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| Q is for Quarterly |
| Saturday, April 19, 2014 |
We call a team event that happens every quarter as a quarterly.
My company is not doing all that well. We have severe budget cuts and discretionary spending cuts, even severance packages given out. I am still here because I like what I am doing and I am learning a lot. If I have to move out I will have to go back to engineering since I am still a newbie in this role. So I am at times a bit scared. But I have the confidence I wont be jobless for too long.
So anyway coming to the point, the boss brought up the topic of this quarterly a couple of weeks ago. I got excited and said we all should go hiking. And I said I can help plan the hike, look for trails etc. Some teams have done successful team events with hiking. Meh, no one was interested. Everyone wanted to eat and drink and party. So hiking was shot down. We decided to make it a quarterly for a larger group of people, not just my small team. BUT, I was on the hook to plan the quarterly!! Then I thought how bad can it be, I worked with a person who calls himself CTO of our business unit, like 60 years old I think. You know these oldies are very difficult to work with :--P they treat you like a kid first off and then they think they know everything.
So I called up Dave and Busters and a few other games places around the area after polling between Games and Bowling and Movie. Dave and Busters worked out. I picked the lunch options. I am the WRONG person to pick out lunch menu, erm a health nut that I am. Plus I dont know the group all that well. So I picked something with a few veggie options, and 1 chicken options. I didnt even go into fish and other meat since I dont know what is good.
The event was last Friday. On Good Friday. Lunch was okay. I forgot dessert! But no one seemed to mind. We gave out playcards to play rest of the afternoon.
Have you played these 'picking' games? Where you have to move a mechanical arm horizontal and vertical and aim at an object at the bottom mostly soft toys and aim to pick them up? Well my luck, I picked FOUR of those toys!!!!
So I was told that this other guy is good at picking and we went to look for him and get him to pick us some toys. We swiped our cards and he tried. No luck. In one place there were three of these machines so I just decided to swipe and try my luck. The first try I picked a toy! Woohoo! Second time I picked another one, woohooohoo! Third time I picked TWO!! My joy knew no bounds. I knoew BSK would be the happiest today. Here is the loot.
After that we were in anotherof those soft toy games in which one other guy won another soft toy lion. It was fun. Big boss was there, also playing. Actually lunch was spent talking business. It was interesting.
Given the state of the company's finances and budget cuts, we dont know if and when we will have our next quarterly. I saw all the wasted food and wondered if I could have done something to save some money. We are just budget cuts and people are being redeployed, but I SEE with my own eyes, company money being squandered. That same happened at the workshop too in February. Some guys who did absolutely nothing to help were staying all days of the week spending company money. I did my bit to be meticulous about who should travel and who should not, but still only so much can be done. I realize it s a small drop in the bucket of million dollar cuts, but still small drops make an ocean dont they?
I have an international trip coming up and while it will be nice to meet customers face to face, in lieu of the current situation I have decided to do video conferencing.
Fingers crossed company should come out of the woods soon.
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posted by SK @ 11:51 PM  |
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