Curatio currently ranks at #2 on my job length-of-tenure list, checking it at 7+ years (close to 8 years if you count my service as Beth’s understudy).*
The company changed a lot in the time I was there, and nowhere was that more evident than in the tradition known as “weekly status.” When I first reached Curatio, this meeting was an entertaining free-for-all where all six (!) participants just let the one-liners, putdowns, and practical jokes fly (who can forget the classic Elayne D&D die roll at Denise’s expense?). It was perfect cartooning fodder, and in fact somewhere in my sketchpad I have a very preliminary drawing of a typical scene from those old status meetings. But aside from that one sketch—though the idea always nagged at me—I never got into drawing any Curatio-inspired cartoons.
One random week (much to the bemusement of my coworkers), I took a bunch of camera-phone pictures during the status meeting, and I used them to rough out this drawing. I’m not sure why I never finished inking this in. Short attention span is a pretty good guess.
This drawing does a fair job of capturing my view of these meetings. But the fact is that status meetings during the era of this drawing were pretty button-down affairs. Witty one-liners had by this point long been supplanted by beaten-to-death corporate buzzphrases, and that doesn’t translate well to cartoon. I’m not sure exactly when or why status jumped the proverbial shark, but I’m guessing it had something to do with Donner and the optospectometer.
I should note that this drawing is based on what my pictures captured. Denise—if you ever see this—you were indeed having the mini-freakout depicted here. And I am certain I was playing Yahtzee.
*The two companies that I worked for the longest were both well-established businesses…and both wound up closing. Hmmmm.
monsiana 
