Mergers and Aquisitions

This spring I took a business management course at BYU that focused a lot on organizational change. I must say that it has become extremely salient to me in the last month. I have come into a company that is still trying to normalize since its merger with SBC that is in the process of acquiring Bell South on the 4th of November if the FCC approves it. To make matters even more interesting I am part of the "market response group" at AT&T. This means that my team's goal is to "respond to the market" At any given time our entire focus can change. If the merger goes through then what we focus on could be completely different than it is today. With the complexity of T1's T3's, MIS products, DSL, VOIP, plain old telephone lines, video conferencing it's already confusing enough. After the merger it is quite probable that we will also be responsible for selling Cingular since the company would be completely owned by AT&T at that point... and will probably be called "at&t wireless" once again. Anyway... now that I have completely blown away any possibility of an entertaining post for anyone who decides to read this I am going to tell you a joke. So this blonde girl goes to this guys house and wants to do something to make money. He told her that he would pay her $150 dollars to paint his porch. She said she would. He thought he was getting such a good deal because the porch wrapped all around the house, and he figured she didn't know it. His wife asked what he was going to do if she did a bad job, and he said he just wouldn't pay her. He already had 3 gallons of paint for her to do the whole job. Well she came back and said she was all done. He looked at her and said, "you're already done?" She said, "yep, and there was even enough paint for 3 coats! But you were wrong mister, it's not a porch it's a Lexus." hehehe