The Greatest Clownshow on Earth!

There has been some action packed days here in the northern territories for your favorite Salaryman with events and plenty of unintentional entertainment involving both work and a wedding (I will elaborate on that at a later point).

During the events ongoing here we had some VIP customers with us from Japan and one of the nights a huge dinner was held in which we had invited them as well as some of my fellow salarymen and women were also going to participate. Just before the event the customer calls and cancels the dinner, they probably realized that it would be more fun to dump our company and drink on their own even if it would mean that they had to pay for themselves. The result? At the dinner, the Japan team ended up at this customer event without any customers since we Mr. Shachou didn't wanna waste the food and stuff since we had payed for it. Apparently they also had the best table at the event arranged for the Japanese customers closest to the stage and everything... I had previously managed to sneak my way out of this event but my colleagues told me that the whole event almost induced embarrasment OD...

Well, this is not the end, the clownshow continued the next day with another customer dinner in which the VIPs actually wanted to participate in, in numbers. Unfortunately the number of customers were quite a bit larger than we had initially thought. But this doesn't stop Mr. Shachou who sees a great opportunity and tries to both intimidate and beg our head office staff to arrange for more seats so he can bring these extra customers. Eventually they put in an effort and manage to accomodate the seats.

When they reach the place, Mr. Shachou and the customers are very happily surprised in that they receive a very nice separate seating area for their pretty large group. Merriment ensues and people are enjoying themselves while waiting for the dinner. Just by chance, my colleague Ms. Nurse goes out of the room to go to the bathroom and notices that at the tables outside people are already eating and drinking. This word gets around and a frantic hunt for food ensues in which they are eventually told that since they added so many people at the last minute they cannot get any food. As you can understand this puts a wet blanket over a dinner party. Meanwhile, outside the room people are eating, drinking and laughing. Eventually someone takes pity on the Japanese group and somehow they scavenge up some cold leftovers which are given to the Japanese group.

Again, for this event too I managed to sneak out but I was told of this by Ms. Nurse who was switching between laughter, deep resignment and tears about the whole clownshow. Another colleague who walked back with Ms. Nurse from the event apparently kept repeating "I can't take this stupidity anymore" to herself...

I find the whole incident pretty amusing, especially how some members in my group had managed to completely screw-up something that should be really easy... This is definately a strong candidate for "Clownshow of 2008".