Saturday, September 04, 2004
Tensions Coming To A Boil

A quick introduction to the rest of the cast of characters in the Office X-Men and Brotherhood of Evil Mutants so that I can relate this incident more clearly.It is amazing I'd actually need to write about so many people at one go but at least this will complete the cast for the entire floor.

X-Men (The old people):
Psylocke:The Indian girl who sits right next to Prof X
Dazzler:Another Indian girl
Archangel:Wolverine's best-friend
Iceman:The other Chinese guy (sits right beside Archangel)
Polaris:A Chinese girl who sits beside Iceman (on the right)

Brotherhood of Evil Mutants:
Mr Sinister:A Malay guy
Destiny:The new girl,the only other female in this group
Avalanche:I called him Mr Plump previously
Juggernaut:The tall guy sitting next to the pantry

So the complete cast of characters read like this:
X-Men (S-branch)
Colossus:一粒蛋
Jubilee:另一粒蛋
Jean Grey:Out of action for the moment on MC
Cyclops:Me
Wolverine:Master typist
Banshee:Indian loudmouth
Storm:The counsellor
Rogue:Incompetent leader
Shadowcat:Elder stateswoman
Nightcrawler:The woman nobody sees or talks to

X-Men (C-branch)
Professor X:Oldest living fossil in the office
Psylocke
Dazzler
Archangel
Iceman
Polaris

Brotherhood of Evil Mutants
Magneto:Female leader of the group,Pantene
Sabretooth:Desperately trying to join the S-branch X-Men
Mastermind:Scholar with the double initials
Toad:Chewbacca
Mr Sinister
Destiny
Avalanche
Juggernaut

Neutrals
Blob:Current C-branch head
Mystique:Designate c-branch head

That's it.The complete cast.I won't talk about the assistants here because that will get really complicated,if it is not already,although some of these fellows are actually very helpful and diplomatic fellows.Actually here goes(this is from Prof X's account):

The c-branch had to do some kind of work improvement project and Mr Sinister was appointed the leader.But the fellow is so bochap,he totally does nothing about it at all.Does not hold meetings to brainstorm ideas,does nothing.So when the deadline comes and Mystique asks what project they are doing.Mr Sinister conveniently hands up a proposal that nobody had agreed on because he never asked anybody about it.Worse still,the project is one of those undoable projects that is tagged onto the previous project as a secondary rejected idea.And it is a project proposal he doesn't even have any idea about what the whole thing is about.How a leader can be so incompetent and doesn't know what is happening is beyond me...wait a minute,that sounds like Rogue already.

Anyway,realising perhaps that he does need to have a brainstorming session to come up with ideas,he calls for a meeting.Without telling people what to do and what to prepare.So people just go in there and have a meeting without an agenda.Again,have anyone heard of such a practice?No agenda to tell the participants?So the c-branch went in there and Mr Sinister started talking about how to do the "undoable" project.The meeting then somehow degenerated from talking about work improvement to some gossip session.Prof X,wanting to cut the nonsense,then asked Mr Sinister how he thinks the project can be done.Mr Sinister,not knowing what he was doing and some of the Brotherhood members started talking about stuff which of course they have no idea of how to go about doing or did not seem to realise cannot be done.The c-branch X-Men were probably aware that these were not workable but didn't want to interrupt so Prof X became the unofficial spokesperson for this group(just like Mr Sinister is trying to be the spokesperson of the Brotherhood)and told them the ideas were impractical.Mr Sinister saw that he had no choice and had to ask for ideas from the floor.This gets a bit interesting here.

Mr Sinister started probing for ideas from the floor but no voices were forthcoming.One of the assistants (the oldest and most experienced one)was trying to give some ideas but they were either already done,not truly a work process improvement or hard to do given the timeframe so they were all dismissed.Then something interesting happened.Mr Sinister talked about induction and started probing the Brotherhood about what they had to say.Nobody came forward to say a thing.All silence.So Mr Sinister kept probing and probing.It conspired that the Brotherhood had two meetings before this meeting to discuss on things.But the c-branch X-Men were totally excluded from these meetings.Mr Sinister claimed that these meetings were just to brief the Brotherhood on processes of work improvement.It seems that at this juncture,they probably talked about something more...the induction,for instance.But the thing was,Mr Sinister obviously had something to say about it yet is too cowardly to say and wanted to use the others as his mouthpiece.When they wouldn't talked,he kept asking and asking.This got the entire c-branch X-Men black-faced as they are the old staff and they are the ones doing the induction.If the Brotherhood had something to say,fine,but they should bring it out right into the open.Instead they are just shifting responsibility from one to another with nobody having the guts to say anything and Mr Sinister doing his incessant probing that irritated the hell out of the X-Men.Prof X finally had enough and said "Don't waste my time.Why don't we go back first and try to prepare and brainstorm some ideas first before coming back here?At least we'd have something concrete."Mr Sinister looked at him and asked,"Do you think that would help?The whole branch has exhuasted their ideas and going back wouldn't do a thing."This got Prof X really pissed and he then refused to talk.The thing was Mr Sinister did not even ask them to prepare anything prior to the meeting and now he is saying that they do not have the means to come up with anything anyway.Prof X later told me that he do not think for one minute that the people in the branch will be so dumb as not to be able to come up with one single idea amongst themselves if they had prepared.That's that.Later one of the assistants,J,helped matters a bit by saying that as ideas are not feasible,they should indeed go back and think about what to do before going back for a meeting.That ended the meeting.But not the episode.

Blob,having heard of the commotion and saw Prof X's black face first hand,decided to call in the branch to"understand the situation" and for separate peacemaking sessions.Two separate groups.The Brotherhood and the X-Men respectively.Of course,whether there was any positive outcome is debatable.The Brotherhood would not even share lifts together with the X-Men,I heard and they don't greet us too.What the?Avalanche now apparently dislikes Prof X.And it seems that Archangel never liked Mr Sinister and calls him a piece of shit.Dazzler,who is the most mild-mannered person in the office got frustrated working with Magneto and was so appalled by the non-sharing episode in the lift,she confronted them.

I have only two words for the Brotherhood:GROW UP!I want to make a qualifier that actually most of the Brotherhood are working in their first jobs here and most of them have been working for under a year so they are,maybe,not used to working life and office norms.But this is how things work in the real life work,you sheltered sissies,so get over it and stop acting like kids.Blob has been known to walk out of a meeting so they haven't seen anything yet.Indeed this would probably have been a normal meeting had it not been for the presence of so many newcomers.They have neevr faced such a situation before but I've heard Prof X has always been blunt so that was normal.He is quite that sort of person.I guess they haven't seen one of the ex co-ordinators in action yet.If he didn't go overseas to study,maybe they'd really see what an "outburst" is like.

With such activity,things don't seem to be getting any better in the Office X-Men's environment.Now we just got to see if there's a cold war looming.Things may get interesting and we'd see what happens.