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from the book i-Land – A double Irish and a Dutch – Chapter 3 – Escape to Cork
Avoka had received an e-mail from a previous colleague and they arranged for the weekend to meet in Cork. She was looking forward to meeting Harry, as it was always great fun; he was the kind of guy, who was seen, as the cool guy. When he appeared somewhere it didn’t take long, and he was surrounded, by beautiful girls.
But now Avoka had three more days to go. The training did not get much better. Mario now had Carver’s full backup and the questions, answer games, the quizzes and explanations got worse together with an always incomplete course material. Avoka could not imagine how to learn the things she really needed to know for doing this job. The only way was to study all the customer sources on the Internet, which she had to do after the normal working hours. Everything was clearly described on the customer sites; the only thing was in many cases the info wasn’t congruent with what was taught in class. How could this be? So far Avoka had not heard from the guy who had recruited her, so she decided to write to the HR person as meanwhile, the two played their silly school boy game on her. The last issue had been that she had asked for the presentations on paper and Mario had agreed to hand it out. This was already more than a week, ago.
Avoka had sent an email that she had asked several times for the printouts but still had not received them yet. No response. In the afternoon, she asked Carver, who was sitting opposite her desk, about the printouts. Mario had turned around towards Carver. “I will give them to her later!” followed by a wink with his eyes. Avoka knew exactly what this meant. He never really intended to give the printouts and neither he would.
In the afternoon, shortly before she wants to leave, a chat window pops up on her screen. Sina, the Indian team manager, starts asking, how things are going and announces she wants to discuss the issue with Avoka tomorrow, asking when Avoka was best available. Both agree for two o’clock on the next day.
Friday morning Carver announces, “Today is team lunch!” For the next two hours, everyone is busy talking about the lunch menu, times ordering the food and so on. One o’clock has been finally set. Some went for Italian food; others chose a Chinese dish. At 1.30 pm the Chinese food is announced to be delayed for probably another hour while the pizza and pasta had already arrived. Avoka explains to Carver that she has the phone call with Sina scheduled to talk about those issues they had. He replies, “Ah, she contacted you, but team lunch is more important. I will let her know.”
At three o’ clock the Chinese food finally arrives and they all sit in the Cafeteria having lunch together. Meanwhile, another team from the SEO team is finishing one of their trainings and every successful member entering the cafeteria is cheered and celebrated from the team with a loud “Wow, you made it!” A decent conversation starts. Carver asks while eating his cold pizza and spaghetti, “And was the Chinese worth the wait?” The Spanish guys replying in a chorus, “Yes. This is very delicious.” The Spanish girl says, “Of, course it was worth the wait and it’s great sitting here all together as a team; it’s a very good idea.” Everyone agrees. Avoka thought she had had much better Chinese experiences than that but anyway thinks team spirit and agrees. Now Carver takes over the conversation with his upcoming trip to India. Mario and his companion support Carver’s monologue with silly comments.
Luckily the lunch is over. Avoka is back on her desk and Sina’s chat photo pops up asking, “How was team lunch?” Avoka replies, “Great.” Sina says, “Yes, I thought that was a good idea for the team. I’ll contact you next week and we talk.”
Avoka was surprised in a positive way how this team manager seemed to have a real interest and show concern.
Again, Avoka asks for the printouts so she can prepare for her tests over the weekend. Carver is already sitting on his desk sorting the presentation papers. Very busily he is sorting the papers which somehow look kind of messy. Thirty minutes later Avoka is asking, “Can I give you a hand? Maybe this will be quicker when we help?” Carver replies “Yes, you can sort this.” It turns out that the presentation they already had were double and the ones missing had not been printed. Carver puts in, “Oh, that doesn’t matter. That’s for the new hire.” Avoka had already captured phrases like this before that they are planning additional people for the German team. At 5:30 pm Avoka is saying, “Okay, I’ll take this one here for the weekend; it will do.” Carver uses Mario’s favorite phrase, “Yes, this is a mess! I’ll sort it out and you will get the presentations next week.”
Everyone agrees and Avoka is amazed how someone could spend two hours getting the printouts anything but in such a mess.
Read the full story here on kindleunlimited – I-Land – A double Irish and a Dutch
Natalie Hush 