As I have written before, Steve is my office equivalent of Dwight Schrute from the popular TV sitcom The Office. I say he is the office equivalent of Dwight because he is the closest thing to Dwight I have ever seen. He is the anal retentive guy that keeps everyone of their toes, keeps weird knick knacks on his desk and is generally strange all the time. I've never seen him use pepper spray on a co-worker, but wouldn't be surprised if he gives someone a blast today.
Anyway, as I said earlier, Steve is rather anal. It seems like he keeps track of everyone's time at work and frequently makes remarks about people not putting in exactly 8 hours everyday. Of course, he is precise when it comes to managing his own work time and always works exactly 40 hours. I am not kidding. I am pretty sure he tracks his time to the exact minute. If he stays late by two minutes one day, then he will leave two minutes early the next. He is rather funny to watch on a daily basis.
Because he is so anal, it gives me much pleasure to share the following story, which goes a long way in proving that no one is perfect, even if they are like Steve and try to act like they are.
Steve is in a position where he has to "call" a lot of coordination meetings. His job is to bring decision makers together, present them with facts and then help them make decisions that have to be made. Of course, Steve being Steve, he is anal about scheduling the meetings, making precise agendas and ensuring the meetings do not stray off topic.
He called a meeting yesterday and several senior managers were in attendance. Unfortunately, the conference room where his meetings are normally held was booked, so he was forced to use another conference room that isn't very conducive to having good meetings. When Steve and his partner arrived at the conference room, they soon realized it was impossible to run the slide projector while sitting at the actual conference room. Therefore, they decided Steve would sit in the back of the conference room and "advance" the slides, while his partner would run the meeting from the conference table. As they went through the briefing slides, they would obviously stop on each slides and a discussion would ensue. They arrived at one particular slide that caused quite a bit of conversation. So mush so that the computer "went to sleep" from lack of activity. This wasn't a problem, as the discussion continued for quite some time. Eventually, the conversation ended and it was time to move forward to the next briefing slide. Steve's partner John turned towards Steve and said, "Wake up the slides." There was no immediate response, so as all the senior managers watched and listened, John again said, "Wake up the slide." Unbeknownst to John, the computer/slides weren't the only thing that needed to be woken up. Steve wasn't advancing the slides because as he sat at the back of the room, he fell totally asleep. Eventually, with a little more prodding from John, Steve woke up. Of course, he was horrified when he realized all the senior managers were aware of his afternoon slumber.
We've all been in similar situations where we sat in a darkened room after lunch and started feeling our eye lids getting a little heavy. I've fought this sleep sensation many times myself. However, when I learned of this story I laughed like you wouldn't believe. It isn't everyday that you can find Steve making a major mistake like this. If he fell asleep in front of me, I don't think it would be a big deal. However, falling asleep in front of senior managers was understandably horrific for someone like Steve.
I should feel sorry for him, but have to admit it is hard for me to feel sorry for him because he is so anal about how long or how hard every one else works. I laughed as I realized this should knock Steve off of his high horse. At least for a while anyway.
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