Satan knew what he was doing...

[susie_flo]

...when he invented the concept of IT networking events.
         
My colleague and I could barely fit into the room of the event we attended today due to the irrational profusion of enlarged egos.  Once we did squeeze in, we were treated to 6 hours of powerpoint slides saying effectively the same thing over and over again.  
    
These were delivered by a stream of ever more egomaniacal presenters.   The first one had clearly been trained in public speaking at the 'Legz Akimbo' Theatre school...   he was all extra-wide mouth, overenunciated words and illustrative hand movements.   The last one was 100% Gilderoy Lockhart.  (The ones in between have become an all-round blur of paunchy-middle-aged-grey-suited-cockiness).
   
Externally I made heroic attempts to behave in a prim and proper manner.  Internally I was a jaded, heckling tricoteuse, providing a running commentary in my stream of consciousness that would have had me locked up had it been audible.
            
At one point, my colleague and I reached a moment of self-awareness...   having just sidled away from a harmless-but-yawnsome man who was trying to network with us, we looked at each other and said exactly what we were both thinking.  "Networking with him is going to add no value to our attendance at this event".    This forced us to acknowledge that many years of business analysis might just have affected our personalities.  We've both become brutally intolerant of anyone who takes up a moment of our time without adding some kind of value....  (what shockingly rude girls we are!)
    
Now I am home and feeling drained...   but was immensely cheered to fnd another package from Ms_Siobhan on my doorstep.  She has kindly sent me some more 80s knitting patterns, this time modelled by an extraordinary mullet, a fembot and the same mutant child model as last time!  :-)
  
(pics later) 

 

Comments

[kissmeforlonger.livejournal.com]

Lovely S, you don't need umpteen qualifications in business analysis to give you an excuse to avoid a bore!

If you'd liked him, you'd be networking with him whether he was any 'use' or not ;-)

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Of course you're right! It's not that I feel bad at all for shaking off the bore... it was more that instead of either being polite, or standing there thinking "what a bore".... we had both been silently calculating the cost/benefit of spending time talking to him :-)

(We concluded that slipping out for 30 mins shopping on Kensington High St would actualy add far more justifiable value to our lives than networking with any of the duffers!)

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Hee hee, I shall scan them in tomorrow!