What did he say when you called him on his cell phone? I mean, you did phone him to ask what’s with the sandwiches, right?
(Best way to phrase it - “Hey boss - that place you ordered our sandwiches from didn’t deliver again. Can I have their number? The guys are hungry, and they were really looking foreward to those sandwiches.”)
Yeah, fool me once, shame on — [pauses] — shame on you. Fool me — [pauses] — You can’t get fooled again.
Better than yours, obviously, if this is the third time…
Meanwhile, he’s blubbering there in his office with a couple of loaves of bread and a jar of Skippy, saying, “Why don’t they ever ask for peanut butter? Geez I offer to make them lunch, and they NEVER want what I’m making…:(”
That’s a good question. After the first time, I wouldn’t have trusted him to do it the second time unless he has actually come through like, 20 other times and it was obviously and aberration.
Take the team out to a nice steakhouse.
Submit expense report.
Yes, and since you’re still working against a deadline, make everybody bring their laptops and work while they eat.
Gotta make sure nobody makes the kind of careless errors that commonly result from trying to work and eat at the same time, so everybody take your time. Budget about three hours at the resaturant.
And since you’re taking so much dining room space out of commission, make sure you tip the servers REAL well…
This is anecdotal, but I once heard Joss Whedon attribute the best years of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to his policy of having the studio pay nearby fancy restaurants to stay open late for his writers, who were more than happy to do week after week of 8-10 hour overtime brainstorming/writing sessions there.
When my boss offers to buy lunch for my staff, this is EXACTLY what he means (except that I give the receipt to his secretary). I don’t think he knows where sandwiches come from. Well-intentioned, but clueless.
Not sure about these passive aggressive approaches. I prefer the direct approach myself.
“Hey, boss, you’ve promised to buy sandwiches for the team three times now and each time you seem to have forgotten. We don’t expect or need sandwiches, but when you offer to get them my guys work through and don’t get lunch because they’re expecting you to buy them. In the end I buy them lunch myself, because of the promise you’ve made but failed to fulfil, you massive cock.”
No, no, it goes:
I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
And I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again
No, no!
:: Drums on desk with pencils::
I think it would be enormous fun to have about 36 sandwiches delivered to his office, then all come by and say “Oh, FINALLY! ! !” Then proceed to scarf ravanously while tossing the odd olive around his office floor. . .
I’m thinking he must have meant “lunch is on me” and expected you to submit a receipt. I can’t see a VP actually running out for sandwiches. You could probably just email your order to his assistant or something.
Why did he ask them what kind of sandwiches they wanted, then?
Well, that’s exactly it. It’s OK that the VP is such an important guy that he can’t be bothered to go out and place an order at the sandwich shop and pick everything up and pass them out to the guys. Seriously, that ain’t his job, and he probably really does have more important shit to do. Probably.
Except, if that’s so, he should say to dmatsch, “Hey, get your guys some sammiches and expense them, go team, yay!”, and expect dmatsch to handle it.
Remember what happens when someone says something for the third time that doesn’t come true:
Mod note: the above link itself is safe, but the comic it goes to has a lot of NSFW content in other strips. Careful where you browse it from. -Miller
In the case of my boss, mentioned above, it’s because he thinks he’s helping me get the ball rolling … he asks, and then I am supposed to write the order down (in the OP, if my boss were also dmatsch’s boss, he would be thinking “wow, that dmatsch sure has a great memory!”). Then, it’s an opening for me to say “thanks Boss … would you like me to add a sandwich for you to this order?”
I agree–this VP should be eaten alive by wolves.
FYI, that link comes up blocked as pornography for me. If it *is *NSFW, you might want to report your post to have a mod break the link.
That particular cartoon itself is safe for work, but the site isn’t.
I thought secretaries of important people had their credit cards handy…? When I see someone busy promise lunch that means “I will pay” it doesn’t mean “I will carry out the mechanism by which food appears”.
That said, your VP sucks big time.
In my company, if an admin is doing ordering, they have their own corporate card(s).
Hell, our VP brings the grill and cooks the food himself.
Granted, we’re a pretty small company.