Client visit

Last Tuesday, there was a client visit in the office. I was helping out in the preparation of one presentation, but the point to be noted was that I had to collate a couple of case studies from different teams and append it to the standard set of slides we have.

By virtue of having "worked" on that presentation, I was asked to be physically present when my bosses were going to run through the slides with the client.

The meeting was attended by few of my big bosses, the lowest ranked among them being in the 3rd level above me! So, I was designated to control the PPT on the laptop and the lowest ranked boss would do that actual talking. Our meeting started 5 minutes later than scheduled and when the biggest of my bosses(he reports to the Board of Directors) came into the meeting after 10 minutes, the conversation steered away from the PPT and got into a generic Q&A session.

And while anyone in the room (including me) could have answered the questions, etiquette demanded that only the bigger of the bosses reply. So there I was sitting idly with my fingers on the keyboard, moving my head towards the direction where a speech was happening, nodding my head in general to show a sign of solidarity with the speaker and also throwing in a half-smile or full-smile depending on whether the perceived-to-be-funny remark came from my bosses or from the client (he got the full-smile obviously).

It didn't deter me that no one was really looking in my direction. Perhaps the only guy who took note of my presence, was the one who was serving us coffee/tea.

Thankfully the charade got over quickly since we had to wrap up the session at a designated time. We bid goodbye and left the place. And since the meeting was in the branch closer to my home, I seized the opportunity of returning home early and was home by 6.15 PM.