Our company arranged for us an eight hour training session with RMIT‘s School of Geological Engineering. We environmental specialists were to learn how to classify soil consistently. We would get hands-on experience reading geological maps and differentiating between silty clay with sand inclusions, and sandy silt with gravel inclusions.

Our lecturer, Paulino, greeted us with abrupt enthusiasm. Seventeen of us sat in the soils laboratory, our legs dangling from high chairs. Paulino introduced himself and turned on his Powerpoint presentation.

“Look! I have new gadget!” he announced in his occasionally incomprehensible (Italian? Portuguese?) accent. With a flourish, he waved in front of us a stubby metallic wand. “See? It’s laser pointer and… Ah ha! Changes slides too.” The presentation jumped ahead. He clicked backwards then forwards.

We were suitably impressed.

“I only got it yesterday,” he said. He looked at us all slyly. “I charged it to you guys, you know.”

There was silence as we absorbed this news.

“Don’t look at me like that!” he cried in glee. “I know your type! Always charging things to jobs. Consultants! That’s what you do. Well — now I charge you!”

It was true and we knew it. We all began laughing.

“Of course, Paulino,” Sherri affirmed. Sherri is the team leader for contaminated land in the Environment Group. “Of course you should charge your new gadget to the company. In fact, you should have bought an even more expensive one!”