The day EVERYONE was on time for a meeting

I am a creative type, the people I work with are creative types. WE ARE CREATIVE TYPES!

I think it has something to do with us creative types but I work at a company where we come in at 9:00, start to function by 10, and around 4:30 we're finally highly efficient and racing the clock to get out by 6 and still have some happy hour specials going. Part of that mentality or "culture" is that people are habitually late for meetings. Of course no meetings are set before 10a(too early), no meetings from noon - 2pm (lunch), and of course a meeting after 4:30 would cut into our most efficient hours. So with very little time to actually meet in any given day you would assume people would be timely. But, we're creative types. (Let me include a side note that inspite of our habitual lateness and need to sleep in, I work with some of the most brilliant people in the industry. I'd go into a long list of accomplishments here but it's really not about that this time).

About every quarter, maybe a little longer, our CEO sends out a friendly email reminder about meeting etiquette. The top of the list is always the importance of being on time. Being the employee that I am, I always straighten up my act a little around the email reminder time. I mean, who is going to be late after the head honcho sent out a reminder that being late is RUDE? Typically I get there early, I read a couple of the celeb gossip magazines that we have in abundance around here and as the clock rolls past the stated meeting time I realize I am waiting on my superiors. While I love reading about the newest out -of-wedlock pregnancy and seeing the hot new shoes the "it" girls are wearing, sitting around gets old fast when I have so much work to do in so little time (reference above for productive time in a given work day). So, I slip back to my old ways and eventually we get the meeting reminder again.

Today however the tables turned, completely. We had our monthly business review meeting(aka: the MBR). Rumors have been flying that the outlook wasn't good but nothing had been totally confirmed. My fellow cube dwellers and I headed to the meeting, grabbed our brightly colored bean bag chairs and plopped down (good thing I wore my palazoo's today and not the pencil skirt that was calling my name in the closet). I looked around and noticed the phenomena - people were on time, everyone was on time. I was thinking to myself that this couldn't be good, while Tony (co-worker) started commenting on the book shelf he wanted. To kill the time I noticed a few things that would accent our home well too. I was almost cheerful again...

But then our Japanese CEO came in (whom we've never seen before) and made some "corporate" joke that created stifled laughter. Then he gave some speech about our hard work and their hard decision but in the end we are closing our division. People will be laid off as early as two weeks from now through the end of the summer. He also told us to be sure to fulfill our job requirements....ummm yeah right. I almost laughed out loud. I don't know who he's fooling when one minute he basically tells us we'll all be laid off and the next tells to to be sure to keep working. He finishes the speech about finishing on a high note, working hard, fulfilling our licenses agreements blah blah and of course - being on time to meetings. I have four words for him:

We are creative types.

My last day is May 30th. If you know of a job that is 0.9 miles from my house, flexible hours, high hourly rate, and fun creative people let me know. Or, in case I have to give up that dream, I'd also love to be a personal shopper. Feel free to contact me for that too.

In the meantime, I'll say goodbye to my whole team on May 6th. And will likely be the sad left over who is ebay-ing desk chairs and dusting old bookshelves.

On a higher note, I still need to blog about NY - it's coming soon, I promise. At least I splurged on the Red Hot Marc Jacobs heels. Had I known what was coming I probably would have chosen a more sensible pair of shoes to remember our trip....and since when has being sensible about shoes ever been enjoyable for creative types?

Thanks for your prayers and support in this. It's a sad day really.