Hello my darlings,
Do you think it’s a bad sign that a company-paid conference made me realize that I actually don’t want to be a project manager?
Let me start from the beginning. You all know my PMP saga, said I would never do it, then took the class but didn’t test immediately, studied for a few weeks, took the test, failed, said I would never do it again, quit my job at the city, studied harder, took the test and passed. Ugh, now that I am certified I have to do continuing education to maintain my certification. Eye-roll! I am all about learning, but continuing education for project management is really just a raquet to make the PMI organization more money. Think of it this way, do you think a hooker wants to come home and get romantic all up in here after she’s been prostituting her body and soul all night? That’s pretty much (some days exactly) how I feel about my job, but this silly certification requires that I have continuing education. The way I see it, I do the filthy job all day long and the last thing I want to do when I get home is hop in the sack with some sleazy project management course. That said, I greedily jumped on the opportunity to let my company pay for the conference so I could knock out up to 15 of the 60 PDUs I need by this time next year.
Spoiler alert! The conference sucked! Probably not actually a surprise, my attitude also sucked!
Correlation?
Probably, but it’s a little too late to do anything about that now, isn’t it.
Anyway, since I can’t undo my decision to attend this nerdfest nightmare, I figure I’ll turns these crusty, moldy-ass lemons into a coffee for all of you. You’re welcome! Hop onto my PiMP bus and let’s go for a journey, shall we…
Rest assured even when I signed up I expected this event to be overly peppy and generally repulsive. Frankly, pretty much all of these conferences are. I’m not the least bit surprised, but still profoundly irritated to admit that I was right. Actually, I’ll say I was mostly right, the conference was actually MORE TERRIBLE than I thought it was going to be.
Let’s start with check-in — YEP - the idiocy started that early in the day. The check-in area was clearly labeled A-C, D-F, etc. A 50-something woman with pigtail braids (the hairstyle should have been my first clue as to how this interaction was going to go) approached me as I stood quietly in line and asked if that was last name or first name. With an obviously irritated look I muttered a curt “last” and turned away. I realize maybe I didn’t need to be a complete a*hole right out of the gate, but that is truly a dumb question. In my defence, I didn’t have nearly enough coffee to be mentally prepared for a question that stupid that early in the day. #COFFEEWHORE
Once I escaped the registration process with no additional idiocy, I took my badge, refuse the PMP sticker that I was entitled to attach to my badge and headed into the ballroom for the introduction and keynote speaker. I was actually very interested to hear the keynote speech from Daniel Pink. You all know that I am a book dork and I’ve read several of his books, Drive, being one of my top 10 business books of all time, but I digress. The event started with a couple of screeching women shrieking and asking us to give a big round of applause and a hearty round, and another round and frankly, I had neither enough caffeine nor desire to even feign excitement. Then they introduce a woman with a faint Australian accent. I’m sure she probably is from Australia or was at one point in time. Her accent was very Americanized but she kept squealing that we should all say “G’day” when we see her in the hallways. It’s possible that I secretly vowed to throat-punch her if I saw her, but I am not at liberty to confirm or deny that AND since she didn’t actually get punched, at least not by me, it’s all a moot point. Then the bitch lost me! She demanded (her word) that we look the person sitting next to us deep in the eye and say “I am accountable!” #NOTINTHISLIFETIME
Mere moments before, Larry, a disheveled older man wearing a pink/purple plaid shirt paired with a brown tweed blazer (I’m fairly certain these were the only two pieces of dressy(ish) clothing he had and it was not an attempt to be hip and ironic) asked if the chair, next to the chair I had my bag sitting on (after the registration encounter I felt the need to protect my personal space) was taken. Fortunately, Larry got my body language and when he glanced back and me and I shook my head and quietly muttered, “NO” he didn’t seem to surprised and just returned his gaze to the front of the room. (Poor fashion decision, but good judgement decision! Yay Larry!) At this point the Aussie-hyena began demanding that we take a selfie with the person that we just looked at, exchange phone numbers and check-in throughout the day because this person is for today, and possibly for the rest of our lives, our accountability partner. Are you f*ing kidding me? Selfie, seriously, NOT HAPPENING! Second, I am a smart, successful professional woman and I do not need Grampa Goodwill posing with me or checking in with me ever. Safe to say at this point I absolutely vowed to throat-punch this twat if I saw her in the hallway. Just sayin…
Let me recap, we are now about 20-minutes into the 9-hour conference and my head has nearly exploded as a result of an absolutely idiotic question and now my blood is boiling because this bimbo thinks I need a complete stranger to act as an accountability partner. Bitch Please! I probably should have just walked out at that point, but I need those 15 credit hours, dammit! Finally, Daniel Pink begins his speech, It was very OK. Not terrible, some good point and some very interesting facts, but I certainly wasn’t wowed. One notable thing occurred during the speech. He was talking about how to approach selling an idea to someone with more power than you and to someone with less power. He then asked, with a show of hands, if you should use “Thinking” or “Feeling” when trying to sell an idea to someone with more power. BOOM! Little Miss check-your-feelers at the door, I’ve got this. When he says “Thinking” I actually participate, as do a couple dozen? of the ~1500 people in the room. Then when he says “Feeling” hands rocket into the air. HUH? That’s not possible. Rationality and logic are king! You have to prepare thoughtful arguments, frankly, I’m on team Thinking all the time. Unless I’m selling an idea to complete halfwit, actually especially when I’m selling an idea to a complete halfwit, I am going to use logic and possibly coersion, but let’s not talk about all of my bad habits here. To my relief, Mr. Pink cracked a joke about groupthink and applauded the few of us that said the argument should be thought-based. Had that not happened I would have walked out and boycotted his books.
Keynote address finished, shrill hag #1 returned to the stage and reminded everyone that the schedule and location of the breakout sessions we signed up for are on the badge that we received at check-in AND in the app. She also informed everyone that there was a map of the breakout session locations outside the ballroom AND in the app. Are you sensing the theme here? #THERESANAPPFORTHAT At this point, I think for the safety of everyone around me I should probably get some more coffee.
Coffee in hand I was heading toward the room assigned for my breakout session when I encountered murder of old crow project managers (teehee - I love that I could work murder of crows into this nonsense) whining that they can’t figure out which room they are supposed to be in or where the rooms are. I took great pleasure in the irony that these project managers were unable to follow simple instructions posted in multiple places to get to their desired location. I breezed past, comfortable in my superiority for dissecting simple instructions and into my first breakout session.
The speaker started his address by telling us about the labor and birth of his middle child, um eeeewwwww, and says he’ll explain why later. Yippee, I’m on the edge of my seat waiting to hear about the placenta. WTF! Then he said that he asked his son what he should do as the ice-breaker for the speech. Allegedly his son challenged him and said “I bet you $20 you can’t make them do the wave.” To which I replied, in my outloud voice, “He’s right!” Sadly, all the little lemming project managers around me did the wave, while I sat, cradling my large latte and rolling my eyes. Sadly, I think the wave may have been the most intelligent and reasonable part of this speech. He shared a few motivation techniques that he uses with his team. All of them made me celebrate the fact that I don’t work or with for him. One such technique included “enthusiastically” starting every meeting with a simple rhyming phrase “Are you having a good day? Is there anything in your way?“ Full disclosure, I just happen to be enough of an ass that I am going to use (and let’s be honest, abuse) this technique. I’m fairly certain that my co-workers are going to LOVE how enthusiastic I can be with a gem like that. (FWIW they will probably murder me in a dark alley) Furthermore, Susie, my work wife (don’t judge me, she’s beautiful) and partner in crime, offered to give me a nickel every time I say it. I’m going to get me a piggy bank for all them shiny nickels…. Seriously, I am an ASS and I do intend to use this ludicrous phrase at any available opportunity. Oh, yeah and I will prepare a list of suspects in advance, just in case I happen to go “missing” or anything. #YOUKNOWWHOYOUARE
Another gleaming little nugget that I snagged from the shitpile that was his speech was the idea of asking questions that you know the answer to. That’s such a a pet peeve of mine that I wouldn’t normally even give it the time of day, but the question he proposed is so incredibly absurd that I had to share it. According to this micromanaging moron, I should, at least once per week, ask the people on my team if I’ve told them they are doing are doing a good job. Seriously, this dipshit actually suggested that I say in my outloud voice “Bob, have I told you this week that you are doing a good job?” What the actual fuck? Why would I ever do that? My expectation is that “Bob” is doing his damn job, so there’s really no need to praise him like a toddler learning to use the big-boy potty for actually showing up and earning that bi-weekly validation in his bank account. Don’t get me wrong, if “Bob” does something exceptional I certainly should, and do, acknowledge that but there is no way I am going to praise every damn thing. Give me a break. On second thought, my job does feel an awful lot like an adult daycare center somedays, so maybe celebrating someone making a boom boom in the potty really is what we are coming to. Frankly, the way the last few weeks have gone maybe I should celebrate “boom boom in the potty” because at least that would be shit that I don’t have to clean-up!
I wisely decided (yay thinking) that my attitude was entirely too terrible to endure the lunch/networking event and the weather was glorious, so I went for a walk around Downtown Denver then stopped and had a salad and a cocktail (judge me all you want, I regretted not having a flask with me to endure the morning session) for lunch then returned for the afternoon sessions. Luckily the first session after lunch was not terrible and at least marginally entertaining and surprisingly the last session was very informative. Additionally, I was able to reconnect with a few people from the past, so the whole day was not a complete waste of time. That said, I did skip the closing session with the shrieking pseudo-aussie hag so I could get to my Friday night Nidra Yoga class. It’s called “yoga sleep” and is an hour-long guided meditation. I didn’t think I would EVER be able to do anything like this, but at this point in my life it’s exactly what my busy brain needs at the end of the week.
The whole experience made me realize why project management as a discipline is such a joke. At the end of Mr. Are you having a good day’s speech there were a few questions from the audience. One woman asked if he had any tips for making team meetings more effective. I wanted to leap onto the stage, rip the microphone from his lapel and respond by saying “based on that question, eliminating you from the meeting would probably be a good starting point.” Don’t worry Cindy, I’m not quitting. Frankly, this gig is too profitable (DAMN I love that Jag!) to walk away from just because I don’t like the way most people do the job. Mostly I just need to figure out a way to not let it affect me emotionally. Until then, I have wine…
Until next time…
XOXO
PS - I’ll have a life-coaching update soon. He had me a DiSC profile and it’s probably not a surprise to anyone that I am off-the chart (literally, my score is outside the boundary) D — Dominant which means I tend to be bossy (who knew) and demanding (shut-up) and impatient (seriously, if people did what I wanted when I wanted it done I would be very patient) and I’m most comfortable when I am in control. Pfft!
PPS - My life-coach is encouraging me to spend more time with the people I feel most connected to, so all you babes that have offered me a bed for the weekend in Northern Colorado you’ll likely be getting calls from me very soon…. You’ve been warned!
