The Joy of Corporate Conferences

10. Corporate Bollocks Including Motivational Intro music

• I mean, how many times can you listen to someone coming out on stage to ‘M’ People with 'What Have you done today to make you feel proud' blaring out?
• Grown adults wearing T Shirts with their names on the back even though we already know who they are
• Shit slogans -like ‘good to great’

9. Networking (or not) over coffee or shite lunches

• Usually with people you don’t like and who don’t like you
• Food so bad you'd rather go out and get something else

8. The 'Same shite, different room' disappointment

• Getting excited about the new strategy you've come to hear about and then quickly finding out that it's not a new strategy it’s just the same old one presented differently
• Knowing that the senior exec presenting it and saying how much better than the competition we are, that they’ll soon be working for the competition
• Walking away at the end of the day thinking 'if this is the best we’ve got then we’re in trouble!'

7. Painful Panel Discussions

• Important people sitting on stools on a stage asking you to ask them questions -clearly just an ego opportunity for them. If I wanted to ask you a question then I would have done so over shite coffee
• Because nobody really wants to ask a bloody question, everyone then feels pressure to engage and ask questions. And then the questions are really pointless
• But, there's always some clever bastard with a clever question - and they're usually called Michael

6. Getting up at 4am and driving to some god-forsaken place in the North

• Being told that you're paid enough to drive at a ridiculous time of the morning regardless of any health and safety implications - since when did how much you earn have anything to do whether you might fall asleep and die on the M6?
• Getting to wherever you've been sent and falling asleep before the first coffee break because you've already been up for 10 hours

5. The night before arrival

• Having to travel (again to a god-forsaken place) on a Sunday so that you can get an early start on the Monday morning, like it's some kind of boot camp
• Regardless of the early start, it's compulsory to get smashed with your work mates and stay in the bar until 3am
• Waking up at 7am and just wanting to die

4. Driving home afterwards

• Still pissed from the night before
• Stopping at every other motorway service station for a piss (after not stopping at the previous one, instead 'pushing on' and then wishing that you hadn't
• Getting home at about 10pm after a 300-mile round trip and nearly falling asleep 3 times at the wheel

3. Embarrassing Ice Breakers

• 'We’re going to start with a fun ice-breaker' announces the conference host. Oh fuck, here we go.
• Having to do some embarrassing thing with a complete stranger in the name of 'fun' and getting to know your colleagues. In truth, I don't really want to get to know my colleagues and this isn't fun, it's bollocks

2. Annoyingly wonderful Motivational Speakers

• Listening to speakers, often ex-military or sporting heroes, extraordinary human beings with breathtakingly compelling stories to tell - truly inspiring
• But when you're already lacking confidence in your own ability, being reminded how pathetic your life’s been compared to an SAS bloke who single-handedly freed 200 prisoners of war from a high-security Iraqi jail or a young para-Olympian who managed to do the 100 meters in under 11 seconds despite having previously had both of her legs amputated, can make you feel a bit unworthy
• Consequently, going home struggling to translate their brilliance into the dangerous and demanding world of clearing banking and reflecting on what a loser you are in comparison.

1. Pointless Table Discussions

• Being forced to have pointless table discussions with a bunch of similarly bored people
• Avoiding being the one from your group forced to ‘playback to the group’ the shit you had been talking about, which usually wasn't about the question you'd been asked and unsurprisingly was the same shit as every one of the other 56 tables.
• Having a twat with a roving microphone forcing you to comment. Even worse, there might be a 'dice microphone' which people throw at you. 'I'd rather let it hit me on the head than catch it and have to say something"

We loved some conferences, but most really were painful. They must have been shite or else fewer people would have booked the day off on holiday!