Personally, I hate meetings like that. They seem really, REALLY unproductive to me. I come from a world where you play your music or do your scene, and the audience claps or doesn't. The audience laughs or doesn't. And if you don't get a response, you know you need to work harder. If you don't write enough for a show, you don't have a show.

This world isn't like my previous world. There are people who make goals for you and then you have to meet them. They don't always tell you how to achieve those goals except to say that you're failing to meet them. And the job you're doing isn't always clear.

So we have these meetings in the hopes of nailing these unknowns down so that we can all... do our jobs? Really? We're all employed. We all have a job. And now, we have to get together to figure out how to do it better. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

So my work hires this woman to come in and do "fun" stuff before we talk about work. And the first fun thing she does is gather us all around a table. There are 36 of us there, standing around one table. And she tells us to number off to 18, and then start again from 1, so that there are only two people in the group who have the same number. These two people are now partners on opposite sides of the table from each other. She tells us that our objective is to change places with our partner as quickly as possible. Then she tells us there are only two rules for this exercise: 1. you must touch the table before you change places, and 2. you need to change places with your partner. So we all talk about it a little, and decide that we're going to move in a clockwise motion around the table until we get to where our partner used to be. If we all move in unison, then we should approximate where our partner was standing and we'll accomplish our goal. So we do that. And Team Woman tells us that we did this in 45 seconds. Then she says that the fastest it's ever been done is 4 seconds, and it was done with a group larger than ours. So how can we make this happen, she asks us.

And immediately I blurt out the answer.

And all my co-workers look at me like a caveman who just saw a blender. And I realized that they didn't get it. They didn't understand this thing that, to me, was really, really obvious. So I explained it, and they started to get it, and we all adjusted, and we started... and accomplished the task in 2 seconds. And Team Woman said that this was the most efficient way to accomplish this task and she said that this was the fastest that she had ever seen a group come up with that answer.

After that, and for the rest of the meeting, my co-workers were patting me on the back, telling me how smart I was. Telling me that they were proud to know me. One woman hugged me and said, "I was hired at the same time he was!" Another guy I had never met before told me that he was going to take me out to lunch next week. "I'll take you out for catfish next week because you're smart and I want to be with smart people."

It was nice to have that kind of praise.
It was awkward to have that kind of praise.
It was lonely to have that kind of praise.
It was nice to have that kind of praise.
I don't want to stand out in that way with this group again.
I felt very much out of place.
I felt like I was cheating.
Yes, I'm able to do this thing. But you all are capable of doing the actual work that we're supposed to do which I guess at every day and feel like I'm just stumbling through without a clue.

I miss acting. I miss singing. I miss improvising.
I miss entertaining.
I miss doing something that I understand.
I miss being around people that I understand.
I miss being part of a group that I get, and they get me.
Even with my band, I knew that there were two other guys that got me.
Even if the entire audience didn't get me, they did.
Just two guys. And some days, that was enough.
Although, to be honest, the audience always got me, too.
I was pretty good at that kind of stuff.