EFFIE BATEMAN | BRISBANE| CONTACT
As she calmly packs up her laptop exactly five minutes past five so as not to appear too eager to leave, local woman Sophie Bush stares daggers at the back of her boss’s head.
As the fledgeling PR coordinator for a government organisation, Sophie has just learnt her first lesson when it came to dealing with upper management in the corporate world – most of them are highly incompetent and way too confident.
Today’s gripe – spearheaded by a boss who was the walking definition of the Dunning Kruger effect – is yet again having to waste time with office politics instead of working. The latter she’d have to catch up on outside of work hours, of course.
It’s alleged that at exactly twenty minutes before close, Sophie’s boss Nick had decided that the campaign the entire media and comms team had worked on for a solid month was not to his taste and that he’d prefer them to take a different direction. This comes after he’d signed off on it a week ago, and roughly 70 man-hours had been dedicated to getting it live.
The new direction, a brand-new campaign inspired by a severely outdated ad he saw late last night on Facebook, is not only detrimental to the brand but also incredibly stupid. And if it doesn’t work, he’ll most certainly place the blame on the person who happens to be in the lowest position in the company…which just so happens to be Sophie.
Grumbling to herself as she ducks into her local Woolies Metro for a much-needed sugar hit, Sophie’s thoughts pinball somewhere between screaming bloody murder and staging a workplace coup. A thought that’s interrupted mid-sentence, when her simple quest for chocolate milk is thwarted by what has to be the world’s AI.
“Unexpected item in bagging area.”
“Remove this item before continuing.”
“Item has been removed from the bagging area. Please call assistance.”
Grabbing the bottle with the unbridled fury of a woman pushed too far, Sophie mutters something about robots stealing people’s jobs and leaves without purchasing.
More to come.
