Mandatory Fun

Our new grand poo-bah has decreed that, in the spirit of getting to know each other and sharing in the corporate vision, we shall all attend a social gathering this week. It's after hours. It's scheduled to last 3 hours. It's mandatory.

I have issues with this on so many levels I have a hard time deciding where to start. First, he does this all under the guise that he wants to talk to each of us and find out what we can add to the strategic vision. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that sounds like a legitimate usage of work time. Something that would easily be chargable to overhead because it would be useful. But let's also consider what realistic probability there is that he, in his grand poo-bah-ness, is going to spend more than 18 seconds talking to me, the lowly software engineer. Because we know he couldn't possibly care less what my thoughts on the strategic vision are. And I know for sure that even if he thought for a second that he did care, that would change very rapidly once he figured out that I am not a brainless corporate schill who simply agrees with someone because they're the new grand poo-bah.

Next, he's planning on spending 1 hour as a business meeting type thing. Again a legitimate use of actual business hours. But realistically? Realistically I see this as being the now stepping down acting grand poo-bah blathering on and on about how wonderful, marvelous, fantastic, etc. it is that we have a new grand poo-bah. He's already sent out two emails about how fantastic it is. I just wonder if he really thinks that all this butt kissing is actually disguised or if he just doesn't care how pathetic he looks. And if the stepping down acting doesn't use up all the time, there are two or three other notorious kissups who I'm sure will be more than happy to (in fact, insistent) step in and make sure it was publicly stated that they worship the spittle that dribbles down his chin while he chews.

And then we get down to the "fun". This is where we have drinks and appetizers. For two more hours. And knowing how cheap my company is, the drinks will come out of my own pocket. Even the water. (Heck, if you have to pay $3.50 at the Christmas party for water, why would this be any different? The only thing I can see being slightly different is that given the upgrade in location, it'll probably be twice that.) I imagine if he could figure out a way to charge based on number of appetizers consumed he would. It's this fun time where he's actually hoping to "get to know" all the employees. Yeah. 2 hours is enough time to "get to know" 20 people.

On top of all of this, we haven't yet looked at the fact that this is in the evening. The evening that I consider my time to spend with my family. Since when does being grand poo-bah give someone the right to dictate what I do with my off time. I work my 8 hours and I go home. When necessary I put in extra time, but I don't do it frequently, nor do I feel like I ought. There are ways they could get me to put in more time on a more frequent basis, sure, this is not one of them. Nope, I get to spend 13 hours at work simply to make this guy feel like he's connecting and concerned about his employees. If he was really concerned about us, he'd do this during work hours so that we could go home and spend time with people we actually care about rather than people we tolerate for 8 hours every day because it buys us groceries.