When you’re a small business with everyone working in the same space, you tend to ask questions as you go and discuss issues as they arise.
A huge oval table dominates the room. Three concentric rows of chairs wind around it, filled by anywhere between fifty and seventy staffers.
The top management, department heads, and senior specialists occupy the innermost row. The rest are spread over the middle and the outer orbits with a few stray chairs having escaped the gravitational pull of the table to float on the fringes of the universe near the walls.
Aurélien, who’s a new hire like me, spots a vacant chairin the inner row and hurries to take it, eager to show his dedication. Camille and I sit in the outer circle. I look around the room, hoping to spot Max. But he isn’t here. I haven’t seen him since we got back from Lyon five days ago.
We haven’t had sex again. He texted me that he was going out of town for a while. No explanation as to why or where to or when he was coming back.
Yasmina taps her pen on the wood. “Who wants to take minutes?”
No one raises a hand.
She surveys the room and points at Aurélien. “Thank you.”
Aurélien’s eyes nearly pop out, but before he can say he didn’t volunteer, his neighbor on the left pushes a laptop in front of him, and his neighbor on the right pats his back.
Yasmina reads out the agenda for the meeting. “We have a lot of ground to cover, so let’s get started.”
“May I?” Aurélien’s boss Claude lifts his pencil. “First and foremost, we must synergize our deliverables and optimize our datafication efforts.”
“That would be a great strategic fit and dovetail nicely with our work to recontextualize the neat and diligent conservation of heritage,” an unfamiliar first-row manager says.
“Recontextualizing isn’t enough,” another staffer jumps in. “We must think out of the box and operationalize our best practices and action plans.”
Yasmina inclines her head. “Let’s park that excellent suggestion for now and discuss how MINDFUCH can better foster joint policymaking going forward.”
Aurélien types frantically.
“We need to brainstorm ideas for more collaborative benchmarking,” Camille says.
Everybody turns to look at the brazen outer-circlecontributor.
“Good point,” Yasmina remarks.
Immediately, heads wobble, accompanied by appreciative noises.
More gobbledygook pours out of the inner-circle staffers. With every new remark, I grow more and more puzzled, wondering if I’m a total dimwit, or if something here isn’t quite right.
Having delivered her piece, Camille loses all interest in what is being discussed. She rips a sheet of paper from her scratchpad, folds it in half lengthwise, and then unfolds it.
“Will you explain the collaborative benchmarking to me at lunch?” I whisper in her ear.
“No way,” she whispers back.
I stare at her.
She glances at me. “Hon, there are words a well-adjusted personneverutters outside of a staff meeting.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Then why say them during a staff meeting?”
“To show that you belong, to sound clever, to mark yourself as an insider versus the uninitiated.” She folds the top corners of the paper down so they meet at the crease line.
“Is there a glossary I could use to initiate myself?” I ask her. “Could you maybe explain some of the concepts, just so I too can sound clever at the next staff meeting?”
“I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Because I’m a temp?”
