Have you ever been in a job, where not only are you not qualified, you are also (to add insult to injury) not really interested in learning about it?
Every now and then we have investment managers come out to visit us and give us a little education on their portfolios and the market in general. Investment Manager 'Tom' is your typical North American IM. A well dressed, well meaning man from a nice suburb, who is very enthusiastic about his otherwise boring as hell portfolio. The guy was talking bonds and yield curves for forty minutes, and my eyes began to glaze over five minutes in.
Dear readers I am a meeting connoisseur. I have the ‘meeting’ body language down pat.
Here are a few pointers:
~Sit back in a relaxed yet attentive pose,
~One hand should be bellow the table: this allows you to fidget the hand un-noticed, thereby giving you the flexibility to occasionally stab yourself in the finger whenever you need a quick wake up call
~The other hand should rest on the all important presentation.
~A key skill is the ability to drift to more entertaining thoughts, whilst simultaneously nodding and flipping the pages of the presentation in unison with others. This skill is developed by practice…keeping your head tilted to another more attentive member at the meeting allows you to follow their lead.
As soon as I stopped listening to IM Tom’s presentation I began to find him very interesting. As he gets more animated about his presentation IM Tom, begins to foam at the sides of his mouth…yuck...
Then we got to the best part of the presentation “the free lunch.” My boss suggested the Baton Rouge. Baton Rouge is a chain of restaurants in Toronto that specializes in good ole mass produced Southern Comfort food. Their most famous and delicious item is their baby back ribs, drenched in BBQ sauce and melt in your mouth.
You can’t go to the Baton Rouge and not have the ribs. It’s like being Catholic and saying the Pope’s optional. Not quite right. The dilemma then became how do you eat sweet succulent ribs in a professional manner? Let’s be honest here, I am not a salad girl. I grew up with salad being a side. It was never a meal and I don’t care what anyone says it will never be a meal. You can add all the meats, veggies, dressings and scraps of left over you want to it. A salad is still just dressed up lettuce, whose origins happen to be sustenance for animals I was born to prey on. I am simply adhering to the laws of the food chain. Ribs are always the way to go.
At restaurant:
IM: Well it’s a good thing I didn’t have breakfast today, I can go crazy.
CP (Hopefully): Really what did you have in mind?
IM: Maybe the Louisiana chicken BBQ salad…..it comes with chicken, corn, fresh romaine lettuce blah blah blah
CP (In my head: Oh the rabbits will be so envious) (slyly) : Hmm…sounds interesting…oh hang on here…they have a lunch menu, ohhh the ribs are on here…..Must say the ribs here are delicious…
At this point I sneak over a look at IM who is looking a little like a crack addict whose been given the opportunity at ‘tasting’ the good life again…
IM: Well I guess I could splurge a little, my wife wouldn’t like it, but she would never know…
CP: (Knowing I have him hooked) oh it will be our little secret and believe me your tummy is going to sing thanks….
Needless to say lunch was amazing, and now all I have to do is not fall asleep at 3 pm.
Every now and then we have investment managers come out to visit us and give us a little education on their portfolios and the market in general. Investment Manager 'Tom' is your typical North American IM. A well dressed, well meaning man from a nice suburb, who is very enthusiastic about his otherwise boring as hell portfolio. The guy was talking bonds and yield curves for forty minutes, and my eyes began to glaze over five minutes in.
Dear readers I am a meeting connoisseur. I have the ‘meeting’ body language down pat.
Here are a few pointers:
~Sit back in a relaxed yet attentive pose,
~One hand should be bellow the table: this allows you to fidget the hand un-noticed, thereby giving you the flexibility to occasionally stab yourself in the finger whenever you need a quick wake up call
~The other hand should rest on the all important presentation.
~A key skill is the ability to drift to more entertaining thoughts, whilst simultaneously nodding and flipping the pages of the presentation in unison with others. This skill is developed by practice…keeping your head tilted to another more attentive member at the meeting allows you to follow their lead.
As soon as I stopped listening to IM Tom’s presentation I began to find him very interesting. As he gets more animated about his presentation IM Tom, begins to foam at the sides of his mouth…yuck...
Then we got to the best part of the presentation “the free lunch.” My boss suggested the Baton Rouge. Baton Rouge is a chain of restaurants in Toronto that specializes in good ole mass produced Southern Comfort food. Their most famous and delicious item is their baby back ribs, drenched in BBQ sauce and melt in your mouth.
You can’t go to the Baton Rouge and not have the ribs. It’s like being Catholic and saying the Pope’s optional. Not quite right. The dilemma then became how do you eat sweet succulent ribs in a professional manner? Let’s be honest here, I am not a salad girl. I grew up with salad being a side. It was never a meal and I don’t care what anyone says it will never be a meal. You can add all the meats, veggies, dressings and scraps of left over you want to it. A salad is still just dressed up lettuce, whose origins happen to be sustenance for animals I was born to prey on. I am simply adhering to the laws of the food chain. Ribs are always the way to go.At restaurant:
IM: Well it’s a good thing I didn’t have breakfast today, I can go crazy.
CP (Hopefully): Really what did you have in mind?
IM: Maybe the Louisiana chicken BBQ salad…..it comes with chicken, corn, fresh romaine lettuce blah blah blah
CP (In my head: Oh the rabbits will be so envious) (slyly) : Hmm…sounds interesting…oh hang on here…they have a lunch menu, ohhh the ribs are on here…..Must say the ribs here are delicious…
At this point I sneak over a look at IM who is looking a little like a crack addict whose been given the opportunity at ‘tasting’ the good life again…
IM: Well I guess I could splurge a little, my wife wouldn’t like it, but she would never know…
CP: (Knowing I have him hooked) oh it will be our little secret and believe me your tummy is going to sing thanks….
Needless to say lunch was amazing, and now all I have to do is not fall asleep at 3 pm.
11 comments:
scraps of left over!
ha! That's good. I saw someone eating 2 ounces of chickpeas and radish salad yesterday. I wasn't sure what to make of it. Maybe she had a rack of lamb for breakfast?
That's funny though. Tom cheating on the food his wife wants him to eat. It was probably better than an affair.
look at you leading the man to temptation. A regular eve you are lol
wait a minute does this make you the other woman? :-)
on another note i hate meetings and refuse to take notes. then three weeks from now when they ask remember blah blah blah i'm like umm vaguely. when i ran meetings on my last project they were great. we had 5 minute meetings every three weeks. i'd come in say what i had to say in point form and ask for questions. one must rule with an iron fist yes?
The the Rib-tress....
(that was funny in my mind)
We appear to be in the same line of work. I used to have to sit thru those meetings all the time, with nothing to look forward to but the $70/pp dinner at some posh NYC restaurant at the end.
The key to making it through these meetings is two-fold: First, you listen intently to the first 2 minutes and focus on one point.
Then, spend the rest of the meeting writing your book (I once wrote a whole chapter of A Scandal in Sandy Lane in one of those meetings), poetry, to do lists, or blog entry.
At the end of the meeting, say, "Can you elaborate on [insert point from first 2 minutes here]." It really makes you seem like a stellar, note-taking employee who listens.
P.S. I looooove salads. But then again mine are usually filled with chicken, black beans, corn, croutons, carrots, green peppers and a host of other things, so that by the time I'm done, it has lost all resemblance to a salad. LOL.
It's nice to see a real woman, one who's comfortable in her skin, doesn't count every single calorie and isn't afraid to pig out a little. Thanks for the tips. They'll help me in class.
Nice post. Good tips. Gotta go now... must find some ribs....
damn, i need to go and eat some ribs myself... but i dont want to pass out on the train back home. lol
Simple Enigma, Good tip..
Leon: I tell you Im the perfect woman, I love meat, feign interest in sports....=)
MB & Lene, Ya know u both one some...mmmmmm
Cheating on his wife with food. I don't know if that's more funny or sad, so I'll just laugh. BWAHAHAHA!!!
I'm not even into ribs but those looked pretty damn good.
"A salad is still just dressed up lettuce, whose origins happen to be sustenance for animals I was born to prey on."
I haven't heard truer words in awhile.
Mmmm...ribs.
I like the bit about how the IM started foaming at the mouth.
Hmmmm ribs...
The other good one to do in a meeting which keeps you awake is as follows:
You have to know the person leading the meeting well and to have some fellow conspirators in the meeting.
In advance, prepare a bingo board, but instead of numbers, fill the spaces with key phrases - these could be anything according to your field
Then keep track of the conversation and try and get your words crossed off.
The first person to get a full line starts to cough loudly in the meeting, and then the first person to fill their board lets everyone else know by yelling out "bullsh*t"
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