Flight of the Snuffleduck

My Dear Princess, Loulou and Fellows,

Do you remember this? It was my very first meeting with Shenée and seems to have been a significant moment. "Snuffleduck" has been our project mascot ever since. And here he is, stuck up on the wall amongst lots of other NZ animals.

"Right in the middle!" insisted Shenée.

But let me start at the beginning.

Today started early. I got into Wellington at 7am to meet Shenée. We got a taxi together to catch our flight to Auckland. She loves horses, and on the journey, she told me of her theories on how training a horse is similar to getting members of her team to work together effectively.

"Wait," I asked, "did you do that to me?"

"I encouraged good behaviour with clear instructions and rewarded with positive reinforcement," she answered.

So that's a "yes" then. 

Effing "neigh".

She also told me how much Saturday had meant to her. Once again, I had got her totally wrong and she actually doesn't have loads of close friends. She told me how comfortable she felt around me and Caro and how rare that is. This makes me really happy. I guess she is an unusual person, fiercely intelligent and yes totally bonkers. Also willing to let small children throw poo at her. 

I suppose that might make small-minded, joyless, dead-eyed people uncomfortable. 

But eff those people. I'm really proud to have her as a friend.

Fazzy and Ollie then turned up at the airport, Ollie is a lovely, quiet yet funny guy who works in deploying and fixing technology across all of our offices. So he was to accompany us today in a more technical capacity, while we did the fluffy stuff of telling people about upcoming change and getting them involved. He works alongside Sam, a warm, effusive, clever man who was going to meet up with us in Auckland.

And it went so well at our first Auckland venue! People in the office were excited and asking lots of questions. They got involved and voted on their favourite animals* and Fazzy and I gave some training. People were enthusiastic and kept asking when the new technology was coming. 

So we were very excited when we arrived at Auckland venue two. 

Oh dear.

This office already has meeting rooms with names. Their names are - I'm not kidding - things like "Bomb Point" and "Rifle Range" and "Jimmy's Point" and reflect the wartime use of the site. 

They were NOT happy when we told them we were asking them to vote on animal names to REPLACE those names. There were a lot of reasons blah blah tradition blah blah very attached to these names blah blah how do you even pronounce those names blah blah...

<COUGH>racism<COUGH> as Fazzy said later.

I was so proud of Shenée. She held her ground and refused to be intimidated, even against what was clearly an attack that had been discussed and planned ahead of time. One of the people in the room even threatened to "mutiny" - their actual word - and refused to vote for any animal at all. 

"What are you going to do about it?" the aggressive woman demanded.

"Oh, I'll allocate the room names," replied Shenée, sweetly.

Of course, it is considered impolite to point out to racists that they're racists. And they know this and use it. They WANT you to escalate so they can be OUTRAGED. Shenée did not take the bait. She was amazing. Shenée was very polite and did not use the phrase "white supremacy" even though we were all thinking it.

The rude contingent of bullies stormed out. But one of them collared Shenée on his way out. "I'm against this!" he said. "I'm going to fight it!"

Just to remind you. This is about MEETING ROOM NAMES. 

Shenée told him he was free to escalate it. But she would find it "interesting" to see how he would argue that, "imperialistic, militaristic and frankly INAPPROPRIATE names are preferable to names celebrating  Māori culture". 

IT WAS JUST SO GOOD TO WATCH.

But conflict is always hard on people like us. Shenée was effing FIZZING. "I just want to GTFO guys," she said. So no training for these people, no chat. We just effed off while Shenée sent furious messages to senior managers.

"Eeeugh! I need RETAIL THERAPY!" she said. Also Fazzy was getting hangry. So Shenée drove us to Sylvia Park shopping mall where we got something to eat. Afterward we popped into Zara where Shenée amused me by staying in Project Manager mode even as we shopped.

"Symon, can you find me a matchy-matchy jacket in size 10 please?" she asked. 

Meanwhile, Fazzy thought it would be funny to take a selfie with me in the shop and send it to Caro. It got the desired (sweary) reaction from my lovely wife. 

But the afternoon controversy continued to rumble on in the background. Senior managers back in Wellington were very supportive and angry that the team had been so rudely treated by people who should know better. I believe there will be some Significant Conversations going on this week**.

Nevertheless the team's spirit seemed to get us through it. Actually, it seemed to light a fire under Fazzy who proposed some smart ideas to fight back. 

"I haven't seen this side of you before Fazzy," I said. "It's kind of scary and I like it."

So that was my first day back on Project Gromit. Very full. Very tiring. Definitely emotional. A little bit matchy-matchy. And I feel very proud to be part of this team. 

S.

* Snuffleduck only got three votes. This made me sad.

** With a very strong theme of "wind in your effing neck", as Bokhara would say.