This is so typical. I got kicked off the Leadership Committee at my company by my CEO after at least two years of being on it, and was informed of this on Monday by my boss. Personally, I don't give a rat's patootie, because I always hated those meetings and thought they were a huge waste of my time.

Yesterday, I hung around around until after the Executive Committee meeting was over to ask my boss whether I had to attend today's Leadership Committee meeting which always starts at 8am, after a 2 hour morning commute. He never got a chance to discuss it with our CEO, and told me "do what you have to do." Told him "Well, then, I'll see you at 11:00 at the Brunch Club meeting, and will try to get a seat next to you, if you let me know where you're sitting."

That didn't happen, because by the time we got to the conference room, people had already taken every seat at the table. My boss had forewarned me to tell another department head like me who had also been axed from the committee, but didn't know it yet, and showed up for the meeting that "I'd been given a reprieve to work on client XXX" if she asked me how I managed to get out of the meeting. I never thought she'd actually ask, but at lunchtime after Brunch Club, she walked into my office and asked. I grinned, and said "XXX," even though it was a complete lie.

Yes, I was working like a dog on that client's account, and yes, I was thrilled to get out of the meeting, but it wasn't that client who was keeping me from attending. I simply used it as an extremely plausible excuse, when pressed for an answer. I also didn't attend the afternoon session of the committee meeting after Brunch Club, nor did I attend the expense-account restaurant dinner after the meeting.

Mentioned to my boss that the other department head had indeed stopped by to ask why I wasn't there, and he replied that she'd been there taking notes all morning, looking around. This woman doesn't normally take many notes. Her office is next door to mine, and the walls are paper thin. She was there at the time. Fortunately my boss is pretty good at lip-reading, as am I.

I made it through a conference call with said client XXX this afternoon over lunch hour with two sales people of ours, one from NY, and the other who was in town from L.A. Every time I get off the phone with that client, I feel like I just won the reality game show "Survivor." Now the two sales folks are suggesting I travel out there to meet the client face to face to help increase their comfort level with us, since the client and I are both research people. Half of what we discuss on these calls sails right over the tops of the heads of our sales folks, but the client and I speak the same language. Okay, if I have to go, I have to, but I'm not going w/o the NY saleswoman. I'm so damn sick of being served up on a silver platter as the sacrificial lamb every time we have a "difficult" client. Thrown to the lions is more like it.

Let's put it this way: I composed a draft resignation letter last night at home, and don't even yet have a resume drafted. It's getting to be that bad.

I'm still on the Operations Committee, which meets tomorrow at 8am, so I have to remember to set my alarms an hour earlier than usual when I schlep up to bed this evening. It makes sense for me to be on this operations management committee, but not really the other one from which I got booted. Seriously, I prefer having to wake up at 5am only once every six weeks or so, instead of twice in a row. I don't care if 5 people within the company consider it a "demotion" of sorts. It allows me more time to get my job done during normal office hours.