Its been done before, but …

Ways you know you have been a consultant for too long (not all of these are me, most obviously the wedding related ones). Hat tip to my anon. colleague who brainstormed these with me. No particular order.

1) When someone tells you they are going on holiday to a place you have already been to, all you can talk about is the awesome itinerary you produced in excel …

2) … and then you really want to pass it on to your friends as a framework for their holiday

3) You plan your wedding with highly flexible excel spreadsheet, sorting it by person, task and nature of responsibility. You refuse to give up ownership of said spreadsheet on the day of your wedding

4) Reading the newspaper, your primary thought is how little the headlines resemble the articles below them, and how the articles themselves have no coherent structure

5) When you go on holiday, you don't consider staying in a hotel less than 5 stars, even after you realise this time you are paying for it yourself

6) You drink sparkling not still

7) Being separated from your laptop for more than 12 hours makes you uneasy / physically unwell

8) Whenever someone gives you a compliment, you go on alert for the inevitable criticism that will follow

9) You start wondering why doctors and lawyers get all those cool TV shows, and consultants get nothing

10) You start a blog on consulting

11) You are satisfied you have achieved “buy-in” when your girlfriend agrees to sleep with you

12) You chart your success at bars, and then have a long think about decomposing the drivers behind that success or lack thereof

13) Despite understanding the last thing that happens at a steering committee is steering, you still stay up until 2am getting the document ready

14) The highest praise you can give to a restaurant is that the service is quick

15) You would never, ever, spend good money on a consultant

16) You have eaten a club sandwich from hotel room service in excess of 100x

17) You consider the full stop to be your greatest enemy

18) You often muse that the local sandwich joint would benefit from some judiciously applied process improvement

19) You justify the fact you don't get paid as much as bankers by the fact you don't work as hard, only to discover that you do

20) You dream about becoming close personal friends with the data guy

Any more that people can think of? As can been seen from above, humour is not mandatory, but always appreciated :)