I'm a Travelin' Man

Life certainly is full of its little surprises, isn't it?

For example, you'd think a well-run multinational corporation wouldn't put up with gross inefficiencies like allowing some mid-level schlub to schedule a large-scale regional event, bringing some three-dozen people from half as many countries together, and only after all has been set and booked and locked in place, let that schlub get away with saying, hey, wait - did anybody bother to invite the facilitator?

Yeah, you wouldn't think that kind of thing could happen, not in this modern age of instant communication and scrupulous digital efficiency, would you?

Think again.

So rather than having a nice spring weekend at home, it seems, somebody you might know is instead going to be spending most of today and tomorrow on planes so that those three-dozen bright-faced corporate acoloytes don't spend their three days in Vienna staring at an empty podium.  And that somebody will be spending those charming hours in flight prepping to lead a three-day course that is only in the most exiguous way imaginable connected to anything he actually knows anything about.

All on one day's notice.

That somebody (the second one, of course, not the schlub, who is going to have a few highly uncomfortable moments come Monday), by the bye, is of course me.  And much as I adore Vienna, I'm not a wholly happy camper, not least because I'll have to race immediately back, for the following week sees the start of a major program on which I've been working for what seems like eons.  For which I'll now have to spend most of Memorial Day weekend getting ready.

Bother.

There's only one trace of sunshine in all this:  as I was such a late addition to my colleagues' plans, it turns out there isn't room for me in the grim business hostelry into which everyone was booked.  As a result, I will be forced - forced - to return to the distinctly more savory establishment I so enjoyed on my last, infinitely better organized (since my office organized it) Austrian jaunt.  So there is some justice in the universe.  As well as some good Grüner Veltliner in my immediate future.