Tit Joke

I know Kathy reads my stories and I hope she doesn’t mind me telling this one. She is the key player in this little moment.

From the title, you already know that I am going to, once again, get a little vulgar and trashy. But I think you will enjoy the circumstances around this awkward moment.

I worked 43 years in the IT business and often found myself in a room full of very rich grey-haired executives that were about to, or not, drop a sizable amount of investment on some idea that I had rolling around in my head.

If you are taking score, most of the time you will know, I had some pretty good ideas. My career prospered and I was well sought after, but enough about me. What is the deal with the tit joke?

Let me begin with saying that the word itself is a bit too pedestrian for me and I would never just throw it out there for anyone’s naïve ears. But I didn’t say it so I’m safe. For Kathy, not so much. Let me set the stage.

I’m in a large conference room. It can seat 25 people. On this day, there were 22 and yes, they all had grey hair. They could make decisions in the moment that would affect everyone one in the entire building and today they were about to. So, of course, I was very excited to have the opportunity to present a new digital product that would improve the business that they were running. They came to the room with high expectations and I came to room to sell them the whole enchilada.

Every presentation needs to have three parts, the beginning, the middle and the end. I know this formula well and had prepared for every stage. Set it up, sell it, shut it down. That was my job that day. I had done my homework and I knew that this new online solution on their website was going to make all of their customers very happy. Money, baby!

But I didn’t count on Kathy.

And that’s when it happened.

The beginning was done and I was half way through explaining the middle when… Wait. Let me paint a better picture.

The large rectangular room had tables and chairs in the shape of a “U”, very typical in a business environment. We all faced a large screen at the front of the room. My presentation was sensationally splashing on the screen. I had my confidence and I had their attention. But Kathy was about to change that.

There are, well there were, I’m retired now and can no longer claim current knowledge on all things digital. But I believe there still are two major types of digital worlds in business today. You are either an Apple shop or and Android/PC shop. Once I had a job where I worked both laptops at once. Point and click became a nightmare for me, but that’s another story too.

I’m in a PC shop in a conference room full of executives who are either voting for my new online solution or denying me the opportunity to develop it. I became an software architect early.

So, let’s bring Kathy in now.

Many people that pitch great ideas know that everything hangs on every word. Keep the energy moving forward and bypass any failings that can derail the whole pitch. These are very true words. But here comes Kathy.

So, here I am and I have every single person’s attention on the main screen at the front of the room. The PowerPoint and live screens of a demo system are making a lot of sense. I think that I am going to get approval. But something happens. In the lower right corner of the large screen a popup message appears. And everyone in the room sees it.

“Tit Joke”. Email arrived, subject line: Tit Joke. Five long seconds before it quietly fades away.

This is a message from my friend and neighbor on the river. We live in a boating community and Kathy, our dear friend, chooses this moment to send me a tit joke at work. No one in the room cared any more about my presentation, but you know they certainly wanted to see the joke.

And the joke? Well, like I said, I don’t like to be vulgar. Reach out to Kathy!

---

To get email notifications when I publish new stories, just enter your email address below, click “Subscribe” and follow the instructions. Then click Subscribe to make sure you have completed the process.