It all starts going
downhill when you hear the word HOUSEKEEPING.
The person who organised
the training conference has already spent half-an-hour behind a Disneyesque
fixed smile that screams Botox and nitrous oxide overdose, rendering her
expression more clenched rectum than smiling face, but some genuine glee seeps
through as she is clearly feeling triumphant over the popularity of the
individually wrapped chocolate bourbons that will end up dissolving like lepers’ cocks in the tepid coffees.
She utters the first fatuous
cliché of the morning - apologising not for the cliché but for telling us how
to save our lives in the event of a fire - when she says JUST A BIT OF
HOUSEKEEPING FIRST… and babbles on about no fire drill being planned and how to
access the AMENITIES. I long for a time
when the HOUSEKEEPING cliché evolves into a simpler THIS IS WHERE YOU RUN, THIS
IS WHERE YOU PISS information broadcast.
She then unleashes the
COMFORT BREAK label.
What cunt decided to add
the superfluous adjective to a perfectly adequate word like BREAK? She doesn’t say NUTRITION LUNCH, does
she? I don’t need to be fucking told the
REASON for a fucking break do I?
Already, I want to get out
of the room and use the amenities for a COMFORT SHIT.
But I’ll get a chance for
a CHANGE OF SCENE, because we have BREAK-OUT ROOMS today (yayy!), she says. Obviously these are clandestine cubby-holes
with chalk outlines of tunnels and pommel horses; or perhaps listening booths
for fans of 80s Chart-toppers Swing Out Sister.
Luckily the days of
ice-breakers have passed. Because now
that Mrs Disney-Grin has assumed her redundant sedentary role for the rest of
the morning, the TRAINER has ceased his affectation of frowning in
concentration over nothing in particular on his laptop to hide the fact that he
is actually all set up and just bored of waiting, and his wait is over and he
gets to train us; but not before a pre-cum droplet of LIGHT HUMOUR in regard to
his journey to the conference that morning. (ooh the traffic on the A414)
Now, for TRAINERS, this
slither of personal trivia arouses only mild disinterest, and limited disdain,
as he will only occasionally punctuate his efforts to impart some useful
information on us with further brief anecdotal quips. If, however, you find yourself sat in front
of a MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER, then all features are reversed and you will be
subjected to occasional imports of useful information punctuating a seemingly
endless stream of anecdotal quips masquerading as MOTIVATIONAL TALK.
There are two ONLY problems
with motivational speakers: One problem
is that they seem to think that you motivate others by being overly animated,
like a bluebottle on amphetamines, irritatingly loud and stupid-voiced in
desperation of not wanting to bore, and loaded with trite nuggets of
faux-profundity in imitation of cheap greetings card truisms; the second
problem with them is that they’re ARSEHOLES.
(As an aside, sorry to
fall into the gender stereotyping of female organiser and male speaker, but my
experience has shown that the sort of stereotypical features I am cheaply
bandying about for your amusement actually fit those gender roles better. Anyway. Moving along…)
A MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER is
really just a LIFE COACH who has fuck all to say and says too fucking much as
opposed to having fuck all to say and actually says fuck all. The better ones have remodelled themselves as
INSPIRATIONAL SPEAKERS and the fatter ones as PERSPIRATIONAL SPEAKERS.
An hour or two in and I
might be feeling mental cramp, due to dangerous under-use of my brain cells and
the burning flame of subversion sweeping through my few functioning
neurotransmitters like dysentery; and I find myself plugging the silences
caused by the trainer taking a COMFORT SIP of water with a loud cough
disguising an actual articulation of the word WANKER. I treat myself to a Fox’s Glacier mint from
the fake crystal bowl in front of me and rue the fact that it makes my stomach
rumble so badly that it is being clocked by the stranger sitting next to me on
the table, a stranger that I have avoided both eye-contact and conversation
with since she asked IS ANYONE SITTING HERE? Obviously I felt a trifle rude for pulling the
shutters down on any potential for small talk within seconds of her arrival,
but once she’d gone ten minutes without knocking at them, I felt vindicated in
my own aloofness. Rude cow.
Anyway. You hate a lot of it, don’t you? And you hate the perennial cunt who turns up
and keeps raising irrelevant points in an effort to appear as some kind of
free-thinking philosophical maverick with more insight than us plebs sat there
gradually undergoing some regressive fucking evolutionary metamorphosis into
less sentient organisms. And you enjoy
the lunch and your doodles on the hotel pad, and at the end you fill in your
evaluation form and out of dignity and pure English reserve you side-step the
urge to wipe your arse with it and tick a load of boxes to tell lies about the
whole thing being GOOD.
No comments:
Post a Comment