Hookahs and playahs

So Answer First and Zero Defect walk into a bar.

It’s a shisha bar, so they order a hookah. Melon flavour.

AF: How does this thingamajig work?
ZD: The whatchamacallit on top is the fake tobacco that filters through the water column. You suck on the tube as if your life depended on it and exhale the fumes worth 50p each.

ZD smiles inwardly, smug in the knowledge that he is the know-it-all of the hookah world.

AF: Whatchamacallit? Huh? Is that what it's called?
ZD (insecure because his knowledge is being challenged by an ignoramus): Yeah. It's also called the.. arbit.. melon-flavoured tablet!
AF: (the light of knowledge bursts through the dark clouds of ignorance) Ah, the arbit melon-flavoured tablet!

And ZD bows to the silent applause in the stands, having saved the day once again, rising from the ashes to deliver a crushing blow to the challengers.

AF: Dude, look! I can do a Confucius!

Consulting Noir

The room. Our hero takes a quick look around. He glances at his watch. Grimaces. The dial grimaces back. They're late.

The desk. Shadows filter in from the blinds to make a pale chiaroscuro in shades of sepia.

The phone. Lying harmless on the desk. Quiet. He waits for the shrill ring to cleave through the heavy silence.

The phone obliges. It screeches like a banshee. He lets it. Three rings go by. He strangles the fourth.

"AF here. What's the market?"
"I don't really know", comes the response.

"Where's the money going?"
"I don't really know", comes the response.

"Where's the leak? Where'd we screw it up?"
"We aren't sure", comes the response.

AF's grip on the receiver tightens ever so slightly. The room seems smaller. His tie is too tight.

"I'll get back to you". He disconnects. The flat dial tone hangs in the air as if in suspended animation. He turns and walks out in disgust. Another case with no leads. He's on his own again.

"Clients", he mutters, thinking to himself. A black mood descends like a moonless night.

A concerned co-worker stops him. "Need a hand with something?"

He looks incredulous. His face freezes into a macabre grin as he rasps the order.

"Fetch me my shotgun"

To be continued

Realization

Scene: A lonely stretch on Regent Street.

Dramatis Personae: Zero Defect, Answer First, four pretty girls in now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t clothes and a Porsche.

ZD and AF amble slowly down the street. Yellow, flickering streetlights cast long, swaying, somewhat melancholy shadows on the cement.

“I am a disco dancer”, proclaims AF to no-one in particular.

The Porsche appears, loaded with eight X chromosomes and slows down at the kerb. The owner of the prettiest pair (of X chromosomes, obviously, you perverts) turns to our heroes. AF is nearest.

“Hi! Do you know where the Park Inn is?”, says a voice dripping with honey and at the same time, sharp as a rapier’s edge (No. 42 on the list of phrases I’ve always wanted to use somewhere).

AF had no idea. Not that he would’ve been capable of articulating much if he’d had one. “Glurk” is all that he manages. An admirable effort, given the circumstances.

ZD, in the meantime, finally turns his considerable girth around and, the revolution completed, decides to inspect.

“Parking?”, he says, flashing his best two and thirty tooth smile at them. To the girl, the thick accent sounds as alien as AF’s dismal stab at coherence, but nobody resists the power of the two and thirty smile. Nobody. She smiles back hopefully. A trifle vacantly, if truth be told.

AF considers a warning, but quickly decides to step back and let ZD work his charm while watching the unfolding drama instead. Briefly considering the problem for a moment ZD lets loose. “You need to go a block further, turn left and keep on straight till you hit it. It’s quite big, actually. You can't miss it!” Impressed, the ladies treat ZD to one hundred and twenty eight perfectly formed teeth and eight lusciously bare legs.

Fifty meters and a few pleasant thoughts later, ZD finally snaps out of his reverie. “They were hot, weren’t they? Wish they’d invited me in. I’d have parked their car myself.”

AF spends an entire minute recovering from hysterical bouts of laughter before finally saying, “Dude. They wanted the Park Inn. Not parking.”

ZD is shaken for a moment. But not stirred. With the calm of a Zen master, he looks forward inscrutably and with considerable dignity, says, “Well then they should have said so.”

As they walk into the night, AF wonders to himself, “This is how we make money.” A moment and a wry grin later, “Cheers to consulting.”

Bienvenidos!

Flashback
Having survived seven rounds of case interviews and four hours of leveraging core competencies, our heroes, Answer First and Zero Defect finally break into the mysterious world of management consulting. The world of business will never be the same again.

A few months later
The doors to 40 Strand open. Answer First and Zero Defect take it all in. The concierge smiles at them and hands them their entry cards. They pass through the electronic gates and up through the elevator to the seventh floor. The London eye watches over the city a few miles away.

A few hours later
A female co-intern approaches them with excitement writ large on her face. She gushes about the laptops, the wi-fi, the wonderful apartment, Oxford street, the 'global hardware major' she's working for, the London eye and even the cornflakes and skimmed milk in the pantry.

Answer First looks at Zero Defect. His eyes are shining. He leans forward.

"Dude. An electronic ID card. Are."

Zero Defect smirks back.

"I love consulting."

PE jargons!

"Incomprehensible jargon is the hallmark of a profession.” - Kingman Brewster

As a consultant, the bread and butter of your job lies in using the right words at the right time. The strategically positioned verbalization of an utterly ludicrous riposte designed to discombobulate the listener is usually the key to remain employed. See what I mean?

Here are a couple of useful terminologies to deal with consultants just in case you have to listen to one (sigh!), work with one (ouch!) or worse, hire one (how did you screw up that bad?!).

Private equity is the “in” thing these days. Some jargons to survive in the tough world of PE:

Target: Usually has a red dot in the center (see pic 1), with concentric circles (optional, see pic 2). Commonly associated with a retail chain in the US (see pic 3).
Also (in PE jargon), a company that wants to sell itself because its management has risen to its level of incompetence and has run out of intelligent ideas to make it better.

Picture 1: Red dot target

Picture 2: Target with concentric circles

Picture 3: Target retail

Bidder: The pseudo variety is usually seen at Christie’s or Sotheby’s. The shady kind hangs around in Ladbrokes and race courses.
In PE, its another company whose management is so incompetent, that it actually has intelligent ideas to make the target better! Usually flush with funds, with no idea what to do with the money. A spoilt rich kid who wants to teach manners to a brat. You get the idea.

Turnaround: Jargon used by the bidder to describe his idea for a target which is fresh out of any hope of getting back to normal. Bidders, consultants and degenerate gamblers are eternal optimists, you see!

Ringfence: The hedge that Bilbo Baggins built around his garden to safeguard his precious.
In PE consulting, it’s a group of people who work like junkies for 2 weeks on a PE case, and then sit around waiting for a month in rehab for the next PE case fix.