Before leaving the office yesterday, my boss came over and told me to attend a conference scheduled at 8.30 this morning. Perfect timing on her part.

As instructed I was present at the conference room in this luxurious hotel exactly on time but there was only one person at the stipulated time. After spending about 10 minutes staring in vain I approached the coffee table to make some coffee. An attendant promptly appeared and volunteered to serve the coffee. Until the other people started arriving, I picked up some small talk with the coffee attendant. After a while groups of elegantly dressed, imposing people started arriving and I was getting intimidated. In such a formal setting I was identifying more with the coffee attendant that the other conference attendees. Some curious people introduced themselves and without knowing I was caught in a conversation between two elder gentlemen who were unconsciously pushing me into a plant in the corner of the room. Imagine my frustration. Ironically, I was praying for my boss to come to the rescue but she only arrived about 10 minutes into the actual presentation.

The first part of the presentation was about secure network infrastructure. I was never interested in networks but I used to think that security was a cool thing way back in my college years. Nowadays I have the same thoughts about network infrastructure and find security extremely tedious, frustrating and deterrent to my job. You can imagine my level of interest. Furthermore the conference was about Microsoft products (again!).

In the coffee break I met two ex-University colleagues who came late for the conference. Fortunately both of them were amongst the minority of the class on my good books. I was pretty surprised to hear that one was going to marry (to another student) in September, and move to the UK.

The second part of the presentation was about "Intranet Document Management" and "Business Intelligence" The products on display were based upon Microsoft's Portal solution, SharePoint, and Microsoft SQL Server for Business Intelligence. Both products were new to me since I am more oriented towards Oracle Solutions. Both products definitely deserve some more investigation and research.

The day finished with an extra 2 ½ hours of overtime, after being insulted once again with a late presentation notification. We received an e-mail just before leaving, instructing to attend to a presentation that was planned two weeks ago. We got pretty pissed off and went to voice our feelings to the management. As usual our lamentations seem to fall on deaf ears.

There is one observation that I must make though. It has been two months since the new manager came to head the department, and in these two months he managed to get everybody to dislike him. I appreciate that people in charge are not in the best position to be liked but most of the trouble could have been prevented with some more thought.

He is trying to change too many work practices at a go most of which are restricting us. Chasing people to work each and every minute of the day might not be the best way to tackle the situation. Turing a blind eye (at least in the beginning) might not be such a crime. Human relationships are one of the most important aspects of management because the work force is the major asset in a department. If an employee is demoralised and demotivated no amount of working hours will make up for the loss of productivity. It might be worth sacrificing a few minutes for a cup of coffee and a small break if it will help in enhancing the work environment and the relationship with other colleagues. I hope that if ever I happen to read this post again, and am in a managerial position I take notice of my present feelings.