Power Point Ranger

I think I might have just made a slide show presentation that will get me fired.

I’ve lamented before about the countless PowerPoint slides I create. I’ll have you know that I do them unwillingly. They shackle me to my fiberboard desk with heavy chains and tell me that I must pump out slide after slide of graphs and charts to appease the brass. No potty breaks or time for non-value distractions like food unless the slides are approved by the chief of staff. Colors must match, bullets must align, and graphs better tell a damn good story or else it’s back to my crooked chair to try again to create the perfect slide that will win this war. Actually, rumor has it that hidden within the 100 GB share drive of the office there exists a PowerPoint show that explains in detail how to achieve victory in Iraq and send us all home early. One day Tommy thought he discovered this Grail of all presentations but alas, it lacked the supporting spreadsheet data! As of this date, we don’t have the perfect slideshow, therefore we must toil to satisfy the generals’ desires to sacrifice reams of A4 paper and drain the color printer of it’s lifeblood. It’s a sad existence and it makes the days seem pointless. A life that can be measured by the number of slide shows made in a day is a sad life indeed.

Today’s PowerPoint session began just as they always do; a field grade officer tasked by a general officer to give them a status brief grabs the first captain within their reach (that would be me) to do their bidding. My topic for the day was a comparison of what my shop and another shop does to see what areas we overlap our efforts. As far as topics go, it was a pretty good one due to the fact that I had just asked my boss that very same question the other day. So, I start inserting text boxes and block arrows in order to “paint the picture” that the boss would understand. In the midst of this transition frenzy, I discover that there are a lot of areas where two people from different sides of the military are doing the same job. It developed into a perfect picture of redundancy and that is not a pretty picture. Realizing that the news was not good, I stopped to show my boss to ensure that I was giving the right information. He assured me that it was correct and gave me an explanation that made me pause my frantic mouse clicking; the big boss wanted this brief to determine where he was going to “cut the fat” and make the decision to dump my section’s responsibility onto another command. Whoa! Hold the phone! Did this mean I was making the last briefing of my military career? Would they discover that there was some sorry sap in another section that could do my job thereby releasing me from the PowerPoint yoke that was holding me back from getting out of here? Did this mean I could go home early? End of mission anyone? Wooohooo!

I think through the squinting of my slanty eyes he could see the premature celebration in my mind and quickly squashed my hopes by informing me that I was not in fact released from the slideshow hell that I was living. If anything, they would just reorganize the section and I would be here for my allotted tour time set by Uncle Sam (and most likely do more slide shows). Best case scenario would be for them to put in me in some short-handed section to help out and stay busy until it was time for me to leave. Worse case scenario would have all of the work from both sections put in my lap and have me do the job in some remote location with more frequent mortar fire (and no Captain Mafia to hang with). I’m positive that the actual outcome will be something in between the two extremes, but only time will tell. Unfortunately, time is one thing I have a lot of.

I’ll follow the advice of a good Marine by the name of Gordon and keep my sanity by being flexible.

Semper Gumby