I think that I slept for about 10 hrs yesterday. This is unusual for me as I'm not really one for lie-ins. However I've been knackered ever since our two day session last week. There's something about being responsible for every step of a process that really does slow you down - you get to the end and you just crash. This time it was stimulus, venues, exercises, shopping trips, introductions, ideas, groupings and enough energy to carry everybody through it all. I though that I was fine, I wasn't obviously.
Meanwhile Jude is up at the crack of St. Early the Riser and starting on charts for her thesis defence. It's on Tuesday and everytime she sits down to look at the screen she gets wound just a little tighter. It's an amazing physical reaction and one that I recognize after 4 years in an advertising agency that worked only on crisis and panic. Most of which was self created.
The problem with where I used to work was size. It was a huge agency, with huge clients and lots of people. The problem was that the number of great people, the people you wanted to work with and for, was tiny. And these people were in demand, on everything. So if you wanted them you had to convince the powers that be that your problem was bigger, more urgent and more scary than any other problem in the building.
"I need these people now or the whole account is going up for review, the work won't be delivered, we'll be sued and the client is threatening to take a crap through your letterbox." was the general tone.
This led of course to several consequences. Hyperbole is one thing, constant hyperbole starts to have a physical effect. People started to believe the desperation of their own circumstance and the stress levels soared. They aged. They got sick. They went grey. They upped the doses of alcohol. They looked for people to blame, for people to shout out.
And then of course everything was rushed. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so of course thought, care and attention to detail were frowned upon. "Get it out of the door Jenkins" was too often the mentality.
And finally there were the defections. Constant seige leads to shell shock and people leaving the trenches to pursue careers in cabbage management, or fluffy hat wearing.
It was miserable and right now Jude is in her own solo version of this hell. Thank God Tuesday sees the end of it.
1 comment:
Gosh i must carry some terrible responsibilities... i sleep 10 hours every day...
Constant hyperbole is indeed the bane of modern existence, we're drowning in it. One British sports report is enough to make me want to murder, if there ever was a British winner of wimbledon I'd not the responsible for the carnage I'd unleash... thankfully that'll never happen...
Hope el Jude is bearing up!! I wouldn't fancy being an external and grilling her on her thesis... my money is on her...
Today's word verification is the old Aztec board game 'ehpengc'. A single player game consisting of 32 pegs in 33 holes, the aim is to remove all the pegs, leaving just one in the central hole, whilst avoiding being sacrificed to the sun-god...
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