managers: don't do this

[marnanel]

This is me when I was eighteen months old, and cute.

Twenty-five years later, at work, I arrived early for the weekly all-staff planning meeting. I turned over my copy of the agenda, and to my horror, naked baby me was smiling back.

Nobody else had arrived, so I quickly checked the other face-down papers around the table. All of them had the photo. I went back to my seat and waited, with trepidation.

The others arrived.

“Just before we start the meeting,” said the CFO, “here’s a bit of fun. You all have a photo of one of the people here, as a baby. I found it when I googled their name last night. Can you guess who it is?”

I LEFT THE COMPANY SHORTLY AFTERWARDS

(Not just because of the baby photo. My desk was near an external door; one day a process server came in and handed me a writ about an unpaid debt. So I took it to the CFO, who said “just put it on the pile with the others.”)