Gromit Unleashed!

My Dear Princess, Loulou and Fellows,

You know, I feel I should apologise to Gromit. I really underestimated her. 

It's easy to do. She IS the most eccentric project manager I've ever had. And I've had some doozies, I can tell you. I come back to Andre the Italian comparisons though. She's definitely closest to Andre in terms of being unorthodox and fiercely individual.

Of course, Slack management put Andre down too. It was typically his flamboyant clothes and effusive manner that allowed them a way of criticising him. And it prevented him moving up too. He was very bitter that another young PM got made a programme manager ahead of him.

But that was Andre. It's even easier to put Gromit down. She's a squealer, for one thing. There's usually at least one in each meeting. AT LEAST. And lots of bad language and a fart joke. 

Animated, is the word I would use to describe her. It's almost like you can see the butterfly-shaped ideas whizzing around her head. And the ideas do PING out of her. It is quite dizzying to keep up. She'll clap her hands and say "and can you and also and invite and make a list and file it and and and..."

I'm not the only one who comes away from her meetings with my head spinning, I'm sure. 

But that's why I think MOST people underestimate her, not me. 

Why did I underestimate her? I think it was her enthusiasm. And perhaps my age. I had that definite feeling of having been through this before. I remember me and Andre cooking up great ideas between us on how things SHOULD be done. And it was exciting! And then Slack shat all over all of them. And that was dispiriting.

One day over coffee I told her about Mike. I think she was a little insulted that I thought there was another project manager better than she is. She wanted to know why. And it was like she was taking notes! She came back the next day and employed some of his techniques! I was really quite surprised.

She impressed me more recently by correctly calling BS on our marketing department who have been delaying us for a while. 

"It's SHIT!" she announced. "I can SMELL it!"

All the same, Mike could have taught her a thing or two about diplomacy in our meeting with marketing today. She was absolutely right about them, they are clearly trying to sabotage her entire project for very unprofessional reasons* but while she came back with salient points at first, her frustration started to show after a while and she started to drop a few clangers. 

I did my best to help. I smoothed things over a bit and then volunteered to write the meeting minutes. I love doing this because you can colour them with your preferred version of events. But if you use enough flowery language, no-one notices until it is too late and they've agreed that they've agreed something without realising it, and now it is ON THE RECORD FOREVER.

(Again, I learned this from Mike who was brilliant at writing minutes that served his purpose and effed over his adversaries).

But all I could manage by doing this was a compromise. A draw, if you will. And Gromit is not having it. She is now on the WARPATH.

Gromit Unleashed. You'll have to read in tomorrow to find out how that works out for her.

S.

* Basically Gromit has done all of their work for them, better than them, and they hate it. So they are doing their level best to sh*t all over it.