Friday, January 11, 2008

Running Meeting Diary 1/11/08 – The Return

10:15 AM - I know it’s been ages since my last running diary, but I thought I’d break it out today as I expect it to be a gem as it’s already shaping up that way and it’s not even started yet. We’ve got Forro, Posada, and Cano on the field with Giambi in the building. Jeter’s not going to be here as he’s playing an exhibition game on the other side of the world and A-Rod is hosing everybody by being his usual late self. If Giambi was here, I’d push ahead for the start. Heck, I still might do it because I hate waiting.

10:35 AM – Cano has agreed with me on the starting of the meeting, Giambi is here, and A-Rod can suck it. We’re finally rolling!

10:45 AM – What I said about the meeting starting? Uh, yeah…it kind of didn’t. We were interrupted by someone and then half the group left. I said that this was bull and started my financial presentation anyway and if they don’t like it, they should have stayed.

11:00 AM – I show my financials and then A-Rod, who showed up mid presentation, hems and haws about how we need more revenue. Forro presses him on trending on patient numbers and he doesn’t have anything, but he passes some bucks, says that it fluctuates. No duh. What’s the trending, give me some data!

11:02 AM – I’m hearing a lot of defense and not much offence from A-Rod. I think he might be pulling random data out of his rear based on things that he has no idea about. That’s usually how it works with him though, no question about it.

11:07 AM – We’re having a discussion with A-Rod where he’s talking about stuff but not backing it up with anything. To quote Lionel Hutz, “We've plenty of hearsay and conjecture. Those are kinds of evidence.” He’s talking about how these chintzy little pieces of junk helped out with doctors and I honestly feel that the numbers don’t back that up one iota. Yet he continues to dance around the issue and blame other people for his issues he’s having. To toss in and modify another quote from Bill Simmons, “Yup, these are our managers.”

11:20 AM – We’re talking about how we suck on the customer service end and there’s a lot of back and forth, but not really anything is being resolved. It’s pretty much the status quo. There’s a lot of concern, but not a lot of action.

11:35 AM – Here we are, two separate discussions. I honestly don’t think that much will come of this, mainly because at the end of the day the person(s) in charge of this just slap stuff on a wall and hope it sticks.

11:36 AM – Forro just got blamed for something by A-Rod for no reason at all. What a meatball.

11:39 AM – This is the reason why it’s been so long since we’ve done one of these. The meetings have been very effective up until this day. I can say that I haven’t been in such a lousy meeting in well over a month.

11:51 AM – We’ll see if this pans out, as is not likely based on the history and the fact that we have a bloviating numbskull in charge of our marketing plan, but we do have a good marketing plan. It took some hammer dunking, and

12:00 PM – We’re currently discussing orientation and Forro is getting caught between a rock and a hard place because people want something and others want something else.

12:07 PM – We’re still on the same discussion about orientation and it comes down to discipline and holding people to the line. We never do it, nor will we ever do it, because we refuse to hold people accountable. Accountability, for all our talk about it, is as good as dead here, from the top down. We have had the problem for years and it starts with the fact that we have an exec (A-Rod) who might as well be Charles Bronson in Death Wish. Well, Charles Bronson if he didn’t go out and whack people but instead sat around and talked. Actually scratch that, he’s Chief Wiggum. Wiggum doesn’t do anything, but he’s still the police chief in Springfield. That’s A-Rod.

12:34 PM – I’m nearly finished with Simmons’ Divisional Series picks column and I think we finally finished the conversation. Honestly, I stopped paying attention about 20 minutes ago.

12:39 PM – A-Rod is hereby prophesying that we will be having a natural disaster here in our area relatively quickly. Or a biological attack. Either way, it will be happening. He’s also saying that in a pandemic, you use yourselves some M-94 masks (not a real mask BTW) and then everyone hunkers down in their basements for 2 weeks. I think he might be a secret member of some Shadow Department of Homeland Security. I also just heard a mention of H5N1 (bird flu), and he’s seriously about 2 steps away from getting a bunch of guns and hunkering down in the mountains waiting for the world to end. While we’re on this topic, Forro talked with him earlier this week and so I do know a little behind-the-scenes information. He has a strong belief that we will be subject to either an earthquake or biological attack (yes, a bio attack here in Utah) in the next 6 months. Honestly, is it just me and the people I know, or is millennialism at an all-time high?

12:45 PM – Done with that discussion…I think.

12:46 PM – One thing that bugs me about ESPN’s web site is that they keep moving things around. They’re the Costco of websites. Every day you come in and you’re looking for Simmons’ columns or the Hollinger/Stein team rankings and you never know where you’ll find them. They may even be on a different website. Of course not to knock either, I’m a firm fan of both.

12:50 PM – “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

12:53 PM – I have just been told that the impossible is possible. An employee has told A-Rod, and because he’s an idiot he believed it, that they are being charged long distance on a local call to our office. Our local office. It gets routed to 2 offices from that line and she believes she’s getting charged for the long distance call to our main office. As someone who knows a thing or two about reality, that’s not possible.

1:08 PM – While A-Rod is wasting our time with his family call, Cano and Giambi are chatting. A Classic Canoism is the ability to just take crucial pieces of a puzzle and force them in somewhere else. They may not fit and they may leave a gap elsewhere, but it’s what he does best (or worst as it were)

1:12 PM – I think we might be done. Smokehouse, here I come!

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