Different people

Meeting with my colleagues from other offices and countries in London last week was quite interesting. To say at least…

Meeting and working with people from different countries isn’t new for me. While working at Manutan I spent a lot of time in Paris with my colleagues from the Netherlands, UK, Czechia, France and Belgium. From time to time we had, of course, heated discussions, but still having the same focus and interests we could agree on most things. When we disagreed we just laughed and said: ”OK, we are different even though we are so much the same“. We were also about the same age and had about the same level of experience, so I guess we just got a long very well.

With this in perspective I was looking forward to meet the people from Germany, Ireland, UK, Norway, Denmark, Poland and the Netherlands. Well, this forum was a bit different… The Scandinavians are always easy to get along with and the same goes with the people from the UK and Ireland. But the German… People had told me beforehand that he was a bit different, but I never thought he would be this special. He never shut up and never ever considered that his ideas and thoughts might be different or wrong. We were there to discuss the e-commerce strategies for the whole group, but over and over again he went into details nit picking things. On Thursday morning he went into total spin over some white borders in the new booking dialogue. By then I was very tired of him and his yapping so I just told him to be quiet. If we had seen a major decrease in bookings after implementing this new booking dialogue the discussion might have been a bit valid. But not now when the bookings are increasing. Our customers don’t care about the white borders…. To my surprise he actually shut up, even if only for five minutes. The group IT coordinator was sitting across the table from me and when our German friend got silent she gave me a big thumb up.

The group IT coordinator was a person I liked from the minute I met her. She’s been working at the UK branch forever and knows everything. Being somewhere in the mid 50’s she has a little different perspective on things than the rest of us. She carries around a big handbag most of the time and drinks loads of tea. To me she just comes off as a very wise and bright woman. She reminds me of the Moominmamma, someone who always has the right answer on things. Someone you just want to have on your side when things get difficult.

The meeting wrapped up about 4 pm and by then I had told our German to be quiet two more times. But with not as much luck as the first time… The group system administrator and fellow Swede, was so annoyed so he wanted to leave the minute the meeting was over. “Another minute and I’m going to strangle him!” We hurried out the door, but our German caught us – “Do you want to share taxi to Paddington?” The group system administrator answered very quickly that we were taking the Tube and then walked out the door. A train just got in when we got to the station, so we just jumped on it as quickly as possible thinking that we lost him. But no, he had just been in a different cart. The train to Heathrow was crowded so one just had to sit wherever there was a free seat. This of course got our German complaining and whining like a baby. My God, it’s not like the ride to Heathrow is forever. It takes 15 minutes! By then I thought group system administrator was going to blew a fuse or something. His face was bright red and he clenched his jaws real tight. Poor guy! So I really don’t need to say that the first thing we did after going through security was going to a bar, do I?! A pint later and thankfully he was back to his normal self.