Corporate America

It is not his fault if the program is so bad. They don’t expect from him the big events that I am doing. From him they want as many as possible, as quickly as possible. When they claim that we produce 50 conferences a year, well, he writes at least half of them, and then he gets his assistants (which I have also become), to do the rest.
The result is a series of terrible events that no one will ever want to attend. I would be ashamed to have written a conference program like that. Considering that English is my second language, I have assessed that I was writing programs like this 10 years ago, when I started. No research has been made, I’m not sure if he knows what he is talking about, and most of his programs are made of bits and pieces of other conference programs, including his.
The language used, the expressions, it sounds very much like all the other conferences out there. It is the vocabulary and style that all newbie needs to learn when they first need to write a program. They read many agendas, and hop, they write something similar on a different topic. That is what I am trying to avoid. I want to make it interesting and more human, less mechanical and boring.
They put me on the worst conference program of all today. It was also badly written, it had no content, and it flopped many times the previous years. We still produce it because we have one main sponsor putting $25,000 on the table every year for it. And I saw the contract today.
I told the Director, when he asked me if I had already invited the speakers, that it was the first time I heard the full title of that event today. And jokingly I said that I guess they were waiting to have confirmed $100,000 worth of sponsorship on it before finally giving it to me.
Though I said it as a joke, I think I made myself clear: don’t expect to have contacted all the potential sponsors in the database already, and then get me to do all these cold calls to chase them up. If I am not going to get my bonus for these sponsorship deals, then I am not going to call any of them. You do it!
I said in his office, innocently: so I guess I can concentrate on the speakers for that one, I don’t have to contact sponsors. Within an hour the conference had been cancelled. I guess they realized that it was a touchy conference. The bonus scheme has not been implemented yet. I don’t even know if all my hard work with the sponsors on my actual conference will pay me a dime, since the Director closed all the deals, even if I had done all the hard work. They appear to have discussed that all afternoon, in my boss’ office. I guess I did not have to say much to make them understand how I felt. Good.
I have to say, I never thought for one second that the conference would be cancelled. Not after seeing a $25,000 contract on my desk. I don’t know what happened there. Things that probably they have not told me. Obviously the boss did not hear my own suggestions about this event, otherwise we would be going ahead with that conference now.
I suggested that we should research the subject, bin the agenda the Senior Manager had written at lunch time, and do a proper conference with this. With well identified topics. Of course, by saying that, I was in fact insulting the Senior Manager. So it did not go anywhere.
Now they want me to produce their first ever European conference, based on their biggest conference ever they have in the US. I have to say, I love the idea. And I love even more what the Director said about it. He said that I can tell him all about how to produce conferences in Europe, since this is where my experience lay. I told him that it was the same as here, but he said that it was not so.
Well, I hope he is not expecting any magic tricks from me, because producing conferences in Europe is like producing them in the US. Language is not even a problem, we do everything in English. No European database however is a troubling situation. It might very well flop. We’ll have to see.
I will propose to them to do two conferences at the same time. One in London in English, the same one in French in France. We can do a double bubble and confirm our sponsors twice at the same time. Let’s see what will happen then. Of course, I still have to do a lot of research, and many phone calls. So it is not going to be easy. I look forward to that challenge however. It might be finally what will make me appreciate that job.
Think about it. If we start producing conferences in Europe, it means opening an office there eventually. If I were to remain in that job for a long time, and manage to get my baby to move here and work with me, then we would open that office in Europe together. At the very least, all my reports must prove to them that I am capable. No one else in the company would want to move to London, they all have houses and family here.
I’m afraid I might have left them by the time the idea even goes anywhere. If they have anything planned for me, as they led me to believe when they lured me here, I suggest they tell me now or before the end of next month. Because then, it will be too late.
18 February 2006
More stress at work
So, the conference that I thought was cancelled, with $25,000 already confirmed in sponsorship, which could reach $100,000 altogether in the end, despite that no delegate wants to attend, has just been moved to the autumn. Most probably I won’t be the one working on it, too much sponsorship involved. And my great conference in Europe has also been moved, and so I am not going to work on that anytime soon.
My next project is even more disheartening than the other two. It is the exact same event I just worked on, but instead of being for the West coast, it is now for the East coast. And the agenda is as bad as the previous one. And the sponsors I need to contact, the ones I have harassed non stop for the last few weeks, are also the same ones. So I need to go back and harass them all, all over again. It should be a lot of fun!
Because of that designer who cannot do her job, poor girl, most likely because she was not trained in the first place, I will have to work all weekend to write another 20 pages of comments to make my brochure acceptable. Same for the Valley Girl who is working with the same designer, her booklet should have been finished last week, and now she will work all weekend on it. And she made sure she told the whole office that she will work on it this weekend. How sad.
I also met the Accountant Director in the elevator, I remembered what the boss’ wife said last night when she left, about coming the next day with a better attitude. I asked her if she was OK. She said no. I said: well, I don’t suppose I can ask you why. She said no. I told her I will ask again in six months and maybe then she will tell me. It was a weird thing to say, but the answer was worth it. She said that I will find out much sooner the consequences of all of this.
Now, that is interesting. I don’t think it has anything to do with me. She either will be sacked as well, or she is already thinking about leaving the company. Funny, I had first assessed her as someone I would have trouble with, and for once, I was wrong. She has been nothing but nice to me, she likes me for some reason.
I would feel bad to see her go. And I’m pretty sure she is the most competent person we have in that office, she is a pillar. I’m not sure who could replace her, unless the girl who was helping her will now be promoted to that position. Somehow I doubt it, they will have to take someone from outside.
The Senior Manager said something nice to me last night when he left, and obviously, this time, not in front of everyone. He was pleased with my work on that conference and confirmed that it was great to work with people who knew what they were doing, someone with experience.
Considering that I am about to start my own conference company, I’m glad he was at least able to see that I could do the job very well, and that I had experience. I have to say, he might have not noticed, since I am doing exactly what his assistant with a miserable salary is doing. They have no clue what I am capable of doing. So far they put me on confirming speakers and sponsors on someone else’s programs. Great. Anyway, that’s encouraging, at least.
23 February 2006
Management Consultant My Ass
When I started working for this conference company in Los Angeles almost four months ago, I was hired as a Management Consultant. However I am only 33 years old, I look younger, and I don’t have a diploma in Management Consulting or anything related.
So I wrote all my reports, a lot of it has been implemented, but none of the radical changes I suggested were. For that the company went to real high paid professionals, and now I know they are all charlatans.
Today we were finally told about the great changes which are supposed to build teamwork, make the employees happier and make more money for the bosses. I have to say, I was not prepared for what I have heard, I was certain my role and incentive report would have a huge impact on their decisions.
In fact, they decided on the complete opposite and even went further underground. I have no doubt it will fail miserably. This is the Dilbert Principle all over again, I think I need to buy them the book: The Dilbert Principle : Cubicle's-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads, and Other Workplace Afflictions, and hope they will read it.
I’m sure that consultant helped tremendously in defining that book, since he claims to have worked for many years in his field, with the greatest corporations out there. Well, these corporations must have been in Utah, and not even in Salt Lake City, but in the suburbs where people have no choice but work in the only company around.
Because the only way I will ever see a bonus, will be if I can keep that job for more than a year. And to be honest, with a turn over of staff like the one I have observed since I have started, this bonus scheme will so obviously failed, you would need to be blind or not want to implement one in the first place, to not see it.
In all, it is all very subjective. I may get a bonus at the end of the year if my Manager feels like it. Well, knowing me and my relationships with all my previous managers, I can already tell you that I won’t get a bonus at the end of the year. So why should I even try?
All I can hope for is a maximum of $2,500 before tax, out of a salary of $60,000 before tax. Do you think I will go out of my way and break my back for $1,250 more after tax at the end of the year, that my Manager might decide I don’t deserve? Are you joking?
I tried to explain to them that a quarterly bonus scheme would be a mistake. It needs to be monthly, especially when over a dozen employees have been sacked or have left since I started. Just to give you a good picture, this company only has 16 employees right now. No one will do any effort to make more money. We are too busy wondering about when we will get the sack, and questioning if perhaps it would not be a good idea to jump ship before then.
So now, all my hard work at selling sponsorship deals, and worrying about who would get the bonus, just went out the window. I am starting a new conference tomorrow, I am supposed to contact 30 potential sponsors. Somehow I think I will forget to call them every day next week, as I am supposed and expected to do. They can lick my ass, I am much more motivated in finding the speakers, get the brochure designed and move on with the next event.
And it gets worse. Not only a huge percentage of my salary goes into taxes, but on top of it something like $500 a month goes into health and dental care insurance. Now there are pushing me to spend another $400 a month on more insurance, because my $500 a month barely covers anything.
As if that was not enough, they have finally implemented a new great scheme supposed to make this company more attractive, that will cost me another God knows how much every month, probably $400. A pension!
I don’t need a pension for a job that I am unlikely to keep for more than a few months, if I am not laid off before I decide to go. I am so crippled with all those social securities that I need to pay, that anyway being Canadian I will never be able to benefit from, that I think I will be lucky if I have any money left to survive at the end of the month.
And to assess if we deserve a bonus at the end of the year, they implemented a wonderful little process that the consultant claims invariably makes the employees happier. Appraisals! Quarterly appraisals!
Apparently communications between you and your Manager is important, it helps build a bond and teamwork. I say appraisals are the tools Managers use to get you sack. The Valley Girl will certainly use it well. They are meetings where they can destroy you and tell you how incompetent you are, and that you don’t deserve your bonus.
Appraisals not only take a lot of time in writing reports and all, time that could be better spent producing events, but on top of it the results are definitely to destroy any remaining relationship you might have with management. It is painful and it does not help. It is like officially filed reports about how bad an employee you are, and will definitely be used against you one day when they no longer require your services. It de-motivates the employees.
By all means, communication is important. Meetings to discuss business are important. But not appraisals, where your Manager ask you how bad you have been, and if you are not honest, he will tell you how bad you are and how you could increase your productivity.
Simple, the only way I could increase my productivity would be to tell me: work on your conferences on week nights and on weekends. This is after all the only way I could work harder, because I certainly cannot squeeze more in a day of work than I am already doing. They have me under so much pressure, I am already stressed to death and work twice harder than I ever did in any other job I had.
The bosses are greedy. They don’t want to give any bonus, that much is obvious. They will only hurt themselves in the end, because by not rewarding me on the money I directly bring them from my extra efforts, I won’t make any extra effort on top of my actual duties to confirm one more sponsor.
It makes no difference to me if there are $20,000 or $100,000 in sponsorship on my event, it only means more work to coordinate all these sponsors and exhibition stands before and at the event.
For my own company, I will be willing to lose 15% to 20% in revenue on any sponsorship deal or delegate people will confirm for me. Otherwise, there won’t be any deal or delegate to speak of. Of course, this is assuming that they would be mostly commission based. Otherwise 7% for sure.
And what kills me about this Management Consultant, is that he came twice, talked with us for one hour, talked with my bosses for a few hours, made us fill a non-anonymous report about how we felt (like if we were to tell the truth in there), and then came back with stupid slides of a PowerPoint presentation that he already had and used in all these other companies he worked for before.
So in the end, not only he costs a lot of money, but on top of it he is laughing at us, since it is obvious that his questionnaire was useless and the talk he had with us was equally useless. He was not interested in any of it, he just came back with what you could find in any management book on the market. And only a few excerpts.
I thought I was incompetent as a Management Consultant, I understand now that I was more than competent. I actually did something, I wrote a dozen long reports, based on my real experience in conference companies. The other consultant did not even write a report, he discussed with the bosses for a few hours. He did not do any research in our company to try to understand it, and he certainly did not gauge the pulse of the office with his questionnaire. He was useless.
And yet, it is his recommendations which will be implemented. And it will take my bosses just a year to understand the failure of it all. Then they will listen to me, to my reports. So I guess it was not wasted after all, even if I will be miles away by then on the other side of the ocean.
In the meantime, I will resume my role of assistant for the Manager, despite my ten years experience in conferences at managing teams and whole departments. I won’t do anything to confirm sponsors and I won’t do any more overtime. They have succeeded in de-motivating me completely. Complete success!
In the meantime, the Valley Girl is working hard at getting rid of the new guy. She has repeated today how unhappy she is with him, how he creates more work for her instead of helping her. And what she had to say about him for when we will go at her conference next week in San Francisco, she could have said about me too. She did not, so it shows how unfair she is to him.
Things don’t change. That’s one employee, that new guy, who certainly won’t see any bonus in his lifetime. He does not even know it yet, how hard the Valley Girl is working at destroying him.
The funny thing is, he is ambitious. Listening to him, he wants to become Director within a year. He took the job because he thought there was place for advancement and promotion. He is only 22 years old, he never really worked before. You can see the problem.
He still thinks that people keep their job for life and become Director in no time. We never get the chance, we are sacked faster than any promotion could ever come. And incentives only create more work with no real and tangible reward. So in the end, they have the opposite effect of what they were intended for in the first place.
27 February 2006
I thought after four months in Los Angeles I was strong and that I got ever the initial crisis of being separated from my family, which is Stephen in London, my five cats, my three tortoises, my two snakes and my 2 dozen marine fish, star fish and other weird specimen including the marvelous Killer Shrimp.
However I had a dream about my cats last Wednesday night and I drank many beers and half of a huge bottle of Porto on Thursday night, and that was it, I cried like I never did for hours. I know someone who would say I was a pussy… bitch. I just could not help it.
I went to bed at 3h30 am and the next day I was a real zombie with eyes that were completely swollen. I looked terrible and everyone notices at work. They must have thought I took weird drugs the night before, I just said I went to bed late because I was writing. Which prompted many questions about what it is that I was actually writing, but I managed to avoid their inquisition, somehow.
I feel better today, I know now that I will be leaving Los Angeles in two months time. I have accepted that, and I am enjoying my remaining days here whilst it lasts. It is still possible that my meetings with this great actor and other main Hollywood writer might change my actual decision, if somehow it changes my life, but it is quite improbable and so I am pretty sure that I will be leaving.
Still, I had a productive weekend for once. I did write a lot in different areas of my playing fields, and I bought some magazines about scriptwriters, movies and independent films. I already had a look, I know now where to start to get noticed in L.A.
I was thinking about sending one of my film scripts to these competition, but I changed my mind. They charge $35 to $65 to enter, I would need to print copies and post it them, and I noticed that the winners of these competitions do not appear to be selling their scripts anyway and are trying hard, claiming to have won many awards, to get somewhere. So it must be some sort of trap for newbie to spend money with no result to expect in the end.
There is also an interesting conference in April with a line up of speakers who seem to have succeeded in Hollywood, however, I produced too many conferences in my life time to be duped and to be lured there. God knows anyway what I would do once at that conference to be noticed. The thought is kind of killing me.
I have done nothing but feel guilty since I have arrived in Los Angeles. For not taking the subway to get downtown and visit a bit, for not contacting people about my film scripts, agents for example, everything. I no longer want to feel guilty, it is acceptable if I don’t do anything and just go back to London with no results from my six months stay in Los Angeles.
I also had another boost this weekend when a well known magazine in France contacted me to publish one of my preface to one of my books, plus an interview and author portrait. They are doing a special issue on Québec and I will be the author representing my province. That is quite encouraging, God only knows the impact such articles will have on my career. I can dream, at least.
I have also been contacted by my publisher to write a preface for the book of another French-Canadian author who is about to publish. This book has great potential and might be a best-seller of that publishing company, so writing a preface about it is quite an honor. Second good news this weekend. It is rare I get any, but sometimes there is a rush like that which makes it all worthwhile.
I have to work on changing my attitude, to be more positive, to convince myself that great things will happen to me in the next few weeks. This is an essential ingredient of actually succeeding, to change your future for the best. This is how I ended up in L.A. after all. I need to concentrate on making a reality my dreams, imagining them as already realized, and it will happen. Leonardo reminded me of that and he is right.
At work I am rushing to send al my invites today, since it will be my only day in the office this week. They will give me a mobile phone to contact all these people once I am in San Francisco for the rest of the week for that conference. So far everything looks good for that trip, however I will need to make sure to do all that the Valley Girl will ask of me without complain, and always be available to help even when not required. The last thing I need right now is a negative feedback once we return in the office next week.
I decided to remain in San Francisco after the conference, but I did not realize how long I am going to stay there. I will be gone for six days, and I have to pay a hotel for four nights. At a discount of course, it will cost me only $55 a night for a four or five star hotel, because we rented the whole place for our conference.
However, what am I going to do in San Francisco alone for five days? After I visited Alcatraz and the port, not sure what else I can do. Especially that I am not interested in going to the gay bars and clubs. I might just remain in my hotel room and write or something. And I should not feel guilty about it either.
I did not have any trouble at work recently, which is a nice change, the only puzzling thing is how the Black guy, who is the third in command, is behaving towards me. He is very tactile, and over nice. I will put his hand on my back and stroke me. I don’t want to read too much into this, it is unlikely that he is gay and is trying to show me some interest. So, how should I interpret this?
I think he learned somewhere that gay people can have AIDS and that it is hard to catch even if he were to suck my dick and kiss me like a crazy. So he is trying to show that he is not afraid of touching me like that, even if I am gay. I don’t know. Perhaps we should tell him that I am not dying of some weird disease.
It is also possible that he thinks I am kind of fragile and could react badly to anything he says or do. It would probably come from he had read so far from my files I was sending to myself, where I quite clearly freaked out one day and wrote that I could not stand having him on my back and spying on me all the time. I noticed that he kind of backed off since then, so he must have been reading my stuff. And now he could be trying to make amends. To treat me with kids glove. I don’t know and I don’t care.