Sunday afternoons should be quiet and relaxing, consisting of nothing more strenuous than taking a nap, watching another History Channel documentary about World War II or Mummies of Ancient Egypt or even the latest Formula One Grand Prix, which will greatly assist in inducing the aforementioned nap. This was not the case yesterday as I made the mistake of opening my snail mail. I was frustrated, annoyed and disappointed. Not because Time Magazine  insists on sending me offers of 70% off a three year subscription, when everyone knows that the only time to read a Time magazine is when it’s three years old and found in your doctor’s waiting room. The reason for my aggravation is a questionable item on my Internet Service Provider’s (and I use the word ‘provider’ very loosely) bill that needs to be queried. The exact nature of the erroneous charge is irrelevant; in fact I might even consider letting it slide considering the alternative. What it means though is that this coming week I need to muster all the courage, patience and determination I can because I need to call the evil, energy draining, blight upon humanity that is their call centre!

The first obstacle preventing you from getting through to a mammal, that may or may not be able to help you, is actually getting through! I tried to get through to another service provider’s helpline recently and got a polite, mechanical voice telling me “The subscriber you have dialled is not available, please try again later.” It appears this large, South African corporation ran out of airtime. I chose to call another service provider later. Dial other call centres and they just ring and ring and ring. If you’re a call centre and you’re not taking calls then, let’s face it, you’re just a ‘centre’.

Some call centres create the impression of being proactive by asking you to input some important customer information prior to speaking to an under qualified “agent” (agent of inaction is more like it). My bank asks me for my credit card number before granting me the privilege of communing with an “associate” (associate of idiocy perhaps). I eagerly punch in my sixteen digit card number, momentarily impressed, thinking that they’re using this number to auto-magically bring up my details to better manage my incoming call. What’s the first question the associate asks when you get through? “May I have your sixteen digit credit card number please?” Then why did I have to key it in? If you’re able to enter sixteen numbers into a key pad successfully do you qualify for a limit increase? Of course, the well trained individual on the other end of the line also has no idea why that’s necessary.

Call centre management, if you can call it that, have realised that having a marginally employed person manning the lines can be problematic. Thus, they’ve resorted to futuristic technology to solve this problem. In science fiction movies humans chat casually and confidently to computers, getting exactly what they need, when they need it… usually bad news relating to aliens in the cargo bay, engine failure or warnings that John Travolta’s in Battlefield Earth. Voice recognition software applied to a call centre is a disaster in the making! I once tried to book for a movie using the robot on the other end of the line. I wanted tickets for two, for Friday, at eight, for Lord of the Rings. Instead I got tickets for a debut, at midday, for an unknown date, for Lord of the Wingdings, a surprisingly dull movie about fonts.

All of this and I haven’t even spoken to a person yet! Tomorrow morning, I’m planning on meditating, practicing some yoga and doing some deep breathing exercise, all in the hope of being calm and centred, before I call the call centre. May the Force be with me.

Join me next week for Part II of this saga, if I don’t get arrested for committing some violent act with a telephone handset! Got any horror call centre experiences? Let me know at diary@jeetesh.net

Maintaining a laser-like focus, 100% commitment and marathon runner endurance and motivation is very difficult for the average employee, and let’s be honest most employees are below average. So is it any wonder that every now and then, and by that I mean regularly, people at work will procrastinate. In the interests of being both helpful and educational here’s my Top Ten Tips for Procrastinating at Work:

10.	Build a fancy Excel spreadsheet for a less than important, perhaps even random, reason. How about a spreadsheet used to calculate how many days, hours and minutes left until Friday/next Public Holiday/Leave/release date of the next Jessica Alba movie? Try adding some informative graphs and possibly even write a macro to refresh the sheet intra-day. If you don’t know how to write a macro, now might be a good time to learn… using Microsoft’s ever so unhelpful Help files.
9.	As part of your personal Back-up and Disaster Recovery Plan, back up your PC to a shared drive and a DVD. Now, you can’t possibly work on your computer while it’s busy backing up – that would just be inviting unnecessary risk into the organisation! Go grab a cup of coffee instead, it’s far less risky.
8.	Schedule a one-on-one meeting with one of your minions… I mean employees. Explain that sometime we’re so busy that we don’t get a chance to connect as people. Then encourage said employee to discuss how they’re doing at work and how they like working for you. Use the time perfect your “meditating with eyes open” technique while your valuable team member blabbers on and on.
7.	Surf the intranet site. Open organisation charts, read HR policy documentation and visit random department’s intranet sites to see what boring things they do and then lurk by checking out their annual teambuilding photos.
6.	Adopt that powerful management technique, as used by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, founders of the rather cleverly named Hewlett-Packard (I wonder if they considered Bill-Dave?), Management by Walking Around, rather cleverly abbreviated to MBWA. This genius technique can be achieved by simply… well… by simply walking around. Tom Peters would be so proud.
5.	Hire a consultant and get them to do whatever you were meant to do. Let’s face it, they’ll probably do a better job and get it done in half the time. They may cost more per hour than your annual bonus but that seems like a fair price to pay to organise the office barbeque this Friday.
4.	Print a one hundred page document and then go and stand at the printer while you wait for your tome to be printed. Bonus tip: Try and time your printing to coincide with the paper or the toner running out. The latter is preferable because it now means you have to go find a replacement which may mean going to another floor… in another building where there’s no guarantee that they even have the same model of printer as you, let alone the same cartridge. It’s a risk that you’re willing to take.
3.	Attend a meeting, get angry and get the meeting postponed for a really trivial, but pseudo-important reason. For example, complain that all the actions from the last meeting have not been completed. Storm out the meeting room, but not before ranting that “If this is the kind of attitude that people take in this team, then there’s really no point in having a follow-up meeting. I’ve really got far more important things to do than to waste my time discussing what should have been finished last week.” Feel free to grab another latte.
2.	Participate in a fire drill… even if it’s not your company. Just for entertainment value, wear a brightly coloured bib and pretend to be an emergency official. Scold people for not taking the fire drill seriously.
1.	Call the employee assistance line and ask for help with… procrastination!

Got any other ideas for procrastinating at the office? Let me know at diary@jeetesh.net See you next week.

One of the most important tools in the arsenal of a professional meeting-attendee such as myself is an Agenda. I do, of course, mean ‘agenda’ as in a list or outline of things to be considered or done, as opposed to ‘agenda’ insinuating an underlying often ideological plan or program.[1] However, after a recent meeting that I attended, one can be forgiven for confusing the two definitions. I received the meeting’s agenda with the invitation and was amazed to proceed through all the agenda items without actually discussing the literal agenda items. Thus, I present my version of a meeting agenda, what it says and what it really means:

Potter Weasley Granger & Associates

Audit Tax Advisory Magic

Company Meeting – Agenda

Date:	15 March 2010 (A company meeting on a Monday? You must be joking!)
Time:	14:00 to 16:00 (After lunch? Seriously? Nap time here we come.)
Venue:	Gryffindor Boardroom (The boardroom without any aircon? Now you’re just killing me!)
Chairperson:	H. Potter (That self-obsessed, short-tempered, long-winded, big-headed, small-minded, one-sided, two-faced, ear infection of a man!)

Agenda Items

No.	Item	Responsible	Duration
1.	Welcome and apologies (This meeting is about as welcoming as a sign outside a building that say “Arbeit Macht Frei”, the snap of latex rubber gloves at US Customs or a Roger Waters and Pink Floyd reunion. In fact, it’s me that should apologise to my family, friends, mentors and educators for having failed them so miserably to have only risen to the lowly heights that is this company, this position and this meeting. I wonder if there’s going to be biscuits?)	H. Potter	5 min
2.	Minutes of the previous meeting (The minutes of the previous meeting will always be accepted because no one ever reads them.)	H. Potter	5 min
3.	Action items from previous meeting (There were actions from the previous meeting?)	H. Potter	5 min (15 minutes in and we haven’t even done anything yet)
4.	New Projects (Oh God, you know what this means? Someone’s been blue sky thinking, brainstorming, or even worse, reading. Now we’ll have to implement another ludicrous idea, like trying to teach clients about GAAP using only a laminated card and interpretive dance. Note to self: blacklist Amazon.com)	R. Weasley	30 min
5.	Budget (A fruitless discussion where we’ll present our budgets, which were merely last year’s budget multiplied by 1.1. Tempers will flare over the rising numbers and why some budgets are approved, such as the GAAP Interpretative Dance Project, while others are cut, such as the bonus pool, business class travel and the employee assistance program. All budgets will then be cut by 10%.)	L. Voldemort	45 min
6.	Marketing Feedback (Great, another fifteen minute discussion about why we need a new logo and a new font.)	H. Granger	15 min
7.	Company Teambuilding Event (There’s a light at the end of the tunnel! A quick chat about another pointless excuse to spend a day out the office under the pretext of building a better team. Just agree to the option that’s outdoors, has a bar and comes with a free T-shirt that I can use in the garden and then we’re done!)	D. Mentor	5 min
8.	General (Brace yourself. All the inane, tedious and meaningless comments will now come out, in an attempt to create an illusion of value and contribution. The end is nigh.)	H. Potter	5 min (the Lord have mercy)
9.	Date and time of next meeting (Don’t people learn? After the pain that was this meeting, they now want another one?)	H. Potter	5 min (at last!)

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[1] Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/ , 14 March 2010

After two weeks of jet-setting, I can’t say that I’m entirely thrilled to be back at the office again. ‘Underwhelmed’ might be a better description of how I feel, however that may just be the jet lag. I was confident that I would have shrugged off the effects of jet lag by now. Sadly, I’m still struggling to fall asleep at a reasonable hour and am now trying to bore myself to blissful slumber by watching CNBC at one in the morning. On the bright side though, there are some very interesting programs about dinosaurs at that time on the National Geographic channel. The other understandable but bizarre side effect of jet lag is that I find myself getting really hungry at four in the afternoon, which now makes dinner at eight feel like the midnight munchies! The good news is that the Academy Awards ceremony is being broadcast tonight, so I should be fast asleep by about 19:45.

Getting back to work can be a very traumatic experience indeed. Firstly, the traffic jolts you back to reality as you realise that while you’ve been partying it up elsewhere, everyone else has been engaging in morning skirmishes, just trying to get to their place of work on time and one piece. Just thirty minutes into your journey and you’re already cussing, flipping the bird and brandishing your firearms (Joburg drivers only)… and that’s just to your kids in the back seat.

If the team that you work with is a group of motivated, intelligent and mature individuals, then they probably did not mobilise in your absence to perpetrate a grand, practical joke at your expense. Given that I’m the one uncomfortably adjusting people’s office chairs when they leave their desks it was to be expected that I would be the victim for a change. So it was unsurprising to see all the contents of my cubicle relocated to the previously empty cubicle behind me. I was impressed by the attention to detail because they moved everything, including my pot plant John Kenneth Galbraith, and re-assembled the whole lot in the new cubicle, in exactly the same, obsessive compulsive way that I usually arrange my cubicle. Of course, it would have been far more impressive if they reconstructed my cubicle in the foyer of the building, the car park or the canteen. Amateurs! Perhaps I shouldn’t have included that genius idea here, because guess where I my cubicle’s going to be the next time I go on holiday?

The next reality check, the final nail in the coffin that was your delightful holiday, is to turn off your Out of Office Assistant. I don’t know why Microsoft calls it an “Assistant”. Maybe they’re seeing “Assistant” in the same context as Assisted Suicide? I could be wrong. But there are few things more depressing than having to click on the option “I am currently In the Office”. I’ve always felt that to be far too brief and not completely explaining my thoughts on the subject. If at all possible, I’d prefer to go with “It is with a heavy heart and an absent mind that I return to the office. I’ve only been back thirty minutes and I already have a headache. The throbbing of my head is matched only by my general state of lethargy, ambivalence and ennui. But other than that, it’s great to be back.”

Your first meeting back is like a splash of ice cold water in the face! Last week you could take minutes to decide what TV channel to watch at eleven in the morning; now you’re just taking minutes. Last week, communicating with people consisted of checking my text messages. This week it entails reading 363 new e-mail messages, returning far too many voicemails and meeting with people who need to update you on all that’s happened in the last two weeks, including who’s resigned, who’s joined, why we’re now over budget and a comprehensive review of the new stationery requisition form.

And finally, last week my ‘To Do’ list had one item on it, “Enjoy holiday”. Well, two if you count “Annoy sales people at the Apple shop”. This week, item 97 is “Plan next holiday”!

Having just returned from my first trip to the USA a little heavier, a little poorer and a little jet-lagged, I’ve taken some time to reflect on my journey. Here’s what I learnt over the last two weeks:

10.	When at the movies, order the kids size Coke and popcorn. A “regular” sized drink is enough to water a garden and the adult size popcorn is so big, it comes in a bag the size of a small child. In fact, you might even consider buying a kids size bag of popcorn for your bag of popcorn, just in case it gets peckish during the movie.
9.	Customer service people generally appear to want to know how you’re doing and genuinely seem to hope that you will really and truly enjoy your day. The South African response is usually to punch said customer service person in the face for being so inquisitive.
8.	Please take note South African banks: the American bank branches I visited are open from 09:00 to 18:00 on weekdays and for some branches, on Saturdays from 09:00 to 16:00. They don’t seem to have a need to rush home to watch soap operas.
7.	Paying for anything that costs less than $40 with a $50 note will arouse great suspicion, sometimes even requiring a supervisor’s approval before payment is accepted. People in the queue behind you will glance nervously in your direction, whisper amongst themselves and give you a little more room in case you need to make a quick getaway. This seemed strange to me until I worked it out that a $50 note is like having a R380 note, which now explains the consternation behind the counter at McDonalds when I tried to pay for my Happy Meal…
6.	The staff at the Apple store get a little annoyed when you refer to everything prefixed with an ‘i” – e.g. iRestroom, iCredit Card,  iWrapping Paper, etc. Now they know how I feel!
5.	My stand-up comedy routine about me cutting the cheese in my dad’s shop is doubly funny because in the US “cutting the cheese” is a euphemism for farting.
4.	Leaving the US is a lot easier than getting in. Getting into the US involves forms and photos, proof of employment and income, interviews and interrogations, fingerprinting and frisking… and that’s just to get a reservation at “The French Laundry” (the restaurant, not the laundry). Leaving the US is as complicated as a cursory glance at your passport and boarding pass, a pat on the back and an invitation to join the airlines’ frequent flyer program.
3.	Stay away from people who’ve just ordered a venti Starbucks coffee – they’re very jumpy. You would too if you need to drink 591ml coffee in one go!
2.	People handing out free samples really want you try their free samples. The South African response is usually to punch such a person in the face for trying to get us to do something that we quite clearly don’t want to do because that might imply that we’re actually interesting in buying the product on offer. Visit any Makro liquor outlet on a Saturday morning and you’ll see what I mean. You can drink six glasses of wine and four shots of spirits from “tasting” tables alone without even buying as much as a corkscrew. This is for your information, not an invitation…
1.	Enforcing the minimum legal drinking age of 21 seems to be taken very seriously in the US. I was asked for ID twice. I admire their enthusiasm but I am 35.