The Executive Office Lunches are a great idea. Once a quarter the president of the company invites all the persons directly reporting to her and their respective employees to a catered lunch. At this event she gives updates on the company, the CEO and Chairman of the board attend and give updates and all vice presidents give reports on activities in their areas. For instance, at this meeting I was given an inside look at Wright amendment negotiations, saw the ads that will go out in the coming weeks, as well as other insider treatments!
It is great to feel incorporated and informed about the company and its business. Now don’t get the wrong impression here, in true Southwest Spirit this was a completely informal event. The president, Colleen, was in a pant suit and sat at her front table smoking. The CEO, sat at a random table wearing his Hawaiian shirt, while the Chairman sat at the smoker’s table in his button down shirt and blue jeans making jokes the whole way through.
Another tradition of the Executive Office Lunch is that each new person must step to a mic and introduce themselves. For Internal Audit we had four new people since the last lunch. In another shining example of Southwest Spirit is often that Colleen will ask you a question, request you sing a song or other antic. We were forewarned of this and we offered to put together a song to introduce ourselves.
Our time to perform came at the very last minute of the meeting. We four approached the front of the room filled with 250 prying eyes. I lead off by getting the room to do the stomp-stomp-clap of ‘We Will Rock You’. Yes we parodied ‘We Will Rock You’ as ‘We Will Audit You’. We each had a verse to intro ourselves. We had practiced many, many times before and all had worked to memorize our four short lines. Not a one of us got through our four lines with stumbling under the pressure. We had the whole room rolling.
At the conclusion of the great performance we received a 1/3 of the room standing ovation. Colleen praised us for our performance as well. We were a mess and sweating under the amazing embarrassment.
Just another day at SWA!
4 comments:
After all the songs and skits in scouts and Twin Arrows you choked.lol
That's awesome man! Wish I could have seen that one. But you have always been one of the best yell leaders anyway. Right up your alley.
Kilroy was here!
Getting up and performing in front of that many people can be nerve-wracking. Even now, though I'm pretty seasoned, I'll get nervous and my knees will shake - I used to have to wear long skirts to perform so people couldn't see!
Sounds like a cool lunch, though.
Lannie stole my thunder...that's exactly what I was thinking while I read your blog!
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