The Land of The Point.

Time for a bit of vicarious venom, I think.
A good chum of mine is busy trying to break her leg or contract green monkey disease so she will not have to attend a work conference at which, she knows only too well, she will have to proverbially dance the powerpoint polka.
The prospect of this useless, tedious and annoying annual get together prompted her to call on conferences to be Granthamed and I have to say I am happy to oblige.
I don't have to attend work conferences in my line but I have either covered them or been along to keep my soon-to-be ex-wife company at ones she has been to in the past. My experiences, therefore, have not been particularly souring - I got to stop in a hotel somewhere different, I got the chance to nick some new towels for Pither Towers, to add to my internationally acclaimed collection of plastic shower caps and to drink myself into a stupor, all at someone else's expense! Hurrah!
The poor saps who, however, had to attend the daytime talks, presentations, workshops, discussion groups and similar assorted bits of business bollocks were not quite so fortunate and they had my sympathy.
The focal points of all this crap are the loathsome "powerpoint presentations". They basically involve some git - who probably doesn't want to be there either - droning on and on and intermittently using an executive pointy stick to point to words he has just said but which are also on the screen behind him!! What (points to powerpoint screen) is the fucking (points again) point in that (final, vigorous point)? The room is always too warm, there is always the hum of the air conditioning and so it is hard enough not to nod off but then the subjects of these little slices of death make it almost impossible - "The 21st Century client and the continuing need for socks", "Cash flow projections for hosiery and associated sub-divisions of Pants R Us", "Know your customer, know yourself" and "Retail, rip-off and retire."
Then there are the completely facile "workshops". You sit around with a bunch of other pissed off people and try to thrash out some problem of great import, such as "Breaking into Taiwan with the self-assembly, flange-powered grommet leveller."
Alternative sessions challenge you and another bunch of idiots to fashion something like a serviceable spacecraft out of cardboard boxes and some party poppers left over from the Christmas party! Why? If it could be done, wouldn't fucking NASA have done it already?
The whole nightmare is usually rounded off by an address by the bloated, smug, Fascist git who runs the company and he or she tells you that while Nazi Knitwear "believes and invests" in its "team" it wants profits increased from the paltry 700 per cent rise this year to 8.5 billion per cent by this time next year. Fuck off!
My chum made the not too ridiculous suggestion that all this crap should be written down and posted out, thus saving on the expense of an hotel and the bar bills of men who have just gone along to keep their soon-to-be ex-wives company. The reason, apparently, is that everyone has to get together to "bond". If you actually WANTED to bond with these people, wouldn't you have done it already? You don't "bond" because the only thing you have in common is the fucking awful job you do. If you happen to quite enjoy your job you are tempted to believe it is fucking awful after you have attended one of these corporate scrums. It's like having to meet up with people you met on holiday - you realise on your return home that the only thing you had in common with them was that you were both on holiday at the same time!
No, corporate conferences (points with pointy stick) can go.