When I worked as a Visual Effects Coordinator I was considered part of management, which I quickly discovered meant two things: Firstly I would be spending most of my days being called into meetings while thinking the entire time that I really should be out on the floor making sure the artists were meeting the deadline. Secondly that I would spend the rest of my time being yelled at by senior management for being busy elsewhere while my team went off schedule.

My direct superior loved these conferences. It seemed there wasn’t a thing in his mind that couldn’t be fixed by a good’ol meetin’. In fact I am quite positive that when he went home at night and found his young toddler refusing to eat peas he called his wife into their home office conference room for a two hour strategy session on how to roll out a five phase nutritional action plan to maintain and stimulate the vitamin supply/demand pipeline within subordinate family members.

This is the man who had a mini-meeting with me to announce I would have to have a daily briefing (read: meeting) with him as he really didn’t know what my job involved (thanks boss) and to quote, “if you were to be hit by a bus on your way home tonight I’d have to do your job and I wouldn’t have a clue what to do or where anything is.”

It’s comforting to know that the day after I am killed by a bus it’s business as usual at the visual effects studio.

Now the nature of visual effects being as it is I would have some interesting meetings.

We were working on a TV show for instance that involved a lot of laser gun fire and the artists were complaining to me that due to the complexity of the laser beams and the volume of them in the episode there was no way we were going to meet our delivery date. A meeting was called and for a good 45 minutes I sat in a room discussing lasers with the producers.

When we finished up I remember leaving and thinking, ‘how many other people can be paid to sit in a room and talk about laser beams with several grown men with all the seriousness of Wall Street traders talking derivatives?’

It made me realize there must be all sorts of strange jobs like that out there, where people talk cold hard business terms over topics we just don’t associate with proper workplace discussions.

Like Hugh Hefner for instance…

First off I am glad I don’t work at Playboy, I’d have to take a long shower after work every night to try and wipe off the slimy sleazy feeling. When I saw this letter though it just reinforced my thoughts, there’s no topic that isn’t business to someone.

What other careers talk strange business?

I imagine the Park Duty Manager at Walt Disney World sends some strangely irate memos upon catching spacemen walking through the Wild West.

I am sure executives at Topps sit around conference tables discussing Evan Longoria rookie cards with a passion usually reserved for ten year olds.

And what about your job? I hope that whatever you find yourself doing to pay the bills has at least a few occasional spine tingling thrill of realizing moments, “I am getting paid… to talk… about this?”

You can read more on the context of the Hefner letter where I discovered it,
the incredibly fascinating website Letters of Note