Thing 293 TRM

TRM is an acronym. My job is jammed full of acronyms. Since Token Northy and I work together, it means that on days when work is eventful, we come home and we start chatting, sounds like we're puking up letters of the alphabet. It pisses Pony Boy off something wicked. He doesn't like not being in the loop.

"F*** the two of you, with your SAFP, and TCCA. It's all WIGH and FYHY with you". He's a charmer is the man.

So TRM. It means Team Resource Management. It's one of those many acronyms associated with jobs which probably means something to someone, somewhere, presumably. It sounds like management speak doesn't it? Like "paradigm breaking" or "outside the box thinking". I was not looking forward to a day of TRM. Aside from anything else, I figured it would be a day of lectures, and speeches. I'm famous for my ability to fall asleep on command during speeches.

In fact, I've made something of a habit of sleeping instead of listening when it comes to any form of speech. Last week when The Canuck was explaining his All Day Chilli to me, I nodded off. Not exactly polite. I know....

TRM was a surprise though. It was such a pleasant surprise that I made it a Project Thing. It was my first time doing it after all. What those photos show there are one of the team building exercises. Build a tower using six pieces of newspaper, add duct tape, two pieces of string and a full tin of beans. Three teams to build their own towers, tallest one to support a tin of beans wins... Genius.

That's the kind of competition gets people going. We came second. Out of three. Glass half full or glass half empty that's not winning no matter how it's sliced. Still, better than dead last eh?

There were group discussions, often quite lively. Safety cases, which weren't boring. And for all the official professional nature of it, I still got to wear a "Grumpy" hoodie and not shave.

The whole point of the day is to get people to engage with each other. Discuss problems. See how different people can create difficult solutions from each other. As someone kept saying, in a kind of creepy way; there are many ways to skin a cat. What a lovely analogy.

That was sarcasm by the way. I like cats.

If cohesion's the name of the game for TRM, it succeeded, since everyone in the room seemed to do well to engage with one another. I didn't fall asleep once, and I think the whole thing was actually highly productive. It's not the kind of thing you'd want to be doing everyday, but it's definitely the kind of thing that most people in most jobs would benefit from. At least once anyway.