The weather was cold, stormy and the airport connections delayed, causing our team to set for hours together at airport boarding areas. Hardly anything enjoyable. After a time of watching the monitors for news related to our next flight. It all seemed to have gone into an endless futile loop. The executive level members separated themselves to the bar and the rest of us began to talk amongst ourselves. We talked about the technical problems and the monotony of the seemingly endless testing that followed whenever even the slightest changes in the hardware configurations was made.

But it was the human element involved that became our main conversation item.

There had been clashes of management styles and petty conflicts, as recurring events, during the two year lead time. There appeared to be, as we talked to be a general feeling that we had collectively and as individually had somehow survived an ordeal of some kind. There was open pride in having succeeded. There was also some guilt about the human problems that occurred along the way.

We talked of the several team members that had variously quit, been fired or transferred out. We spoke of what different members knew about these lost co-worker’s problems. Some of these had had ugly personality changes, some had illicit love affairs and/or abuse involved personal lives. A common thread was; that nearly all the lost team members had taken to heavy drink and/or drug usage, (legal RX, street or both) just before they left the team.

A few days after I was back at work and in the security of my home space, I had a dream that has bits and pieces of that trip and some strange twists.
I am in a window lined corridor type construction that is common in modern airports. I am with two women, one is a team member from the recent trip and the other is an attractive, polite, but rather distant and impersonal person, that I know to be divorced and that she lives alone. She was not on the trip, but I do see her from time to time at corporate headquarters. I have never approached her, although I have thought about doing so.

In the dream for some reason the three of us are at an access point of the corridor where different aisles lead to different flights. The two women check the documentation and boarding passes and start to argue over which way to proceed. The argument turns nasty, and they both turn to me to say which one is right. As I don’t really know, I try to make a decision from what is printed on my boarding pass. I struggle to read it, but the numbers for the aisle and the check in desk are too blurred to read.

Both women are now angry with me, each saying I was unworthy and incompetent, or they wouldn’t be in the mess of potentially missing the flight.

The windows along the corridor have curtains that can be pulled across to shut out the sun, when needed. They are open now and planes parked outside can be clearly seen.

The ‘team’ woman in anger or frustration, pulls the curtain across the window and partly wraps herself in it, as if not to see us at all. This infuriates the ‘corporate woman’ and she pulls out a butane lighter and sets fire to it. I try to smother the flames but fear I am going to get burnt. Also I think the ‘team woman’ misinterpreted my actions as attacking her.

I struggle to get awake and a part of the dream replays, only now, it is I, who grabs the lighter from the ‘corporate woman’ and make sure the curtain burns.

I am repelled at the thought of such maliciousness on my part and get awake enough to turn the light on.