That was not funny

I decided I should lighten the tone of my blog with this post. The religious debate has been fun and very informative, but I need a break. In this time of delightful breakfulness, I thought I should share an interesting tale from my first month working for a new company.

After serving here for just under two weeks, I finally got the opportunity to do some work for the CFO. I have been looking forward to working with him because he seemed like a nice guy, and I knew he would have some important, but odd projects that he could hand to me. Over the following few weeks, he gave me a number of small tasks that I completed with great success, but they were all in the background of a major project that I found myself a little too involved with.

Allow me to give you some background. The CFO sent out a packet of material last month to be completed by the presidents of each of the divisions. These are some very important people in our company and probably get paid more than 4 times my salary. The directions given were simple: complete this packet of financial analysis every month and send it up to the CFO. After the first month, everyone failed miserably. The numbers were no where near correct, and it was clear that no one had any idea what they were doing. It was at this point in time that I entered the scene.

The CFO wrote out some notes to make a power point presentation to help the division heads get their act together. He handed me the notes and said “go to it.” I was a bit overwhelmed because I didn’t know what the heck he was talking about, and because no one in their right mind could interpret his hand writing. Despite these shortcomings, I put together a pretty good presentation to run by the CFO. We moved through a few drafts and he was really happy with the work I did. Yea I know, go me!

This is the point where things started going a little south. In one of the final stages of developing this presentation, the CFO looked at me and said “I think you have it, you would be able to present this to all the heads, wouldn’t you?” As I lost feeling in my legs I sarcastically replied “yea, no problem.” Luckily, he laughed and we moved on. The presentation day was coming up and the CFO and I were clearing the last few changes in his office as my boss walked in. The CFO showed my boss what I had put together and we discussed it for a bit. After the discussion, the CFO said “Zack is a pro at this stuff now, he could do the presentation.” I had a similar response, but had more confidence that he was joking. HOWEVER, my boss did not get that same sense of jubilation from the CFO. The day before the presentation, my boss drops by my desk and gives me the helpful tip that I should take the presentation home with me to review. By doing so, I might be able to clearly describe the steps the department heads should be taking. After I picked by jaw up off the floor, I thanked my boss for the tip and explained to him my internal terror by adding the line “you know, I really thought the CFO was joking when he said that. My boss laughed for a moment, then told me that he was indeed not joking.

I went ahead and planned for the meeting and filed into the conference room on the next day. I got to introduce myself to these people: “hi my name is Zack, none of you know me, or care to know me, but I am going to take some of your time to tell you how you dropped the ball and describe the steps to rectify that.” In the end, the meeting didn’t go too bad, not too well, but not too bad. If nothing else, it was an adventure. The next day I was in the CFO’s office with one of the division heads discussing another project. Joe asked the head “what did you think of Zack’s presentation yesterday?” The other guy thought I did ok, and I added that it was quite a spectacle. Then, I went for it. I simply couldn’t believe that he expected that of me and that I misread him so terribly. Therefore, I told the CFO “I’m not going to lie, I really thought you were joking when you said I would have to give the presentation.” The CFO looked right at me and said with all seriousness, “I was.”

We all cracked up laughing as the CFO told us that he wasn’t planning on attending the meeting because of other engagements, so he asked my boss to do it. My boss respectfully declined because he had no idea what he was doing, and at that moment, the CFO’s joke became real. The CFO tried to get out of his other engagements to do the presentation his self, but didn’t make it back and time. Talk about getting thrown into the lion’s den right off the bat. I guess in the long run, it was a pretty good experience for me.

That is my story, thank you for reading.