How not to build morale (5/16/07)

Yesterday was happy fun day at work for the contract creatives like me. We had the office all to ourselves while everybody else (including our colleagues from off site and out of state) attended an offsite department meeting. I have been to one of these before and it was excruciating... I have been very happy to use my contractor status as a get-out-of-meetings card ever since.

Today, I got the report back from my full-time friends.

The meeting was at the N.C. Museum of Art. The employees had to sit through an all-day meeting in a no-food-or-drinks auditorium with two five-minute bathroom breaks and a 20-minute break for lunch. Speakers from management and senior management gave long, dry talks about the industry complete with awful PowerPoint presentations that make professional communicators cringe. Out of a group of 50, the three usual kissups insisted on asking questions, dragging out the presentations and irritating the suffering majority.

For entertainment, management brought in what was described to me as the world's worst improv team to stage a murder mystery. I'm told the "actors" came to the forefront and created some "chaos" that resulted in one actor on the floor with a knife in his back. The "survivors," attempting to represent members of management, tried to solicit unimpressed audience members to guess which member of management was the culprit.

Speaking unwittingly on behalf of everybody there, an admin named Pat said, "Maybe he killed himself to get away from the rest of you."

Pat, of course, is my new idol.