The Vacuum

The "Concept which will never be delivered" project team I am a member of were in sombre mood this week!. It was announced that one of the mainstays of our conceptual floundering cleverly disguised as a project was leaving! After literally months as our PM, Dickie Dove, tired of the daily commute to Grimidlands City from Faroffinthevalleysbuttie in Wales to chair our raucous debates about Enterprise Search, Taxidermy and Conceptual thinking. We didn't see eye to eye at first, we had the project team full of enthusiasm and Dickie full of "I hear what you are saying but can we just park that for now" and "this is a four walls conversation" (with appropriate hand gestures) and many other PM cliches too boot! We soon straightend things out though, Dickie took to simply saying "moving on" (with appropriate hand gestures)!

So out with the old and in with the new, I say new but the reality is we had one PM stereotype replaced with another. The new encumbant, Lathe Ertours announced his slimy intentions by making his excuses to leave then dropping the most foul anal stench witnessed in the meeting rooms on any professional services company in the UK, actually, EMEA and the rest of the world too!! We all showed our disgust (with appropriate hand gestures)!!! Ewwwwwwww!

The Grass IS Greener

Now the dust really has settled, the outsourced staff are starting to realise that actually they have the best part of the deal. The retained staff are also starting to realise that twice as much work with half the staff and their key knowledge sources, spread between eight other contracts and twenty seven different sites, is not actually the most conjusive way to run projects!

Never mind, at least we won't need to listen to Even Borowski waffling about AD security anymore! He will be amongst friends at CompetantMantra, weel that is until they discover that his psychological profile puts him in the paedophile bracket!!

Poor old Mike Chrome, apparantly, second line left suite B early so they could set up the gauntlet for him to run. When you look at it, he got away quite lightly, the stains from the toner down his pants will go and headsets are quite lightweight nowadays so I guess they will be much easier to pass! It's a good job security arrived before they managed to disconnect the robot arm from the backup system as I don't think either of the 'Two Ronnies' from Third line had any intention of using their lipsalve as a lubricant!

The dust has settled. Lester'the hatchet' Francombe has visited all the teams who were lucky enough to be seated in suite A with news of re-organistation. " I think all that jeering and laughter was uncalled for!" said Lester. "They didn't give Mike Chrome a chance to speak. What did you all think of it?" His question seemed superfluous. No-one was about to say that they cringed, or they thought is was a farce or badly run. Everyone to just said it was a bit wierd and sympathised with the occupants of room B.

The worst part of this of all this activity for my team is that we are to be moved from the glorious first floor where we have happily resided with the marketing team and it's array of gorgeous girlies! A travesty!! We are to be shipped back from whence we came! Back into the foul stench of IT with all it's personal hygine associations! Back to sit with our manager Adrian Hechler-Koch. The man with no personality, Mr Corporate. But lo, there is a silver lining, he is to join Uncle Peter in the newly formed Tactical Illusion section when the re-org kicks in! We, of course were all hoping he would be assimilated into the cleaning section.

The talk in the pub at lunchtime was of who will get what role in the re-org and jokes that Adrian Hechler-Koch would be manager of the team of who-ever was there.

We will see, perhaps God will intervene and apply the same sort of leniency and fair mindedness we see in other parts of our lives.

I'm good at holding my breath, but not that good!

Wedenesday 3rd August:

I start with a day of note! Today in the world of Skippy, IT was halved!! Outsourced to CompetantMantra plc. It was at this point that The Hobo walked in, five minutes late. He had to stand at the back and couldn't see the screen with the list of unfortunate teams.

It all happened in a flash, "we are now going to split into two groups" says Mike Chrome the IT Director. "Those of you who are staying go into the foyer for coffee and biscuits, those of you who now work for CompetantMantra plc." gesturing towards a subtley disguised large bear trap "go through the door into suite B."

The smokers all piled down the stairs to get a last fix before we were told why we had been chosen to stay. "I thought development would've gone too " said Raymondo With hindsight, the two hour wait for the meeting to start seemed cruel for those deemed unworthy, some loitered in sun with glazed expressions. There was a mood of distrust and resentment in the air, I was hoping for a good punch up when we got back in. No such luck.

Uncle Peter assured us all that our knowledge was the reason we were kept and that, despite making the same promise to the staff in suite B six months ago, we would not be outsourced!

Not really an issue for myself as a contractor, but very bizarre to witness