The chairperson mentioned a couple of times today at lunch how he has a size 26 shoe that he keeps putting in his mouth. It brought to mind the run in we had a couple of weeks ago, he hassled me about providing a cashflow report, I gave him a serve. I felt justified in telling him to back off, but I was very angry and really let him have it.
I thought I’d made peace with him since then, but was disappointed by some comments he made towards the end of lunch today. He mentioned how things were going strong “despite the pessimism of the finance department earlier in the year”, then made various comments about cash flow which seemed to be a dig at our previous encounter.
It’s not the first time I’ve felt undermined by things he’s said publicly. And it feels worse because I just don’t know how to respond. He is someone who jokes around and often says outrageous things, so I guess I probably shouldn’t take these comments too seriously.
It’s tough though. He sometimes says very good things, and he has mentioned a few times that he trained as an accountant. A lot of the work I’ve done in the past two years has been groundbreaking stuff for me, and a lot of important and unpopular decisions are based on it. How awful to think that the budget I worked on might have serious flaws, that all the unpleasantness of cost cutting and drawn-out EBA negotiations could have been avoided.