From the Archive - The Banana
‘From the Archive’ is a series of real-life anecdotes from my career. Because some stories just need telling!
I was asked to do what I considered to be a tough assignment by the Chairman of a large Insurance Group for whom I had worked previously. I only accepted the job out of respect for the man concerned. A well-known consulting firm had been appointed by his European head office to develop new IT systems in Australia.
Problem was, they had completely taken over and were proving difficult, if not impossible, to shift them out. They were also costing him a small fortune, and there was a litany of problems occurring with a growing chorus of staff complaints. My brief was to find out what was going on, remove the consultants, fix the problems and restore service. This was going to be a seriously difficult and challenging assignment, for which I had no idea of how I was going to approach it or what to do.
The day I arrived, I did so unannounced. As I was walking down a corridor looking for the office of the head of the consultancy, I overheard a voice say something like “run faster this time”. With that, a banana peel came flying out of an office doorway into the corridor. This was followed by a distressed looking young lady who quickly grabbed it and ran back into the office. I stood in amazement, then the whole scenario repeated itself, except this time with an instruction to “do it faster”.
Again, the banana peel came flying through the doorway, followed by the young lady. I stood and waited to see how long this would go on for, the whole scenario happened one more time, except this time I yelled out “I’ll get that “and grabbed the banana peel and walked into the office. I politely asked if she was the manager in charge, she replied: “Yes and who the hell are you”. I replied, “I’m the guy who is giving you 15 minutes to pack your bag and leave, or I’ll have security escort you out”. I added that her behaviour was unprofessional and totally unacceptable and that I would not tolerate it from a senior member of an external consultancy. I apologised to the young lady concerned and reassured her that nothing like that was going to happen again. After that, the rest of the job was relatively straight forward.
I have only one comment about this, sometimes pennies, or rather bananas; do fall from heaven.
