The Meeting free essay sample

The room is silent other than the steady hum of the air conditioner. Businessmen and location supervisors all sit around a large rectangular table, waiting for the man in charge. There is a projector screen at the head of the table with an opening slide displayed. It reads â€Å"Monthly Safety meeting† in plain black text on a white background. A few of the men lean back in their chairs and relax. Two start a casual conversation. Even in the silence of the room I cannot understand them because they are mumbling so quietly. It’s an early Monday morning, and everyone is still a little drowsy from the weekend. Suddenly the big door in the back of the room whooshes open. A deep, carrying voice greets the room with a â€Å"Morning! † The men in the room all perked up and fixed their posture. The man who entered was Mike Guinn. He is the head engineer at Noble Energy. We will write a custom essay sample on The Meeting or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page A lot of people question why the engineer will be conducting a safety meeting. Mike had worked out in the field for many years before getting to where he is now. He knows how it works, and that is why it is his job to conduct the meeting. A few of the men greet him and shake his hand. The others have been here before and they know the drill. Mike has a cup of coffee in his hand that he finishes as he approaches the projector in the front. He sets his mug on the table and looks out at the others. By now they have settled back in their chairs and relaxed a bit. Mike is a man that likes to get right down to business. He quickly turns around and grabs the remote that controls the slide and advances it. â€Å"I’d like to do this as quickly as possible. † He says. He had told me beforehand that the meeting focused on some important information, but was one of the dullest parts of his job that he has to endure. The others in the room seem to know this, as the meeting seems to be done as more of a formality than anything else. Before starting he strikes up a conversation with a man who he appears to know very well. You can tell by their casual banter with a few of the others that, although is he is technically their superior, everyone in the room seems to treat Mike as more of a colleague. They talk about golf and professional sports, or how the weekend went. There is clear respect for his position and authority, but it seems that he wants to let them know that they are all a part of the bigger picture. Everyone is working together for the success of the Company. He starts the slideshow. The first few slides go through fairly fast. Mostly graphs and statistics of past performances with their company compared to others. He explains to them every graph and where they rank according to the competition. A few people are taking notes. I was very impressed with how they ranked. The Company seems to be doing very well. It is very clear that they strive to be better than the next closest competitor, and you can tell Mike takes a sense of pride in that. In every chart displayed, he focuses mostly on the good aspects of the information, but if there is an issue he makes that clear and asks the others what they can do to solve it. Most of the slides so far in the show have been very boring. No pictures, just a lot of text and graphs. The information is important to the businessmen in the room, because it is their job to keep the information in check. To the rest of them it seems that they are just trying to get through with it and on with their day. A slide comes up with just one chart on it. Not much text. Mike takes a pause at this one before speaking to let everyone take in the information. After a few seconds of silence he says â€Å"This chart shows our quarterly safety analysis from last quarter compared to this quarter. † Although I don’t understand much of the information, it is apparent that the current quarter is below last. Mike explains in a positive tone that the company did everything right out in the field to get all of the great results shown in previous slides, but they had a major accident a few weeks ago that caused this quarters to drop. A driver of one of their trucks pulled onto a busy highway in the night and caused an accident. A few people were hurt, but it was all resolved and taken care of. Aside from that accident Mike was very proud of how well everyone did and put a lot of emphasis on the good parts of the report. To let them know that he appreciates all of their hard work to keep everyone safe. He set up a date to host a barbeque out on a location so they can celebrate a good safe month, with the people who make it happen. The final part of the meeting consisted of what you would expect at a safety meeting, the routine standards that everyone hates discussing. At this point he dismissed the businessmen to go back to their jobs. The location supervisors stayed in the room. They are the people whose job it is to keep the crews out in the field safe. They are the ones that need to know proper procedure and how to react when an accident occurs. They keep the workers doing their jobs safely. This is where the meeting gets very boring. Everyone in the room had heard all of this information a hundred times. But because of the accident a few weeks ago, corporate is pushing safety even harder. Mike does his best to keep the information interesting. He relates what he can to things that the others have had to deal with before, by bringing up specific events that each supervisor has been through. Maybe an accident a few years back or some praise for being accident free. This helps them understand the information so if a similar accident occurs, they know what to do. To close the meeting, Mike congratulated everyone one final time on their exceptional performance. He dismissed everyone and started to close down his computer. One man stayed behind to talk to him. This was also the man Mike had started a conversation with at the beginning of the meeting. They appeared to be good friends. Maybe someone Mike had worked in the field with before. They talked for a few minutes about life and how things were going. By the end of the conversation the projector was all packed up and it was time to leave the room. While most men would just go in, do the meeting and get out, you could tell Mike was different. He had respect from everyone he worked with, and did his best to connect with everyone else on a personal, yet professional level. There is a good bond between him and his co-workers. They know that if there is a problem, he’s the one to talk to. He will do his best to get it done and get it done right. Although it was just a standard safety meeting, it showed me how putting just a little effort into your career can earn you respect from everyone you work with, and make your job a lot easier. Sitting in on that meeting really showed me a lot about one of the possible careers of my future. Mike love for his job gave me positive reassurance about my decision to become and engineer.