We've had a group of four consultants from a high profile firm in our office since early March. This was not something that many of us looked forward to; the consultants from that company had a reputation for arrogance and a sense of superiority and secrecy. In the past, the presence of a consultant in the office usually meant that something was desperately wrong and probably about to be dismantled and pink slips weren't far behind.
But they weren't engaged (their word -- these kinds of jobs are referred to as 'engagements' -- it sounds so quaint!) to pull us apart, job description by job description (see Office Space), but to help us organize our massive ideation (see below) and fix a few processes while they were at it. So they were friendlies. Very friendlies. Which I found disappointing at first because I really wanted to hate them and their templates, process improvements, and jargon. (Years earlier I had even made up a a character on Friendster called Blaine whose description was taken -verbatim- from the websites of Bain, McKinsey, and BCG - no, I wasn't a fan). But they were too damn lovable, all four of them, even if they preferred diet coke to Junmai Daiginjo.
For the first time at the company, I was actually enjoying the people I was working with (OK, Ed, that's not entirely true, but it sounds so, um, epiphany-like) and I found myself spending quite a bit of time in their office (appropriately they had set up camp the same deluxe office once occupied by my now departed former boss), telling them about whatever crossed my mind. As time went on this devolved from work-related topics to completely inappropriate discussions of homicidal roommates, the past sex life of one of the consultants, the evil in-laws of another, drunk people, stupid people, and most usually, the unbelievable and ridiculous situations that one of the consultants got himself into on a regular basis. For hardcore and highly paid type-A personalities, they were flawed and nerdy and pleasant and social and I soon found myself joining them for the occasional dinner out on the town, each time at a venue of my suggestion. They accorded me final decision perhaps in part because of my food background but more likely because they just didn't want to think about it.
We have been out together now more than a handful of times -- usually just me and a couple of them. We've dined at some newly opened fine dining joints including May Street Market and Sola (where we were the last people to leave because invariably we are the last people to sit down owing to the consultants' workaholic ways and late departure from the office), some good chowist destinations like Mitsuwa Market and Tank Noodle, a sushi joint downtown, and some chain restaurants. On one night we bought chicken bowls from both Baja Fresh and Chipotle, just to be able to say, definitively, which was was better (Chipotle by a long shot). And the beauty of all this? They have expensed every last dollar. And the delicious (not literally) irony? Ultimately my company picks up the tab.
Yup. Apparently they get 20% on top of the agreed-upon price as a cost overrun. So let's just say (hypothetically speaking) that they are getting $100,000 for the job. They would also get an additional $20K for incidentals, like dining out and travel and rental cars and any other expense that might come up. We do talk about work at dinner, so I don't feel terribly guilty. And some of our meals have been so cheap that they don't even need to send in the receipt. But fine dining is part of their lifestyle, a trade-off for the hours they work and their very firm-focused social world. As one consultant told me, "Everyone in the company has done something really interesting and was probably a really interesting person in the past. But now they don't have time for anything except work, and so they aren't interesting anymore."
One thing I will say for my present work situation is that I do have work-life balance. When I was chained to my desk at Cheese Hell in NYC just before moving to Chicago, I had no time for anything, including seeing friends. I was gone from my house 16 hours a day, which left not quite enough time to sleep, let alone have a life. I worked for a chef and he expected us (especially those of us on salary) to work soul crushing kitchen-style hours so that he could maintain his home in lovely Greenwich. Have I mentioned that I don't enjoy working for chefs?
Work at the Company is relaxed compared to what I used to do and a vacation compared to the work of our consultants. What they do (crunch numbers, make really pretty power point decks that aren't much fun to read) and don't do (sleep, mostly) reminds me of life in grad school, and I'm way too old to want that anymore.
But I'm around if you want to take me out to dinner - but no chain restaurants.
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