I am half way through an employer-funded Project Management course and it is going great. I have reached several sobering conclusions about the corporate world, however.

The first is that whatever you do is pointless. You spend the whole time away from work picturing your colleagues running around frantically, desperate to get a hold of you… Things are coming crashing down around them… At least one person is in tears. Then you duck into work at the end of the day to check if everything is all right and several people looking quizzically at you. What do you mean you weren’t here today? I thought you were just sick or visiting a client or something. No, everything is fine.

The second is that more than half the work force should be made redundant. When you learn Project Management you are taught how to deal with the whole ‘too many chefs’ thing –everyone wanting to give their irrelevant opinions about how something that does not concern them will actually happen. The second lesson is make sure you get sign off for whatever you do, which entails running around looking for chefs and asking them to pointlessly meddle in your affairs because if they don’t then you will burst into flames right then. This process takes about ten weeks. The third lesson is to allow for all this pointlessness by tripling the amount of time it takes to do something.

The third and most upsetting is that every damned thing is a spreadsheet. A list of seven people that are coming to a lunch function is a spreadsheet. Year on Year figures –which is actually just two numbers- must be sent in a spreadsheet. And I hate them. They are a ruse used by people to convince themselves that they are doing actual work. I could give a print out of numbers to someone and they will spend half the day putting those numbers in a spreadsheet –no analysis, just numbers. Then some of the columns will have colours added to them. Now… If I gave you the list of numbers that means I actually have the numbers. What is it about seeing empty cells on a computer screen that tricks them into thinking these numbers must be entered? For the large part it is colouring-in for grown ups.

If any of this made sense to you or if you currently have a spreadsheet open in another window then you are in trouble. Climb a mountain. Move to New Zealand: you can have my job. But you won’t get it unless you can whip up the prettiest, most colourful damned spreadsheets in the land.

G Preston White is a New Zealand-based freelance writer. He can be contacted via his website and blog. www.prestonwhite.co.nz