Thursday, November 03, 2005

Motivational Man

It’s usually a bad idea for people to write about their jobs on blogs, but it’s hard to resist when your bosses bring in a motivational speaker for a sales meeting. I had the pleasure of sitting through a performance the other night.

Now this guy wasn’t on par with a Tony Robbins but he was brutal just the same. The grandiose gestures, the cutesy anecdotes, and the urging for our sales guys to be lions or tigers or bears (I don’t remember what was the good or bad animal) was too much. Overly energetic and happy people bother the shit out of me as a rule, but when people make a living out if it, I kind of feel sorry for them.

Mr. Motivational had a demure little assistant with him who held his water bottle and paged through his PowerPoint presentation while he spoke. The whole scenario was frightening, and me being the amateur comedienne that I am, leaned over to the guy next to me and whispered, “Hey, I think she’s here under duress. She’s like kidnapped or something don’t you think?”

My co-worker brushed me off. He was paying attention, and didn’t want to get in trouble apparently. Honestly though, I couldn’t believe Assistant to the Traveling Effeminate Motivational Speaker was a real job. Something had to be up. Do I call 911? Do I slip her a note and tell her I’ll help her escape?

Whatever, I thought. Not my problem. But I’ll tell ya not having to be a motivational speaker for a living is enough motivation for me to work a little harder. So I guess he succeeded with this woman.











2 comments:

t2ed said...

If you don't pay attention, you're going to be living in a van, down by the river!

Because my boss is so tight, one year at our Xmas event we didn't even get a motivational speaker, we got Dr. Phil's book. This was not met with much of a positive outlook by the group.

I love it when work tries to get all Rah Rah to motivate you. But then that's probably why I like despair.com.

Anonymous said...

The old blogger is back. Screw happy people!