So far, I’ve spent time with the police, then time with the emergency task force and now I can’t find anybody to listen to what I have to say. Picking up from where I left off yesterday:

We wait until about 10 minutes past the hour when I’m supposed to start and by this time there are five people in the room – Kathy and me and three others who have straggled in to get a rest from walking around the show. Remember, this is a big trade show.

I rationalize that I’ll give my speech anyway, because it will be good practice, but with that low a number of people, it’s more of a conversation than a speech.

After about 15 minutes, it suddenly enters my consciousness that a cleaning woman has worked her way forward about half-way through the room. She’s actually been working for quite a while. I decide to bring this to everybody’s attention.

I say, “I’ve never given a speech before when somebody is actually cleaning up while I’m talking.”

She says, quite nicely, “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I bothering you?”

I say, “No, not really. And since you’ve just increased the size of my audience by 33%, why don’t you stay.”

So she sits down and starts looking at my slides with more interest than anybody else.

Another ten minutes later, the alarm goes off again. I’m thinking, I simply can’t let any of these people leave.

So I keep talking, the lights keep flashing and the alarm is going “AWOOGA AWOOGA”.

We finally got through the session and I said, with as much good grace as I could, thank you for your “thunderous applause”, and I made my escape.

To add insult to injury, my own sister came to the conference. It was the first time she’s ever attended any function where I’ve been making a presentation and even she went to a different session.

So now, whenever I’m speaking to a (sizable) audience, I say, “Thank you for being here today. Although, remember, the score card is still out on how good an audience you are.”

Alex Carrick

Find Canadian construction-related economic articles in Canadian Construction Market News and in the Economic Outlook section of Daily Commercial News.

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