The Corporatorium: Caipirinha (Episode Nine)
“Huh?” I asked helplessly. We were in the middle of yet another production
meeting, and I thought I’d heard my name
mentioned.
“You’re going to…” and here TWO named
our southern office located in some North Carolina backwater.
“But, why?”
“Training,” TWO said. “Capital B has decided to decentralize
certain functions now centralized there.
We’ll need you to get up to speed as you’ll be the chief liaison between
the Northeast and Southeast regions.
“Why me?” I asked. My fear of flying is well known and to her
credit TWO did an admirable job hiding her glee at my discomfiture.
She gave me an answer but what it was
I don’t know as her words were drowned out by the sound of smoke being blown up
my ass.
“Oh,” she said rising. “One more thing: Brett will be going with
you.”
***
Nigel sidled up to my cell, glanced
up and down the hall and slipped into the narrow space. “Here,” he said thrusting several small
glassine packets at me.
“What’s this?”
“A survival kit for your trip,” he
said mysteriously.
***
At the airport, I was accosted by a
burly, grumpy woman in a TSA uniform as I attempted to clear security. I am convinced TSA does their recruiting
exclusively among ex-Nuns discharged from their teaching duties for extreme
cruelty, and who were only too happy to substitute the Word of the Director of
Homeland Insecurity for papal infallibility.
I caught her eyeing my hand and I knew instinctively she was wishing she
had a ruler instead of a gun.
“You can’t take this on the plane,”
she said brandishing a large bottle of lotion she had found in my carry-on.
“But it’s lotion!”
“I don’t care what it is! You can’t take
more than three ounces of liquid on a plane!”
“Since when?” I challenged.
She gaped at me. “Since, like, forever!”
“Oh, I don’t fly much,” I admitted.
“Don’t you read the newspaper?”
“Um. Actually, no. So depressing…anyway back to your three ounce
rule—I’ll be gone for three days, I need more than three ounces of lotion!”
She stared at me incredulously.
I tried again: “I have very dry skin.”
I was forced to check my bag. By now it was so late I didn’t have time to
worry about what our latest travel policy said about checking luggage. Luggage
checked, I sprinted down the corridor to the bar closest to my gate where I ordered
two Churchill Martinis (pour gin over ice in a jigger, nod towards France, and
shake). Martinis are the perfect drink
for pre-flight jitters, providing maximum alcohol but with little volume thus eliminating
the need to get up and pee mid-flight. (Is there anything more terrifying that
standing over a toilet trying to pee while suspended in midair?)
Semi-drunk, I arrived at the boarding
gate to discover my plane was delayed an hour.
It would, in fact, be more than four hours before we took off by which
time I was sober and the airport bar closed.
I am a barely tolerable flyer drunk; sober I am impossible.
***
Despite the seductive lateness of the
hour and the paucity of witnesses I resisted my usual post-touchdown ritual
which generally involved genuflecting, kissing the ground and shrieking
gratefully, unbelievingly “Land!” I
picked up my upgraded economy rental which turned out to be a small unmarked
armored truck and got on the “highway,” a long winding road one lane wide,
sometimes two with a constantly changing speed limit: 40, then 50, then
45…40…50…40…so that you were always going too fast or too slow. It was impossible to get lost as the road ran
one way in each direction, from the airport through the center of town and on
out to the suburbs where the office complex was located. Even someone as directionally challenged as I
was couldn’t get lost. It was dark though and that caused a certain
amount of anxiety.
This training was led by
Savannah, the local practice leader, a Valdosta, Georgia native and a graduate
of the southern beauty queen circuit.
This three-time Miss Valdosta Feed
and Grain would cut your throat or throw you under the bus as easily and
thoughtlessly as she had once issued the “pageant wave.” Yet she would deliver the death blow so genteelly and smile so beatifically that
you almost wouldn’t mind. Imagine, if
you will, Suzanne Sugarbaker with a shiv and the mind of Machiavelli. Her rise within The Corporation had been breathtaking.
That morning, she greeted everyone
with a Miss America smile—lips stretched over Vaselined lips and held for the
beat of a flashbulb—a smile no less
dazzling for its insincerity.
Preamble over, she launched into the heart of the
session. “Most companies today face a range
of HR challenges around role definition, fuzzy process design, capability gaps
within their HR function, and inadequate in-house support. Quite simply put, most organizations don’t
have the bandwidth to effectively
manage HR processes. That’s where we
have opportunity with our outsourcing
solution.
“HR business process outsourcing has moved beyond cost
reduction and now plays a strategic role in helping companies improve workforce
performance, enabling them to gain the agility they need to prosper even in
this economic downturn.
“We are forming a decentralized Center of Excellence for HR Process
Outsourcing around thought leadership, best practices and innovation in
strategic talent management and new economy leadership. Our Center
of Excellence model follows a multi-pronged strategy focused on maximizing
the effectiveness of each company’s HR function. Redefining the HR operating
model, leveraging technology, innovative sourcing and reorganizing HR processes
and HR roles are the keys to our success in this space.”
As much was said and not much of it
was sensible, I stopped listening early on, choosing to daydream rather than be
perplexed.
We were in that twilight state of
consciousness that often follows a heavy lunch and a boring speaker when Brett
arrived. Pulling a pile of luggage
behind him, he was wearing a very tight belted suit. A black-and-white checked shirt whose checks
were easily fist-sized exploded out of the narrow opening at his neck and from
his sleeves.
“I have been to thirty-two countries
but this was my first time on a shuttle bus!”
The words snapped in the air like a pennant.
“Hello, Brett,” Savannah said
icily. “You’re late.”
“I know! I’m soooo sorry,” he
said while making it clear that he wasn’t sorry in the least.
The afternoon dragged on, the endless
talk punctuated by the near-constant buzzing of Brett’s iPhone.
Dinner was an equally dreary affair
until Brett with his usual self-absorption said,” Don’t you know? It’s all
about me!”
“No,” Savannah drawled, contradicting
him. “It’s all about me.”
The woman next to me, dropped her
napkin and as she picked it up whispered to me,” Oh, don’t you wish someone
would just drown them both?”
Midway through dinner, Nigel tweeted
me. We hadn’t been in touch all day as
cell phones, Blackberries and laptops were banned so we could all focus our
attention on the wisdom Savannah had committed to sharing as part of the
decentralizing effort.
Nigel Gale @MannequinMan
How is it?
Prometheus
Jones @THEUS
Egos at war. Like watching 2 super
powers collide. Thx 4 the Xanax.
When I tuned back in Brett was
speaking. “So I jump into the Town Car
and I look up and there was Anna Wintour glowering at me! And then I realized I had gotten into her
town car by mistake!”
This anecdote was greeted with
silence.
Note to self: Name-dropping only
works if your listener knows the name you’re dropping. I sighed. “Anna Wintour,” I repeated. “You know, the Devil Who Wore Prada.”
Murmurs of recognition. Brett shot me a look that would have been
gratitude in anyone else. As it was the
look seemed to be making a notation against me.
Eyes rolling across each other and
locking drew my attention away from Brett.
I could almost hear their shared thought: They really do have their own
language!
Dinner was over at last. Just as everyone started gathering their
things to leave, Brett said brightly,
“Let’s all go for a nightcap!”
Everyone froze.
“There’s a bar across the lobby. Let’s pop in for one quick drink, then off to bed for
everyone,” Savannah said. "We have a full agenda tomorrow!” She added with false brightness.
From the twilight light provided by
the jukebox, I could see there were peanuts on the bar and sawdust on the
floor.
“Well! Isn’t this quaint!” Brett
bleated. “You’d never find anything like this in New York!”
Savannah stiffened. Her haughtiness,
borne of the fact that she was Savannah, three times Miss Valdosta Feed and
Grain, seemed to fade for a minute. She looked both lost and baffled. That she,
she, should be condemned to life in this
Carolinian backwater, looked down on by the likes of Brett, was just too much,
and typical of the unjust cruelty of Fate.
Brett sashayed up to the bar. Even in
the dim light, I could see the bartender’s eyebrow rise and his “well would ya
look at that” grin.
“I’d like a Caipirinha!” Brett fairly
shouted.
“A what?” the bartender asked.
“A Caipirinha!”
“Never heard of it.”
“Surely you must have—it’s all my
friends and I drink. It’s the national cocktail of Brazil!”
“Well,” the bartender drawled, “Maybe
you and your friends should go back to Brazil.”
“Fine. I’ll have a martini—very dry,
very dirty—You’ve heard of that, right?”
The woman standing next to me
whispered, “That bartender is so
going to spit in his drink.”
I ordered a beer, which the bartender
lazily handed me. Domestic. Served in
the bottle. It was going to be a long
night.
Missed Episode 8, Into the Fire? Read it here.
Next Episode Wednesday, July 27.
Next Episode Wednesday, July 27.
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