Zoom Call with a Big Corporate Client

*** Zoom call. Team of consultants meeting their client team from a large corporation. Leader of the corporate team Mark Kobroff is introducing his team. ***

“Hanke Moon, she’s a bit of a superstar over at here. She’ll be sitting in my seat soon if I’m not careful ha ha ha ha. Mike Shultz, one of the most organised people you could meet. There’s Susan, Lindy, Garry. Garry makes mistakes and has caused myself some headaches but we’ve had a word now so hopefully things improve. That’s probably why Hanke is getting ideas about my chair. When Garry performs poorly it reflects badly back onto me, people above me don’t want to hear me complain about my subordinates. But Hanke needs to be cautious as she’s dealing with a Russian bear in Australian clothing. Understand Hanke? Good, good. Right how about your team. I see there’s a Harry Mentoroff? Harry It looks like we share a common surname suffix indicating a shared ethnic background. I’m not sure if you know this Harry but the ‘Off’ denotes members of the, hmm how do you say, the aristocracy. Harry you and I would have ruled vast swathes of land and people, taking from them not just their labour but also sexual rites over their womenfolk. People with names like Smerdyaklev, like Gerorge Smerdyaklev, would have been essentially ours to toy with and to torment at our leisure. Of course, I’m glad those days are now over and we can all live together in a workplace of dignity and mutual respect.”

***Later in the call, discussing a database migration that will go all weekend long***

“If there’s nothing further we can close the call there”
“Um Mark, just one thing”
“Lindy?”
“I’m just looking at this schedule. It has me working from 6 am to midnight both Saturday and Sunday.”
“Mhmm”
“That, well that just kind of seems like a long time, don’t we have a limit on the number of hours someone can work for? I mean that’s two 18 hour shifts back to back with 6 hours off in between. Just seems like a lot. Do you know if there is any documentation, company documentation like a handbook that limits the…”
“Lindy Lindy Lindy listen. It’s very simple. You only work as long as you think you can handle and not a microsecond more. We’re not here to loose people. But we do really need to get this done this weekend without any issues as we are under a microscope at the minute due to a couple of high profile fuck ups. Does that answer your question?”