So my boss got a message from a scheduling person in the main office that went something like this:
"I need your team in (city) by end of next week."
"That's less than a week's notice. What emergency meeting is this for?"
"Not an emergency meeting. It's optional but your team needs to be there. We want all teams present. You won't be doing anything or receiving any awards. You'll get a message from your manager that your team don't have to attend, but as the scheduler, I'm telling you that your team needs to be there."
"You're saying it's optional but also not optional? Anyway, I'm not going to be able to be there, but I'll ask my team. They'll be comped for the higher travel prices, right?"
"Lol no. I've decided that we're only doing estimated travel budgets for this one, since we want everyone to show up."
"...Riiiight."
Good news is that my boss, the crew manager, and our branch manager all have tripled-down on us not having to go if we don't want to and/or can't.
Survived the two days of 8-hour meetings (because of course it was online as well), had to drop during the first day to give a presentation on the upcoming version of the software my team and I have been working on for the last year. This is a tool which is LIVE and FUNCTIONAL.
The response from 90% of the audience was "Neat, that'll help everyone, glad to see it's progressing" along with great questions and suggestions.
But then there was this one guy who scoffed and went "I could get this done with an AI agent tonight. Without your help."
And guess which individual was calling me two hours later demanding I send over the criteria we built our software with. 🙄

















