Ah Management!!

So all good with the parents now after the breadroll debacle. We made up the British way the next evening by not acknowledging anything had happened and making a cup of tea, however my friend Deesha had the following take on the situation...

"About the parents thing, I've started thinking about them a bit like they are kids. Makes it easier to deal. I totally get the freezer thing, but its also galling for them to be criticized on their own mistakes by someone who's bottom they wiped.

Its like a junior member of your team calling you out on some minor (according to you) error at work. The first instinct might be to deflect and offend instead of being defensive and apologetic. Hows my armchair psychology! :)"

I think her armchair psychology is pretty spot on, although this 40 year old thinks it would be nice if my parents could recognise I am no longer a child. I suppose in an ideal world we would all meet in the middle, which I suppose we are by ignoring the situation and moving on.

I am soooooo very sore today after getting back into my usual routine at the gym over the last 5days. I really wasn't expecting it to hurt this much as it's not as if I was totally inactive while in San Diego, I had 4x 90minute surfing lessons for goodness sake and surfing is quite a workout and uses similar muscle groups to the classes I take - chest and biceps for lifting the board over waves, core and legs for stabilization - but after 3 days at the gym I am seriously sore and if I forget and accidentally take a deep breath or sneeze....ouch!!!

I'm taking a day off from exercise today, but given how tired and achy I feel I am having second thoughts about the surfing lesson I have booked for Friday morning. Two days ago two hours of surfing seemed like a great idea, but this morning I was up at 5.15am to be in the office for a 7am call with a high level client from China, a meeting I was quite relaxed about since my team member had done all the heavy lifting on the analysis and would be walking through the presentation along with our media agency partners; I was just there to participate and hear the client feedback, no big deal, or so I thought.

Unusually for an agency call everyone was gathered on the conference call by 7.03am and making noises about getting the meeting started and...

..um, where is the guy from my team?

I wasn't too worried at that point, since as I mentioned it's rare for a meeting to begin on time but nevertheless I sent him an "are you on the call?" email as the media agency kicked off the introductions.

5 minutes passed, the presentation was underway and no response from my guy....

At this point we're 3 slides away from having to make a contribution. I mute the call and phoned him from my Blackberry and....

....GOT HIM OUT OF BED!!!!!!

"Oh...shit," was how he answered the phone

"Damn right oh shit. Dial in to the meeting!!"

Jesus Christ, if I can get my arse out of bed at 5.15am, get showered, do my hair and take a 20minute cab ride to the office then surely he should be able to manage to fall out of bed at 6.45am and dial in from home.
I was soooooo not happy to find myself having to jump in and present something I oversaw, but did not work on directly, to a senior level client in China who had a lot of detailed questions, in fact I think it would be fair to say I was fuming!!

He was very apologetic when he arrived at the office around 9.30am and I imagine waking up to a phone call from your manager is not the preferred way to start the day, so I'm letting it slide this one time, but he did receive a stern "don't let it happen again." Given I'm a usually quite a relaxed manager and not prone to having to be stern I think he got the message that I was not in the least bit happy.