#577 conference room showdown

This afternoon during the system testing, a man walked into our conference room and announced that we were going to have to leave the room and find another place to have our meeting. One of the men, I'll call him Carlos, said that he would talk to the lady who wanted to make us move. Carlos came back a short time later and told us that we wouldn't have to move, so we continued with our testing.

About half an hour later, the man came back into the room and said, "I'm sorry Carlos. You guys will have to get out of this room. Kathy reserved this room six months ago and it's for a quarterly meeting and she wants to get the room cleaned up in preparation for her meeting tomorrow. You have to go. There's a room across the street for you." Then, the man actually stood there with his hands on his hips, glaring at us. The pocket protector he was wearing didn't do much to increase his authority level.

Grumbling, we all gathered up our laptops and test scripts and snacks and headed across the street. I was walking with Carlos. When we got to the cross-walk, who should we meet up with but Kathy, the woman responsible for kicking us out of the conference room. She was walking with another lady, Alice. Alice started talking to Carlos while Kathy looked at her Blackberry. Carlos said something about the tail wagging the dog. Kathy put her Blackberry in her pocket and yelled - YELLED - "I've had that room reserved for six months! That's my room!" Carlos yelled back, but I couldn't really understand what he was saying because they were both talking loudly at the same time. The rather heated conversation ended with Kathy telling Carlos to "take it up with Kevin." Kevin is a big boss. His title starts with Chief (but let's be clear: he's not the Chief Executive Officer).

Carlos marched off across the street, with me following behind, barely able to keep up. (I was toting my laptop bag and a big box of snacks.)When we got to the new conference room, he was still cranky about the whole move. Who should Carlos see but Kevin? I wish you could have seen the look on Kevin's face as Carlos lit into him. Carlos was flapping his hands around. Kevin stood there quietly and I heard him say, "Kathy was yelling at me." (She is kind of intimidating.)

Now we'll be in the new room for the next couple of days, unless we get displaced again. It's true that the new room isn't as comfy as the modular room. There's not nearly enough room for us all to spread out. Oh well. The little drama to end the day was kind of fun.