Trumpet blowing

I had a meeting with Gavin today, which was a combination of a supervision, a performance review, a planning meeting, a business lunch and an onsite inspection. True of most of my ‘meetings’ with Gavin, it involved sitting in a decent gastropub eating a fine meal and drinking lots of coffee.
It went very well, I have to say.
From previous employment, I’m used to these sort of encounters being an exercise in frustration; a waste-of-time, box-ticking extravaganza of closed-eared bosses indulging in corporate line-toeing and meaningless Management Wankspeak. Many are the days I have sat in bland Meeting Rooms, or participating in online conference calls, wishing for the time to pass quicker so I could get the hell away from the over-promoted pricks and fresh-out-of-uni power-dressers who make up most Senior Management teams in the world of retail. For every good idea suggested by a participant, there are a dozen monumentally stupid, ill-advised ‘blue-sky-thinking’ gimmicks that end up taking valuable man hours away from already over-tired employees and causing more problems than they solve.
Anyway – if I may pause to breathe here for a moment – that wasn’t the case today, and will never be the case for me again, unless something goes horribly wrong.
So, to summarise, Gavin is very, very pleased with the new structure he put in place this year, and my part in it. There may still be a few tweaks to the ‘who does what’ playbook, as we reflect on a first season together and learn from it, but all in all we all seem happy with each other, and confident that 2022 will see even more improvements and even more enjoyment from all concerned.
And I shall celebrate tonight by eating a large chunk of Mint Viennetta as my dessert…..

RC 23-11-21