Office work that made me forget to pick up son from his school

This week has been a nightmare for me and I cannot wait for it to end; too much work in the office.

I spent the first two days of the week in the Public Speaking class where I got to suffer some serious humiliation in the hands of the trainer who told me that I lack executive presence and that I was not good at articulating my points.

He then spent about one hour talking about himself and how great he is and is filled with executive presence. What I do recall from the session is that I need to change my wardrobe to have a more corporate presence as well as trim my goatee because in the trainer’s view it makes me look like a warlord.

Then we went through a rather long lecture on elocution and diction where I found out that the way I pronounce words such as ‘adhere’ and ‘composure’ are all wrong. We also went through the tonality and pitch of my vocal presentations and the constant repetition was frankly annoying.

The second day was spent going through mock media interviews which had me sweating so hard which prompted the trainer to once again make a comment that my “aftershave is rather cheap and does not exude executive presence.” This was then followed by a 10-minute lecture on what Colognes I should use so that I can have this mysterious presence.

At the end of the session, the trainer showed me some clips before and after training and, truth be told, I did not notice an improvement.

Just when I had finished the training and was getting ready to pick up my son from school — Shiro had an office function —I received a call from my CEO. He did not even ask me about my training and said immediately, “Come to my office.” So I made a dash to his office to find out what he had to say because it sounded so serious.

When I got to the office, he said, “Josphat, we need to change the Board pack immediately.” I asked: “Why? Was what I did wrong.” I could not believe this change of direction considering I had worked so hard to make sure I got all the details correct and meet what the CEO had said were the “ Board’s demanding standards.”

According to the CEO, a number of board members wanted a comprehensive presentation and so wanted the slides reduced from 27 to 7 and the written document from 90 pages to 30 pages.

This sounded insane and so I asked,” “When do you need this?” He responded: “By tomorrow 9am but I am sure you can pull it off.”
I started fiddling with my goatee in annoyance reckoning that this indeed was a tough task to do. My thoughts were interrupted by the CEO who said, “you need to shave that goatee, it is not professional.”

Realising that he was not in a good mood I went into my office and began working on the documents. At around 9pm, I felt that I had made some headway and decided to get some tea from the kitchenette. As I walked to the kitchenette, I decided to check my cell phone which I had completely forgotten about in my haste to finish the project. I noticed I had more than 80 missed calls.

My heart started racing as I scrolled down to see Shiro’s, the househelp’s, my parents’ number and even the Pastor’s number.
My heart started racing especially when most lines were so busy.

After about 5 minutes I got through to Shiro who hysterically yelled on the phone, “Josphat, How could you?” I was aghast and said,” now what did I do?”.

She just screamed on the phone, “your son has been in school since 4pm and has just been dropped home by the school watchman” My heart literally stopped and my blood chilled.