About being late for a meeting ...

I had to attend this meeting in Brussels.

I was doing this huge project, a merger of 3 companies into 1 and we had lots of meetings with all kind of people in our group. It was a tough job but it was lots of fun apart from being threatened with dead, heart problems and hair turning all grey.

Anyway, I had to attend this meeting in Brussels. Most of the meetings were about budget, document management, ERP, extranet, intranet … But this meeting was with senior execs from HQ and they didn’t send an agenda so I didn’t had a clue what it was about.

I was driving to Brussels and the weather was awful. It was snowing and I ended up in huge traffic jams. I figured out I would be late so I was rather stressed.

Then I saw this very cute car … COOP COOP … Oh my god, so cute … it was the car my friend totally was in love with. A Mini Cooper. I was thinking, hmm, what if I catch it and give it to my friend ? Little voices in my head started to scream “catch it Ren, catch it catch it catch it catch it …”

The thing is, I always listen to voices in my head, because most of the time it’s just me thinking. So I started to chase the cute Mini Cooper. I wanted it so badly. My friend would love it !

I started to chase it, but it was fààààst. I had to do my best Michael Schumacher to follow it. I chased it for hours and hours, days and days, weeks and weeks, but in the end I lost it. I was very disappointed, my friend would be all sad. Then I decided to go back. Hmm, what was I up to ? OH MY GOD, THE MEETING. Oh gosh, I completely forgot about that. I would be lààààààààte !!

I rushed back to Brussels, looked at my watch … only 10 minutes and 3 weeks too late. When I came into the board room, everyone was already there. They all were wearing beards and they smelled … ugh !!

“You’re late, mister !”

“Yeah yeah, couldn’t help it, snow storm and traffic jams. Sowee”

They nodded and started the meeting.

I didn’t prepare a thing. I had my laptop with my files in OneNote, about document management, my budgets, ERP, all the stuff but as I didn’t had a clue what this meeting was about, I was totally unprepared.

One old guy stood up, stroked his beard and started talking “As Ren has finally arrived, we can start the meeting. Gentlemen, this is an important gathering. Today, we’re here to discuss, not the budgets, not document management, even not the enterprise resource management but … CUPCAKES ! Cupcakes I tell you !! “

Then they started this discussion about cupcakes and in the end they chose to have cupcakes with little flowers on. I was thinking about all the things that happened, how I let my friend down by not being able to catch the cooper and I was rather sad. Business is hard business …