davethegrinch.net

Dave Says,
It is not going to escape my notice that nobody is going to be very sympathetic with the sentiment that follows. After all, I have everything I could possibly want: no job, no responsibilities, the world before me and now the prospect of living in one the finest European cities but all that has been rudely shattered by…. work.

Just the verb/noun sends a shiver down my spine. In one of my finest moments of self delusion I thought I was actually looking forward to returning to the grindstone, nose down and all that. The prospect of a little structure in my day was appealing as was, I am not ashamed to say, the money. However, the master stroke of my own self delusions was that I actually fell for my own hype by believing I am as good as my resume would suggest. I have been gainfully employed by the computer industry for the last 17 years, a fact, and maybe the only the only fact, that makes my resume look quite impressive. However, what with my change of environment this year, I had forgotten that just like military campaign medals, I have achieved these ribbons of resume success merely by just turning up at the conflict. To continue the military analogy, I’ve spent a great deal of my career at the greatest battles but probably did no more than peel the spuds for the battalion. All I have done, and I’m very good at it, is to do very little. Unlike other professional ner-do-wells, I’m not at all interested in gaining any glory for that which I did not do. A point of fact that, according to my slightly off-balance sense of karmic morality, justifies the slack. It’s easy to be humble when you aspire to do nothing of grandeur.

And so, armed with my impressive resume and disarmed by my recent semi-retirement, I went off looking for a job. My new employer was either deafened by the wonder of the resume and my interviewing skills or, as I suspect, deafened by the 77 departmental vacancies they have yet to fill. I say deafened and not blinded because no matter what I said, they didn’t want to listen. I tried to convince them I was a bad bet because the chances of us staying around after nine months were slim to none. I also explained that I’m not really a gadget man and don’t really like to use or spend my money on them. I even said that I didn’t know what Sat Nav meant (which was true) and I don’t have a car (which is kind of true). But, obviously my winning smile won me something - oh yes, it won me a job.

So there I was last Monday, in the Dutch equivalent of an office, which not surprisingly looks and smells much like any office, with my head in my hands wondering what the hell I had just done. And then it got worse: within the first few hours of my new employment I was told:

1) I would be leading a team of 12 people
2) taking over responsibilities from the corporate lead architect

and
3) was to ‘turn this project around to be the company’s greatest success ‘.

I almost threw up.

There are many things wrong with those three statements not least when one considers that my greatest worry over the past nine months has been where to locate another beer cheaper than the one I’ve just finished. This wasn’t what I asked for (oh, but it was) and wasn’t what I wanted (but I did want the money).

I wish there was a competition for that overplayed, unimportant game of office politics they call corporate chess. If there were I would surely be the world’s champion. I have weaseled my way in and out of so much corporate bullshit in my time that I’ve actually made it a new art-form. But now it was different, now it was survival. I set up my corporate chess board and, wondering if the magic was still there, played my opening gambit. I won’t bore you with the political play by plays but, suffice it to say, that at this point of the game I have managed to do the following with those previous three statements:

1) Convinced management that the other new guy that started with me should lead the 12 people and, more importantly, convinced the new guy that management always wanted him to lead them. (this is a subtle combination of humility in my own abilities and flattery in his)

2) Convinced management that successful projects are not lorded over by lead architect but ‘facilitated’ by a team player so that everyone’s input is solicited, valued and appreciated and thereby removing the requirement to have a lead architect in the first place.

3) Explained that, unlike the Titanic, one man cannot turn the ship around rather the trick is to avoid the icebergs in the first place and perhaps make a point to always sail towards warmer climes.

I think they fell for it. So far so good. I have not been asked to make any decisions or assume any responsibility. Today I volunteered to take responsibility for something I would later pass off but my boss suggested I spend more time looking at ‘the big picture’. But it’s early days and all I have done is remove a couple of pawns and the king’s bishop. My opponent will probably play their queen next when one of the higher-ups returns from vacation and will no doubt discover I’m not actually doing what I was employed to do. American corporations are not good chess players. They play too defensively - the threat of a lawsuit worries even the pawns but now we’ll see if the Dutch are any more canny than their American counterparts. In the meantime, I await my first paycheck with the expectation of a man who has, quite literally, been wearing the same clothes for the last nine months.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 10:49 am and is filed under Amsterdam, Global Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.