Presentations

Every two months we give a presentation to all staff about what is going on in the world of ICT, moves, shakers and hot news, you know the kind of thing.

By the way, I really hate that word staff but have never found a better one.  My thesaurus gives some alternatives including agents, assistants, cadre (?), deputies, faculty, operatives, personnel, servants (!), work force and workers but they don’t seem to be any more appropriate.

Anyway, every two months we give a presentation to everyone who works in ICT about what is going on in the world but this is not the point of my little tale.  In one of the buildings there is no suitable room that is already set up for presenting and so we have to use the break room or canteen as it is otherwise known  This inevitably involves some moving of furniture, chairs and bistro style tables, to change it from a café style to a theatre like arrangement.

We move all of the small round tables and chairs, along with the leather sofas against the walls and put out plush red velvet conference chairs in neat rows facing the wall on which the presentation is to be projected.  And this is where the fun begins.  As the people come in they are desperate to make sure that they get a seat in their preferred spot.  Many like to stick to the walls like limpets and these seats are always the first to be taken.  People will also try and sit at the small tables even if it means squeezing through impossibly small spaces and being uncomfortable for the thirty or forty minutes that the presentation is going to take.

Only when all of the other seats are taken do people then start to fill up the neat lines but further patterns are yet to emerge.  All of the men tend to sit at the back of the room even if it means they can’t hear very well whilst all of the women tend to sit nearer the front.  There are very few volunteers to sit on the front rows however.

In the other buildings where there are rooms more suitable for presentations there are two other things of note, the first being that teams always come in together and sit together.  But what is really strange is that the first person to come in will determine where everyone else sits. If they sit on the right then the right fills up and if they are on the left then it is the opposite that happens. Quite often the room will end up completely full on one side and virtually empty on the other.  It’s all very odd.

We all think that we are free sprits and make our own choices but it doesn’t appear to be that way.  Humans are the funniest of creatures.