Monday 23 March 2015

...of a briefing

The whole thing will be explained to me again next day in the course of a briefing with the theoretician. Thus I learn that a sophisticated three-tier system of training has been set up by the Ministry (therefore by him, if I understand things correctly). It is a question of how best to respond to the needs of the users by means of a complementary, but organically independent, package of training programs.
In real terms I will be involved in a tour that will take me firstly to Rouen for a duration of two weeks, then to Dijon for a week, and lastly to La Roche-sur-Yon for four days. I will leave on the first of December and be home again for Christmas, so as to enable me to 'spend the holidays with my family'. The human aspect has not been forgotten, then. How splendid.
I also learn - and it's a surprise - that I will not be alone in undertaking these training programmes. In effect my company has decided to send two people. We will work in tandem. For twenty-five minutes, and in an agonizing silence, the theoretician points out the advantages and the disadvantages of the tandem training. Finally, in extremis, the advantages seem to carry the day.
I am completely in the dark about the identity of the second person who is required to accompany me. It's probably someone I know. In any event nobody has seen fit to notify me.

Cleverly taking advantage of an unrelated remark he has just made, the theoretician makes the observation that it is a real pity this second person (whose identity will remain a mystery until the last minute) is not there, and that nobody thought it wise to invite him. Pushing on with his argument, he contrives to implicitly suggest that in these conditions my own presence is itself just as useless, or at least of limited use. Which is precisely what I'm thinking.

[Whatever, Houellebecq, M.]

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