Drifting Off...

by Alex J Allen

aaa

So I'm at work and the training woman is going through a monster PowerPoint presentation, accompanied by a monster of a handout detailing the PowerPoint presentation. The front page has 'page 1 of 38' written in the top right hand corner, which frankly seems like unnecessary Microsoft nose rubbing to me. In these situations, I've found it fairly easy to accidentally drift in and out of what's going on. It can start with something as innocuous as the mention of a phrase like 'pie chart'. Suddenly I find myself thinking about actual pies, and then other things that are circular shaped, like wheels, and then Wagon Wheels, which I realise I haven't had in a long time and blah blah blah etc. Suddenly, something happens. There's a cough, or a slammed door, and all of a sudden you're back in the room.

aaa

I now realised that I was a long way behind everyone else in the handout, and in these situations it's a minefield trying to catch up again without everyone realising that you haven't been listening for the last twenty minutes. You've got three options. One, you just bite the bullet and flip through and find the right page, but if you choose that option then you have to do it amidst the excruciating silence of other people reading, knowing that the slightest sound with alert everyone to the fact you've drifted off. Two, when everyone else turns the page, you can just try and turn enough pages at the same time to end up on the same page as they are, but that's seriously advanced technique, it takes years of laziness to acquire the stealth to pull that off. I went for 3, I accidentally knocked the handout off my desk as I reached for my pen, and then casually picked it up and turned to the right page as if nothing ever happened. Now that, is how it's done.