In-office prancing (Peter Pan style)

Last Friday was a great day from entertainment purposes. One of my co-workers who will remain anonymous since threats were done that even I won't challenge.

However, yesterday he wore a shirt that the instant I saw it reminded me of this old Internet classic. Which I of course immediately brought up and to my suprise noone seemed to have seen it before, that's what happens when I'm one of the few in the office older than the Internet.

However, if you come into the office wearing a Peter Pan shirt some prancing and/or stupid smiling should be in order one would think, but we got none of that. Just a surly attitude, like most days...

Hopes and Dreams

I can tell you, 2007 so far has not been a very good year for your Mr. Salaryman, it kicked off with a nice little depression in the beginning of the year, followed up by a sudden and particularly nasty phobia that is difficult to shake off, then I went through a particularly un-Mr. Salaryman friendly break-up with my girlfriend since almost 10 years back and now a family member is going to have a serious operation in a few weeks.

Well, the good news is that I don't think this year can end up much worse after all. From now on it can only get better I hope!

I do have hopes and dreams you know, there are things that I am looking to achieve with my life and not only continue with this consulting thing. Since quite a few years back I have set up some things that I want to achieve with my life:
1. See the faces behind the voices of the Simpsons - This one is already taken care of, with the when the Internet became useful for other things than porn I managed to get this done.
2. Be able to call myself Mr. Salaryman Ramone - Unfortunately this one is impossible now since both Joey, Johnny and Dee Dee of the Ramones have passed away... You can't have it all I guess...
3. Play the US President in a movie - This is a more long term thing, might take another 10-15 years before I get a clear shot at this. Preferrably it should be some Tom Clancy style thriller but I am open to ideas.
4. Find a mistake when Luke explains something about food and/or wine - This one is pretty new, he always impresses me with his knowledge in food and cooking, but just once I'd like to hear him make a mistake...

I'm working hard and focused, these are my hopes and dreams and it's only me who can make them real!

How to exceed in Business, lesson 1

* Always write e-mails as bullet-points
* Even when using messenger
* Don't stop if anyone tells you to

One of us is crazy and I don't think it's me...

I think you have had one of those moments, it happens sometimes. I had one of them the today. One of those legendary moments when someone tells you something that sounds so stupid that the first thought that comes into your head is "Wow, either I'm completely stupid or he/she is". The fact that you find it so unreal that someone throws out something that is so blatantly stupid makes you first question yourself since you think that you must have misunderstood something. Then it strikes you that, no, the other person is 100% serious.

Dealing with severe stupidity is not easy since it usually is not a good strategy to retort with a "Are you stupid or what?" to your boss. My usual strategy is to try and ply around the edges with gentleness to see if something comes loose, but no such luck today. The stupidity wouldn't budge this time and I believe I did what I could without risking a confrontation.

So, what happened you ask? Well, Mr. Chin (obviously) mailed me and wanted me to summarize a power point presentation for him in an excel sheet with page numbers, tag lines of each slides and a brief summary of the slide. Perhaps it is in it's place to mention that tag lines of individual slides are designed to summarize the content of the slide they are in?

The exercise was amusing in it's stupidity and the whole office erupted in a brief moment of merriment of my little predicament at trying to handle this with Mr. Chin over the phone to try and make him see the pointlessness... That it would be too difficult for him to handle clicking through a presentation and try to grasp the content of a presentation just astounded us. This is for a project that he is said to be main responsible manager for and which he would be expected to know the details of...

More of this and I have to start a separate label called "The Stupidity of Mr. Chin"...

Getting with the Convo

Most of the people in my lovely firm are quite a few years younger than me, The Boy is for instance almost 10 years my junior and we have had serious talks about me adopting him as my legal son.

One of the more challenging things in working with younger people is for me to get the hang of how young people of today talk. One of the more useful words I recently learnt must be the word "Convo". The word is used to describe conversations on messenger, especially long ones and is an abbreviation of "convoy" due to the likeness of these long lines of text and a convoy of trucks.

Remember it was here you heard it and feel free to tell everyone around you about this great new word and the original meaning of it. If anyone tells you that "convo" is not derived from "convoy" they are lying to you. Me on the other hand has no motivation at all to lie to you, why would I do that?

Beware...of the tooth fairy

Now, I know that it's not really right to be amused by another persons misery, especially if that person is a friend and colleague. However, I cannot really help but finding the current predicament Luke found himself in pretty funny.

Like some people sometimes have, he started having some problems with his wisdomteeth and went to the dentist to have them checked out. The dentist did what he was supposed to do, took a look and recommended to have one of them pulled. So far so good, right? Luke got a time booked for this quick little manouver and during a conversation just before this he talked about how great his dentist was and so conveniently located close to his home.

Well, the day comes, the tooth gets pulled and he comes into the office talking in that amusing way people just coming from the dentist does because of all the drugs they pump into your mouth. Luke even managed to entertain us with some fascinating tales on how it felt when they pulled out the tooth and the twisting breaking noise that was heard. A couple of days pass and we even begin to forget about this thing since more disturbing and annoying things come up instead making us pass our days at the office. Then I encounter a seriously pissed off Luke in the bathroom, telling me; "You know what Mr. Salaryman?! They pulled the wrong fucking tooth".

Turns out that the dentist had managed to miss the wisdomtooth and instead pulled out one of his, useful and in perfect condition, molars. Japan is not the paradise of lawsuits that the US is, but Luke is currently considering his options. The clinic is willing to do what it can to make up it's mistake through arranging an implant or so. However this will mean that Luke will need to go to the dentist a number of times and spend time on this in addition to the overall suffering and operations...

All this pales in the amusement of the simple fact: The dentist pulled the wrong tooth! This is what he does, he spends all days long looking into people's mouths and still he pulled the wrong tooth and now Luke has to go through another round of suffering because they couldn't do their job properly. If you think about it, it really is kinda funny.

Segmenting the customer and the USP (unique selling proposition)

I work as a consultant, but at heart I'm a marketer. With this blog I'm actually selling a product to you, dear reader, although I do not charge for it, nor do I receive any money from what I am doing here. My reward is some twisted form of sense of achievement when people read it and find it entertaining, disturbing or both.

When you want to market a product you think about the product and the customers you want to reach. I want to reach a certain segment of the market and make my blog popular in that segment. So what segment am I really targeting? A quick analysis of the contents in here shows that the following topics are brought up at some point or another:

* Life in Tokyo

* Japan Craziness

* Consulting

* Workplace Stupidity

* Patrick Swayze

* Serial Killers

So I want to reach the segment of the market that are interested in those subjects. There should be 2-3 worldwide I hopefully could reach.

However, something recently made me think. One person had fallen into my blog after doing a google on "male rape scenes". Maybe I am thinking the wrong way here, maybe that is a segment of the market that is untapped and has great potential? Perhaps that is the direction I should take this blog in? (The person doing the search was in Germany, which for some prejudice reason does not surprise me at all...)

I have some thinking to do now when I stake out the long-term strategic plan for this blog...

That's when I reach for my revolver

It is that season again!

In my lovely company we have a evaluation system that's based on "360 degrees reviews" which means that you will get evaluated by all the people you have been working on the last 6 months higher and lower of you in the grand scale of things. The evaluations are also completely anonymous which means that this is the time when old crimes are settled and avenged. Now, I am not too worried about my own review since I have been such an extremely pleasant and entertaining person to work without that I hope that my incompetence is quickly forgotten and my ratings will be decent.

Likewise, I'm a pretty nice nice evaluator myself and unless someone has been blatantly incompetent or incapable of even the simplest things, I give pretty nice and good ratings.

...so, last six months you say?

Well, there have been some interesting incidents that nicely fits in that category. Word on the street is that not anyone who has worked with Mr. Chin has very good things to say about him and his work style (which mostly seem to consist of playing Bigfoot) so I would guess that he is in for quite a ride.

Here the fun never ends!

Cry me a river

Before I joined the world of high intensity consulting; providing executives with the answers they need to get ahead in the world of business, I worked in a pretty ordinary corporate environment here in Tokyo. There are many differences between how my work environment looked and how it looks now, but there is especially one big difference that stands out.

There is a lot more crying at my current company.

In my previous job I think I witnessed one crying incident in the 6 years I spent there and that incident was unrelated to work as far as I could understand it. However in my current company there is a lot more crying going on. I think we can further segment the different types of crying that occurs in the office in the following segments:

1. Toilet Crying

2. Tired "I'm tired and I want to go home but still got a shitload to finish up" crying

3. Exhausted "I spent a weekend doing this and now you're just throwing it away" crying

4. "Someone said mean and hurtful things to me" crying

Toilet Crying can also be caused of one of the three later segments where the crying is deliberatly located to the safe environment of the toilet booth instead of out in the open.

Just in the recent couple of days, there have been incidents of the three later types of crying with one type 4 induced by Mr. Chin on one of the sweetest nicest female staff members (who sometimes wears a t-shirt with the text "I'm your c***") and also a type 3 on Ms. A induced by El Presidente.

However, there is one toilet crying incident that stands out and has become legend in the office. "The Mr. J Toilet Crying Incident". This legendary incident occured a good couple of months ago when there was a lot of turbulence and El Presidente was making efforts to remove Mr. J from the company. One of my beloved colleagues went to the bathroom to attend do his bodily needs, went in to the available booths and started to do his thing in a healthy and happy manner. However, from the booth next to the one he was enjoying the distinct sound of Mr. J flipping through paper was heard (believe me when I say that it's a very distinct sound) combined with sounds of crying. My colleague quickly finished up and evacuated the premises and not much later Mr. J emerged in the office again with red eyes, went in to his office and closed the door behind him without turning on the lights, sitting there in the dark (possibly eating peanuts).

So, why did he go to the bathroom and cry and not stay in his office where noone would notice anyway? Well, this is where the sad and funny part comes in. Mr. J was at this point so hounded by El Presidente with phone calls, e-mails and messages that the only safe haven he could find to get a minutes respite was the toilet...

Now, this is not very funny you say? Well, it's funny in a sad way...

As a conclusion, I have realized that if I'm to move up in the corporate ladder I need to make more people cry. Looking back now, I have managed to make very few people cry so far and that is something I really need to work on starting from tomorrow.

Googling nowhere, fast

One of the entertaining things of having a blog and checking activity related to the site is to see how people came across my modest little site. Now, recently there have been more random people finding this little oasis of peace through the all-knowing google.
Let me lay out some of the key search words that have been used and directed my lovely guests here:
Gacy Waste Plan - I like this one, hope he found what he was looking for...
Work related to road use in Tokyo - Maybe I should do a post on this?
Salaryman sex - Yeah, now we're talking!
Tokyo snobbish - I don't wanna know what this person was looking for...

Finally, my all time favorite so far:
ivy league consulting Tokyo - Wow, this guy used just the right keywords!

Now the right wing extremists are driving their black buses blasting out their war time classics on full volume outside my apartment, time to end this post!

Largest table by end-game wins!

Location: Company X boardroom in Osaka

Participants: Mr. Salaryman and Meg

One big part of the work we do here in my lovely company is to talk to different actors in the specific field we are working in. Just last week I was in Osaka where we had scheduled a meeting with a partner company of the company we are currently hired by. The short story of the current project is that we are looking in to how our client can support its Japanese partners better. In case you are getting my different projects mixed up, this is the one I'm working with Meg and Dr. Y. on. Thankfully it is not the project that this post refers to.

Anyway, it starts with me and Meg arriving at said company and getting shown into the boardroom of this considerably large Japanese company with a huge table. As we sat down on one side of the table it was probably 3 meters to the other side where our interviewees would be sitting. Forget about handing papers across the table, which would be a breach of Japanese etiquette anyway, no, giving documents required getting up and taking a long walk to the other side of the table. And we were hoping to conduct the discussions in a friendly intimate atmosphere, but those expectations were thrown out the window pretty quickly...

Now, with the focus of this project to find out how our client can support its partners, we were foolish enough to expect, if not open friendliness, at least basic courtesy. We were sorely mistaken. Granted, it was only one of our interview sessions that was met with open hostility. The following dialogue took place as our interviewees sat down. Feel free to act out the dialogue below with a close friend, lover or perhaps distant relative?

Japanese Salaryman X: (Confrontational) I don't understand why we have to have this discussions, we already submitted all our plans to the client! If you haven't looked at those plans, you will have no idea what questions to ask and this will just be a huge waste of our time and yours.

Mr. Salaryman: (Apologetic) I see, well at the moment that is perhaps a bit difficult since we are already here and would like to conduct the interview anyway since we believe that your opinions would be interesting to incorporate in our study...

Japanese Salaryman Y (the subordinate of Japanese Salaryman X): (Passive aggressive) Well, it will just be a waste of time if you don't look at the plan!

Mr. Salaryman: (Gently) I see, well maybe we can take a look at that plan when we get back to the office if the client agrees to it.

Japanese Salaryman X: (Matter-of-factly) No, that's not possible, that information is confidential so you are not allowed to see it!

If someone can please remind me why I'm doing is job again please?

Stupidity

Probably the worst work related Monday ever for me... The sheer stupidity we encountered today just makes me shudder... I wish I could dare to tell you all the details, but I cannot stand to relive this again. Unfortunately it will continue for another couple of days...

Burnout Rehabilitation

Consulting is generally known for horrible hours, plenty of weekend work and generally intensive work environment. We have heard horror stories from some of our US offices of projects where people have been worked until 2-3am, going home for a 4-5 hours of sleep and then back to the office and pick up where they left sometimes going on at weeks on end.

Now, in our office things are pretty nice. Sure, we have our share of internal problems that we face, but generally we can leave the office at a reasonable hour and El Presidente seem to have a certain appreciation of the fact that people with a life outside the firm produces better results. Mr. J on the other hand was more of the old school type with very little regard for human life or personal circumstances (he will still get a more detailed post later on). But with him gone and Mr. K instead, things are getting pretty comfortable from this aspect. We regularly take 1.5-2 hour lunches when we have the chance and don't stay too late unless absolutely necessary. Now, we do actually have some pride in producing great work since there is a paying customer down the line, but smart management and elimination of busy- and nonsense-work can make both worlds possible.

Our office has actually been known as the office where people don't work hard or late... Something that we take some misdirected pride in.

We have also served as a burnout rehabilitiation office recently. One person from the Chicago office (if some people are unsure about where Chicago is located it might help if I mention that it is in the Chicago area where John Wayne Gacy operated and did his gigs as "Pogo the Clown" among other activities) got sent to our office for a 3 month transfer. Now, he's not a Japanese speaker so his activities naturally got a bit limited by this. For him the transfer was vacation with the long lunches and comparatively relaxed work hours. He quickly got into our rythm though and we were sad to see him return. He also sent out a farewell e-mail to the us in the office where he tried to advocate the good points of doing an exchange to his office. That was the comic highlight of that day.

It's not even funny...

Some of you people probably read and like Dilbert, a lot of people do. You read the strips and laugh a little because of similarities that has happened to you in work sometime, but usually the strips are exaggerated compared to what you experienced.

...this exact thing happened to my team in our previous project. Not "something like it" or "almost like it", exactly this happened to us. Our job satisfaction wasn't that great to begin with either...

"Pain doesn't hurt"

A lot of difficult things going on in my personal life at the moment which makes you reflect over the past and things that you have done. So far I have come to one crystal clear relevation and it is very simple. "Some of the best times in my life has been spent watching the movie Roadhouse". I have always tried to stick to the rules as laid out by Patrick Swayze in that movie "All you have to do is follow three simple rules. One, never underestimate your opponent. Expect the unexpected. Two, take it outside. Never start anything inside the bar unless it's absolutely necessary. And three, be nice." and since I do not own a bar the second point holds slightly less relevance to me. But I always make sure to expect the unexpected even when unexpected things are not expected, but it they do come along I already expected them.

Now, I know that some people would argue that Next of Kin was the pinnacle of Patrick Swayze's career and although that movie is by no means a bad movie I would argue that Roadhouse packs more of a punch. Granted, the overall concept of Next of Kin is hard to beat, but Roadhouse has everything you could want to ask of a movie including two funny fat guys (one evil and one good), a typical 80's sex-scene and great lines.

Now, with this relevation sorted out, the question that needs to be answered is; how do I apply this new found knowledge? Well, in order to get my life in order again I would say that the best course of action for me is to watch the movie again and then maybe everything else will just fall into place!