Getting Drunk in First Class

Welcome to the blog, mensamember. Thanks, thanks - great to be here.

The perfect consultant has no clients. You probably assume this is because I love being on the bench, drunk/salaried on a Tuesday afternoon at home by myself. Nay. The perfect consultant has no clients because clients are, by definition, stupid. Try to keep up: If clients were not stupid, they would solve their own problems instead of hiring me to restate their problems using pedestrian business metaphors. But they do hire me, and I’m full of shit, which now twice implies their stupidity because they cannot sense this. Babies can’t change their own diapers.

A top consultant interacts with the client never. Clients are from a sad and different world. I am 28 and currently rest my balls on weeknights in a 2100 square foot 2BR corporate apartment on a high floor with a view of Lady Liberty. On Mondays when I have to smell my clients again, I self-sooth by thinking about how the client is paying for three homes: theirs, mine, and my weekend home, whether that be my high rise in LA or the Mardavall in Mallorca. Yes, I’ve had kids. Couple mistakes with coworkers, but thankfully they didn’t “go live”. Except for the old guy in sales who knows too much top scotch, clients and I don’t have a lot to chit about.

Typical Client IT Staff

There are always the angry ones that want you out. They work for Mr. Big Swinging Stupid, who retained our consultative services. The angry ones are usually from IT, so you have to send them a message they can tune in to. Consider a recent exchange. I’m conducting a group interview with the trolls who hold the keys to the data mine. ”So,” I edify, “we want to elicit a soup-to-nuts view of core business metrics.”

Smartass commentary, from some ogre I call Dapplegrim who thinks I don’t hear him: “Soup to nuts would burn my balls.” Chortles, more odor.

“Four oh four?”

I am rewarded. Confused and uncomfortable stares.

“404,” I let it sink in, bellicose and repulsed by the clients attempt at interaction. “Not found. What was that? Irritainment. I see your point, but I don’t think that you do. Who was the 1982 Time Magazine Man of the Year?  Not the Time Magazine 2006 Man of the Year. So if we can keep this at a professional tenor, we’ll dialog for feedback later.  Thanks.”

Dapplegrim

It’s tense for a while, but after the meeting I send them a fake chain email claiming that experts-exchange.com used to be expertsexchange.com, and they think I’m trustworthy again. This annoys me so I masturbate in the client bathroom and subsequently feel that the Partner, like god, somehow knows that I have defiled myself.

Now you know where that hand has been.