Sometimes I overdo this humor thing

Allow me to illustrate: Last night, I was having dinner with my company’s CEO along with 30 some odd managers from different departments. So the CEO was going from table to table talking to everybody and, when he reached the table where I and the company’s marketing managers were, the arbitrary topic of discussion was “shit you were into when you were young.”

Since he was a pretty cool guy, everybody was shooting the shit with him and telling him stuff from “drawing” to “building shit with lego blocks”, I, on the other hand was frantically trying to think of something to say that jumps out of the page whenever he looks back at all the people he met in Manila, contemplating on who to promote.

I was thinking along the lines of “Business Analysis” and “Requirements Elicitation” even though I knew that saying those would be the grand douchebag thing to do.

So, I decided to resort to something I thought I was good at–telling jokes.

“Well” I said. “I was really into dolls growing up.” [mimicking playing with a doll. Moving imaginary appendages with my fingers.]

Dolls?

Really Mike?

Dolls?

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Three things I learned about myself last week (Bicol Edition)

I developed a retarded fear of flying. I’ve traveled many times on a plane before but never did I develop a paralyzing fear of flying until last week, after my trip to Bicol with Marc, Riz, Ely, Alvin, Rico, Francis and other USAP Marketing Managers. 

The morning we’re supposed to fly back to manila, we all took a Cebu Pacific flight from Legazpi and I, as usual, was violently hungover - I had saliva and beer encrusted on the edges of my mouth, and was practically shivering like a motherfucker as all the Gran Matador I so ungraciously imbibed the night before waltzed around my arteries.

I was still wearing the board shorts and hoodie I wore the night before and I looked, not surprisingly, like a homeless person–or more like a homeless person who had just got kicked the shit out of by a gang of Bicolano youth who belong to True Brown Style’s Legazpi Chapter with 2×4’s and chains.

Anyway, the flight, although only thirty minutes long, was probably one of the most turbulent plane rides I’ve ever been on in my entire life. The plane was diving and falling the entire time and, as I leaned back on my seat, barf bag in hand, crotch on the other, I thought about all the girls I didn’t make out with, all the deviant sexual activities I didn’t engage in and was making a list of things to do should I survive the ordeal (On the top of my list was “Verbally abuse an old woman”, “Print a hundred copies of a document with nothing on it but ‘[Name of someone from work whom I hate] smells like dried fish and looks like a harpy’ in big bold letters and place a copy on everyone’s desks”, and “eat an entire Shakey’s grand slam pizza in one sitting.”)

Now from that flight on, I shall be abnormally afraid of flying. Also, the fact that I suffered a minor stroke as soon as I landed in Manila will do nothing but to reinforce this fear.

I have a retarded fear of storms. During our visit to Sorsogon, the waves on the beach were frighteningly savage. I have no idea whether or not this is normal, but my mom sent me a text message asking me how I was and how the weather was because the north is being buttsecksed by a devastating storm.

I knew I was in the south but when you’re as panicky as I am, it wouldn’t matter and the only thing that’s gonnao go through your head is “getting hit in the head by a stray monobloc chair because you ran out in the open in the middle of a storm to find the plate of Bicol Express you left behind is a terrible way to go.”

Yeah.

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Human Resources - A Category mistake

I want to add something to this post, which, in typical Seth Godin fashion, hits the nail squarely on the head.

I have worked with a lot of companies in the past and if there is one thing that’s common between all of those companies’ Human Resources departments, it has got to be the fact that, traditionally, the department has assumed the role of a pen-pushing, forms-collating, support unit.

Sure, I’ve worked with some HR departments that have people in them who do stellar jobs in sourcing talent, but never have I seen such a department that gives equal weight to taking care of talent.

An excerpt from Seth’s post:

What if you started acting like the VP of Talent? Understanding that talent is hard to find and not obvious to manage. The VP of Talent would have to reorganize the department and do things differently all day long (small example: talent shouldn’t have to fill out reams of forms and argue with the insurance company… talent is too busy for that… talent has people to help with that.)

I couldn’t agree with this more. If you’re a company looking for top talent to join your ranks, do you think that putting your hat in your hand, extending an attractive compensation package and pretty much just chucking the candidate into the routinary fray of things to rot forever would suffice?

Even sadder is how most Human Resources departments seem to try to mitigate their workload by dumping clerical tasks (i.e. Attendance monitoring, forms-filing, etc.) to the people they hire to become middle management superstars.

I guess what I’m driving at is that if you want to keep top talent, you have to treat them like Superstars–and I’ll tell you what superstars don’t do: They do not fill up leave applications in triplicate for their staff, nor do they argue with accounting on behalf of their staff members because of salary disputes. Superstars are too busy excelling at what you hired them to do for any of this.

And what the fuck’s up with the term “Human Resources” anyway? “Resource” is not something you ascribe to the word “Human.”

Following Seth’s lead: How about “Corporate Talent Management?”

Narcotic awesome. Also, sad

The milder(compared to the previous one prescribed to me) anti-anxiety pill I’m taking reduces me to a steaming heap of messy, conflicting emotions. Sure, I do calm down when I pop one of these babies but for some reason, after I do, I get cloyingly nauseous and I feel a myriad of emotions ranging from lust and hunger to extreme sadness.

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Promotion. Or something.

There are only a few things I’m unambiguously against: Polio, couples who show blatant disregard to bitter, single people by holding hands in public places, men kissing other men, and you really should know this by now: Hard work.

(Wait, on second thought I shouldn’t hate seeing men kissing other men because I myself have kissed other men a couple of times. Like that one time my best friend JL accidentally wandered into my room in drunken stupor and mistook me for the girl he was making out with a couple of hours prior. But whatever, that only happened like 2 times and it’s not like I didn’t pay him 200 pesos on both occasions. So yeah, whatever.)

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