Another busy manager

It's every weekday morning and always at the same time. Why doesn't he realize that a little more variety would make it harder to find him out? Just after 08:00, I usually watch the a.m. news special's financial topics where the analysts all blame the failing economic situation in Japan on the overwhelming number of incompetent managers. In the middle of doing that, I get an email from mine: "I was suddenly called to a customers during the morning, will be in the office at around 11:00". Yeah, right.

You see, little does my manager know that the co-worker he went out with last night is my "friend" and he tells me everything: including that Mr. H left the bar with a girl that he met on-line and had invited out for the evening. I refer to him as Mr. H for various reasons one of which being that he is a hypocrite, none having anything to do with his actual name, and others for which I will leave to the imagination.

Mr. H invited my coworker along just in case he turned out not to be interested in the girl in question. And no he did not go home with the girl, as his wife and child waiting there would not likely let them in.

The morning hours go by at a good pace in comfortable atmosphere. As 11:00 nears, I start to feel nauseated at the fact that Mr. H might come to work. However, not much to my surprise, I receive another email to my company telephone that says: "The meeting went on longer than I thought. I will be having lunch with the client before returning to the office". I use the Mr. H specific translation software (installed into my left temporal lobe) to translate the email message as follows: "I came home very late after 'rest time' at a love hotel and have overslept longer than I thought. As my wife is suspicious, I will be having lunch with her to calm things over".

As per usual I am able to get straight through lunch and well into the second half of the workday before he ambles into the office. I'm not sure if I should greet him with the usual "O-tsukare Sama" (Oh tired person) that all Japanese (or me, not Japanese but living and working here) say to fellow co-workers, or with "Ohayou gozaimasu" (good morning).

For the next forty-five minutes Mr. H opens his lap top, rustles papers on his desk, and telephones my coworker in the Tokyo office to ask him if he has received the new model for our company mobile phone. Then has two cigarette breaks, sends email to my co-worker to say that he has updated his homepage, sends email from his phone (probably to the girl from last evening), and then sends email to my computer asking if I would like to have a coffee break somewhere.

But maybe over coffee would be a good time to tell him that, I made an appointment to go and see one of our most important clients next week, by myself, since I never know when he is going to actually be at work.

During the next meeting when my co-workers and myself are getting ragged on for being sales executives who do not go out of the office enough, I am going to ask him to clarify if "out" means going to potential clients or just "out" of the office.

I think I'll contact that a.m. news program to tell that if they were to broadcast the following newsflash during financial topics, we may see drastic improvements in this country's economy:

"Survey shows that managers slacking off on the job should fear female subordinates most."

I am actively planning for and highly anticipating the fall of Mr. H.