Electrical eSpectacle

This past Tuesday I was invited to be a guest at a very high level strategic meeting because my old boss couldn't attend and he asked me to sit in as a representative on his behalf. The people in this meeting were from around the world and all at a v.p. or director level.

Our company is in the process of totally rebuilding their headquarters. They moved people out of one side of the old building and moved them to temporary quarters while they rebuilt that half of the building. Over the last month they have moved people back into that building. Since I work in the temporary location (and won't be moving back any time soon) I have only been on a walk-thru of the new building once and so am not very familiar with the new layout.

My first challenge of the day was finding the meeting. Since I wasn't directly invited to the meeting, I did not get an official meeting notice. I saw on some documentation that the meeting was going to be held in a specific location; the X.X. XXXXX location. Well, our company owns a building downtown by that name so that's where I thought the meeting was.

Not wanting to be late (and I am almost always late to things), I scrambled out of the house a good 15 minutes earlier than usual in order to make it on time. So I got down town and as soon as I pulled into the parking lot I noticed a lack of cars and a lack of hub-bub . . . uh, oh . . .I think I'm in the wrong place. But I better park and go in the building and check just in case. Darn, the signs that were posted for events taking place that day did not include this global meeting. By that time it was 10 mintues before the meeting was supposed to start.

That meant I had to get from down town to headquarters, figure out the parking situation at the new HQ building and which door to enter (since I had seen e-mails about certain entrances not being available yet), as well as finding the meeting room all in 10 short minutes. I didn't think it was possible but thought I'd go for it. Also, I suspected that the first 1/2 hour might be people just informally gathering and getting their coffee, bagels and fruit so I figured I'd scope it out to see if I could just kind of sneak in.

I got to HQ and found parking with no problem. Then I saw someone heading towards an entrance so I just followed them and that worked out good. Then I got myself to the 2nd floor. Since it was 7:00 a.m. there were only a few worker bees around. I ran into a guy I knew and just asked him if he happened to know where the global meeting was being held. He didn't but said he saw a bunch of important looking people going through "that door." So just when I was heading toward "that door" I happened to see the president of our company who was hoofing it at quite a pace toward "that door." Being the perceptive person that I am, I figured he was going to the global meeting (probably to head it) and so I scurried up behind him and followed him thinking even if I'm late I'm not really late if he hasn't opened the meeting up yet.

But not to worry, when we got to the meeting room, everyone was casually grazing at the breakfast troph before the official 7:30 a.m. kick off. Whew, that was a close one.

Where am I going with this story? Oh yeah, so I sat like a fly on the wall (knowing my place) and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to sit with the execs and hear future strategy being discussed. When the portion of the meeting was done that I had been invitied to, I excused myself from the room, glanced at my watch and knew I had to hurry out to my next meeting which required driving back to the temporary building in which I am housed.

So, I was trotting rapidly along since again, I was late. I was in a world with my own thoughts, mulling over what I had just been exposed to as well as transitioning into the next meeting topic and thinking about what demands would be required of me. My head was down and I was just booking in the general direction of the door that I had entered the building through. I grabbed the door knob to twist and pull. It wasn't until that point that I glanced up. There, in bold letters, staring me in the face was a sign on the door that said "Electrical Closet!"

One minute I'm hob-knobbing with the global execs, the next I'm in an electrical closet!
If that won't keep a person humble, what will?