The room is full of vidioettes, those who await a six digit connection to several remote sites by videoconference. There’s a buzz in the room while the remote is sourced, mute is on. Space for wall flowers at the room’s periphery is tight, for those seeking the outer limits of obscurity. Table hugging job grade climbers seek prime locations at the laminated board table edge. These are prime spots in the “look at me” status stakes. Those surer of their status hover mid distance tween table and wall, knowing their interruptions can always be sustained by a table hugger unmuting the mic for them before they speak.
I nearly slumber. The previous meeting minutes are skimmed, while I shuffle an untidy sheaf of papers which I know don’t contain the minutes. It appears though I’m better prepared than those who’ve chosen to go to the meeting paperless and tablet less. Impressions count. Then the call is made,
“Who’s gonna move the minutes?”
Most of the wall flowers have their tongues firmly stapled to the rooves of their mouths, but a Hobart table edger slips a digit up and says,
“I’ll move ’em!”
“So who’s gonna second them” comes the disembodied voice from Launceston again. Nothing happens, nothing. The video at North West judders, there’s pixilation from Burnie, slightly less than MCH and I look around. It’s quiet in Hobart.
“So who’s going to move them?” is asked again. After a pregnant pause a soft voice from the Launceston theatre is acknowledged as a seconder.
It goes on like this meandering through the action list items for which apparently no-one in any of the rooms is accountable. There are waffly self aggrandising minor updates on where the heck they’re going. At least the meeting form is being followed!
And onto a dissertation on “The Transition,” from the Launceston Revealer. Its long, torturous and rambley, covering old and new ground at the same depth, consistently shallow. It dawns on me that what she’s talking about convolutedly reverts us nearly right back to where we were just over two years ago. That the change was “nothing much to worry about” while ” we continued with business as usual” allowed us to watch as the change sowed the seeds of its own destruction. Ultimately the new brooms were closeted.
The same description is being used by the Launceston Revealer to describe this new change. I find myself wondering why senior people who had the means, leverage or gall, decamped to regions unknown only to re appear as the designers/reviewers of “The Transition”.
From the pit of my tummy something stirs. The lyrics sound the same, the melody vaguely familiar. Though there seems circularity and vague symmetry, some folk in fact did worry and were affected. Though in the first iteration the union got involved causing the process to drag and drag the fact that the implementers were naïve to Taswegian practices and mores, conspired to make the whole experience mind numbingly extended. The tricky mass meetings trying to ‘sell’ the idea were a massive waste of time for such a patently self evident need for change. An amalgamation of disparate sites into a cohesive whole wasn’t exactly rocket science. But then again this is health, nudge nudge, wink, wink, and it must be important hey.
So after a further meandering through the peaks of professional status and troughs of divisions at the 42nd Tasmanian parallel, a Hobartian dares query the Launceston Revealer.
” Will this Transition be subject to a change proposal for union consultation!”
After some more waffling, the Launceston Revealer’s response attempts to bat the issue right out into the long grass.
” Is there anyone down there, some senior manager who can take this query off line and explain this to Hobartian enquirer,” she hopes.
Its a little tense, then tenser, Hobart eyes formerly raised are now floor gazing, as its apparent there are no senior managers present. There’s plenty of wannabe acting managers and the otherwise disengaged, two of whom are already thumbing it on mobiles.
Eventually we hear,
” I’ll take it up with the enquirer,” a Hobartian says. Who it is, isn’t clear.
Sorted, phew, the Launceston Revealer goes on,
“Ok, then I’ll continue about the Transition for the rest of you,” she says, adding ,” if I’m allowed to.”
The muted tone of the slipper sinking in.
Do others hear it? Doubt it. Those who matter to me do.
I jot it down.
Editor’s note: Originally published in DidIreallyhearthat, a blog by theHobartChinaman
The Hobart Chinaman 