The Office: Part Two

Although I have blocked many of them out of my memory, I recalled this story of FOX19 today.

There were several consultants that the station brought in on a regular basis. By consultant, I mean someone who came in and taught us ways to swindle people out of money.

On this particular day the consultant, Melanie arrived in all of her splendor. Purple shoes, lime green suit, lots of jewelry, bright red hair. She tells us that today we'll be figuring out what our sales style is, and then learning how to use that to our advantage. I think, "no problem, what a blow off day."

Then, she gets out one of those giant post-it note pads on an easel and a fat sharpie. She smiles brightly as she says, "to figure out what your style is, we need to talk about everyone's strengths and weaknesses are."

HUH? "As a group?" I ask, dumbfounded.

"Yep, as a group, it'll be fun. Let's start with Michael (fake name for former boss)."

At this point eight of the 10 people on my team are in the room as well as my boss. Melanie makes a chart on the board. On the left there is a column that says "weaknesses" and the right says "strengths". "Okay guys, what are some of Michael's weaknesses?"

Well, it's only fair to say that at this particular point in time everyone on my team HATES Michael. We've had commission cuts, account switches, and our bonuses are getting paid 3 months late. So, we let him have it. As I recall, the list of weaknesses was something like this:

Liar
Bad follow through
Dishonest
Scatterbrained
Untrustworthy
unavailable
Shallow
Stupid

And the list of strengths (that Melanie came up with herself):
People person
Good smile
Laughs a lot

I couldn't even believe what was happening!!!!! We went around and each person was dissected in front of the entire team. People were saying toother people's faces things like "overly sensitive", "whiner", "kiss up", and "wears her emotions on her sleeve". By the time it got to me, I was so freaked out that I spouted off 5 weaknesses about myself so that no one else had the chance to take a shot at me.

At the end of the meeting we even evaluated 2 people who were NOT in the room that day. Then, Melanie takes all of the sheets and posts them all around the room. And leaves them up there. Michael's boss comes in and looks at them. He did see all of the nasty stuff that we had to say about Michael, but he just cocked his head a little sideways, made a , "huh" noise, and moved on.

Mysteriously, the next day all of the sheets were gone.