Larry was standing in my cubicle when I arrived at work on that fatal Monday morning and I knew it meant trouble. He had that slick, devious smile across his face that meant head for the hills, danger zone ahead.
“I’m leaving on Thursday for that conference in Hong Kong”
“What conference in Hong Kong”
“Doesn’t matter, the point is, you have to cover for me.”
“No problem Larry, it’s not as if anything important is scheduled for the next seven days. The big  turnover isn’t due for a month.”
“Yes, that’s true. You will have to take care of the presentation though.”
My face went green. It had been over two years since I made the big mistake but they wouldn’t let it go.
“Piece of cake for you Steve. Mr. Powerpoint himself.”
“I was just lucky, I had a great audience.”
“You’re much too modest, my old man. Anyway, It’s been decided. The CEO won’t hear of anyone else.
The presentation was to be delivered to a group of European desk heads who were being flown on Tuesday. I had 90 minutes to show them what I.T. was about. Many people think that putting together a good presentation is a piece of cake. These are the same people who believe they can get a decent MBA degree on the internet and find a job in a leading Fortune 100 company. I had spend about five hours trying to come up with a suitable theme when it came to me. This was my chance to screw things up. I would deliver the worst presentation given since Moses brought down the ten commandments and then I would never be bothered again. It was as simple as that. I could put it down to a touch of nerves and with a bit of luck the whole fiasco would be forgotten in a couple of months.

   Putting together a really bad presentation can prove as time consuming as creating a good one. I started with clothes. A presenter must be suitably dressed for the part so I wore the most outlandish tie I could find in the shape of a noose. There were more than a hundred people in the audience, I had opted to open with a joke that with a bit of luck would alienate at least half of them. Though it entailed a female rabbi, a gay pope, a drunk Irishman and several black slaves not manager was offended enough to leave the room. My company employs far too many hypocrites.
My first slide was meant to display the complexity of managing an  I.T. Department. Using a minute font I had managed to cramp 87 positions into the space of one slide, not one word readable. To make things worse I commenced by listing every position displayed on the slide before moving on. I had put a lot off effort into the design of my next slide challenging the world record for the amount of silly animated gifs present. They jumped, crawled, did somersaults and flashed continuously, my third grade homeroom teacher would have been proud of me.
At this stage, I paused the presentation and spent the next few minutes miserably attempting to remove a rabbit from a black top hat and magically turn doves into pigeons. One of the pigeons, whom I will call Joe, flew twice around the hall before landing on the head of Ms Jane Balkin,  manager of our office in Frankfurt. Unfortunately the pigeons legs got caught up in her hair and it took Jerry Talkin from the New York office, sitting next to her,  several minutes to separate them.
Returning to the slides I decided it was time for failure and in total darkness I spent the next nine minutes leading the audience through a kareoke off key rendition of Hey Jude.
When the electricity returned a slide with a bright yellow background. One by one bullets appeared defining the different functions of the I.T. Division (all 47 of them). In order not to totally alienate my audience I refrained from opting to chose a yellow fond to match the yellow background and stayed safe by choosing light orange.

   I had been briefed that in a presentation of this kind it is important to show a growth chart, preferably emphasizing how much better we are performing in the present quarter. Using all my Excel expertise I managed to group sixteen sets of data into one comprehensive chart.

Being the powerpoint expert that I am I am Aware that no presentation is complete without a few cute cats and newborn babies working In an I.T. department, so I added fourteen or so slides of that nature It wa allowing my presentation to end and running out the back door before the ripe tomatoes hit me.
   Next morning I quietly slid into my cubicle expecting the worse. If two guards appeared to escort me of the premises, it would be clear that I had gone to far. At around 10:00 the phone rang. It was Bigley’s secretary. My presence was requested immediately.
   As I entered his office I felt sure my legs would betray me.
   “Ah Taite, take a seat for a minute. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
 My whole career went by in my head. What had I done? Maybe if I get down on kmy hands and knees.
“Quite a show you put on yesterday, Taite.”
“Please sir, I can explain. I…”
“Yes, well I haven’t got all day. I gather you ran out without an encore. Well anyway here’s the agenda for next week. I.T. representatives from sixteen American banks will be arriving on Monday. you go on at 2:00, should be plenty of time to get a replacement pigeon. Great work my boy. Never thought you had it in you.

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