The Office Chronicles

I’ve always wondered how the person on the other end feels when someone takes her on a cell phone trip to the bathroom. I guess they don’t mind? I don’t know, it seems a little disrespectful to say the least, but I guess if nobody cares, who am I to judge? And to show my approval, I like to flush constantly during their conversation whether I need to or not.

Yesterday, in between my own flushes, I heard the funniest thing.

“Did you send the invitations?”

“Did you handwrite them?”

“What about the envelopes? Did you handwrite the envelopes?”

“Good. I think that’s always so much more personal.”

If anybody knows personal, it’s you, honey.

Flush.

There is something in Indiana I call “The Indiana Man Syndrome”. I don’t know if it’s the accent (or the lack thereof), the formal enunciation, the candid emotion, but there are an extraordinary amount of married men who, frankly, seem gay. My first encounter with it was more behavioral: Two men I worked with ate their lunches (packed in little lunchboxes by their wives) together in an enclave behind closed doors every day. Men where I come from wouldn’t do this.

Now, I have nothing against anything any-sexual, be it hetero-, homo-, this-ho-, that-ho-, a-, etc. But I don’t enjoy people who can’t just pick one and own it. Be honest with yourself and the rest of us, I say. Be proud. Don’t pretend. It’s like lying. And don’t think I don’t know. It’s insulting. And creepy.

I am sitting across from a man who is a grandfather. He gets excited (think full-on-girly-giddiness with flailing hands and bouncy feet) about the most questionable things.

Yesterday, he created a ruckus because someone asked him about his color-coded folders.

“Oh, my, yes! I JUST LO-O-O-O-V-V-V-E my folders. I don’t want to think about having to be without them.

I have blue folders for jobs I must do today. I have red folders for jobs due in a week. I have green folders for jobs that I repeat each month.

I enjoy them so much!”

(See? Now, I ask ya: Is this normal man talk?)

“That’s a great setup. Do you mind if I steal your idea?”

“Oh, my, no!!! You’ll love it! You can buy color-coded folders at Staples. They’re right down the road. And I think you could get your system up and running for less than $20.”

“I’ll go today. Thanks, Dan!”

“Call me when you get it together and I’ll stop by your office. You can show off what you created. I know you’ll be soooo happy.”

I want to saw off a toe with my color-coded Bic pen. It would have to be less painful.

There is a receptionist who rightfully spends her entire day on the phone.  Most of it, though, is apparently spent on personal conversations, because she’s always baby-talking into the receiver.  (If it’s business, it ain’t right.)

“Awww. I’m so sawwie. Want me to kiss it?”

“Ooo be cawefuw. I wuv ooo too much fo’ ooo to get huwt.”

Upon investigation, she’s talking to her children. She has two daughters and a son, the youngest of whom is 42 years old. They have children who have children of their own.

How can a person not know?

Ah, the holidays in an office. The office manager has a huge bucket of popcorn sent in by a customer. 

“Grab you some popcorn,” she says as she hands me a paper towel. “You can put it in this.”

I look, but the thought of putting my hand in a big ol’ bucket where fifity other hands had been makes me want to vomit.

“You’re sweet. But, no thanks.” 

“Scrooge.” (She thinks I’m weird anyway, ever since I commented about the decorated tampon machine.)

Why, Lock-it-Man, why???

Maybe if I understood, I’d understand. Why do you lock your office door every time you leave? If you go to your friend’s office down the hall to check in about Sunday football games, you lock your door. If you go to what I guess is the bathroom, you lock your door. If you go to lunch, you lock your door. If you go to a meeting, you lock your door. If you go speak to an employee five feet from your office, you lock your door.

I can’t stand not knowing why. It’s not that I’m annoyed by it or am complaining about it, I’m just so stinkin’ curious.

What the heck is in your office? I’ve looked in there when I know you’re out of the office and I can’t see a thing that would cause you do this. I don’t see equipment or filing cabinets or anything that would make one think you required all this security.

I have no answers. I don’t even have any guesses. I give up. Not really, though, because I still wonder every time I think of you. And I want to write a song to the tune of RocketMan and sing it to you until you tell me why.

“We farm.”

This overheard during an all-morning-long phone conversation with an insurance agent. With a little googling effort on my part, I discover she is what’s called a Poll-Ette. I thought it had something to do with voting at first, but no, she’s with an organization that promotes cow education. I think that means they educate people about cows, not the other way around.

What’s that expression about being raised in a barn? Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good farmer, but I can’t say I want one confined to a cubicle next to me. They’re not meant for cubicle dwelling. They have outside behavior.

The constant chair movement. The radio. The phone calls. The outside voice. The opening and closing of drawers every day and all day long. And the chewing. I know, it’s just too obvious to insert a cow/cud comparison here, so I won’t, but I hear unnatural levels of chewing.

Oprah did an audience participation test recently called “Are you rude?” One of the tell-tale signs you were rude was whether or not you had ever typed on your computer while talking on the phone. This is something I would never do. It’s rude. But guess who does? Ol’ Poll-Ette.

So where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Which brings me back to the farm and the insurance. And that I think I’d rather try to get my work done sitting next to a cow than a Poll-Ette.

A long, long time ago, I worked in a small Georgia town and sat too close to a gal who was a little older than me at the time, but had almost grown children. Two daughters, 18 and 17. She had married her husband, Gary, the day after her high school graduation. They were that much in love. And as she liked to let us know, all those years later, still were. 

She spent hours on the phone each day talking to Gary and her girls. He was a firefighter and had some extra time. One of the girls was out of high school and wasn’t in a rush to get a job, so she had some extra time, too. 

While not on the phone, she socialized. But the only thing she talked about was Gary and the girls. Gary and the girls. Gary and the girls. The girls were so this, so that. Just joys. She was proud as punch of both of them. They were funny, pretty, smart, popular (“their phones just ring off the hook”), you name it. And Gary. Well, he was just the bestest man, the bestest husband, the bestest looking, the bestest fireman, the bestest cook, the bestest in every room of the house. 

And she was the expert on bestest men, after all. On and on and on. Twenty years. Gary. Girls. Twenty. Gary. Girls. Gary. Gary. Gaaaaaarrry. Ahhhhh. She’d sigh. She’d actually sigh when she talked about him. 

“I’m sorry ya’ll don’t have what I have.” 

Yup. I still have a clear picture of where I was. Sitting three people away (it was the farthest spot I could get) at a long lunchroom table. Rather than schooling her right there, we calmly pointed out to her that since Gary worked 24 on and 24 off at the firehouse, her twenty years of marriage was really the equivalent of ten, which, while still envious and all, is not quite to the same level. 

What we really wanted to point out was the problem with her claim to perfection. There was something about Gary and the girls that the whole town knew that she didn’t. First, the girls: being well-known and in demand high school meth dealers was mistaken by Mom for popularity. Second, Gaarrrrrrrrrrrrry: he was sleeping with everything in town. 

So, while she’d go on and on and on, we’d say nothing. But we knew that we knew and that made listening to her almost like entertainment. Plus, she was either the queen of denial or just stupid. No matter, both were just icing on the cake of satisfaction.

There was a man named Robert who I’ll always remember fondly. What a nut.

Probably close to his 60th year, with at least that many botox injections. He reminded me of Liza Minnelli’s “husband”. Robert was better looking, but he had that same plastic appearance.

There were six of us in a room that under normal circumstances would have been someone’s office. Three desks facing each of the longer walls. Robert got a corner, but it was still beneath him. He was too good for his job, his lot in life, his partner, his employer, his house, this city, you name it. If you put a man like this in a room this small with contractors (even though he was one of us), it doesn’t take long for something to snap in somebody.

He would later tell us that he had to persuade three of his friends with offices (this was meant to point out that he knew more important and better people than us) to relinquish their rolling whiteboards. Granted, they can be used for room dividers, but he put them all around himself. So, he’d sit at his desk surrounded by these three rolling walls of whiteboard to separate himself from us, the riff-raff. I always loved his busiest days, because he would open and close one of them like it was a real door and it was so fun to watch.

Nothing has made me happier about getting to my desk each morning since. I’d get to the office door each day and stop to smell the roses of being exposed to such an unapologetic fruitcake. I’d look at him (yes, he could still be seen, but we never told him) between these whiteboards and couldn’t help but laugh. He always ignored me, though, because after all, it couldn’t have anything to do with him – he couldn’t be seen.

He couldn’t conjure up a secretary, so he wrote “Robert is OUT” on one of the whiteboards with a box beside it that he’d check when he’d leave and erase when he was at his desk. I really don’t think he had any idea that he was still visible. It didn’t take long for us to write things on the whiteboard while he was out. We’d add things like “…to lunch” and “..of his mind” and “….finding more walls” and “…talking to better people than you” and ”…..and invisible, so please knock”. A gal who sat by the door would keep an eye out so we could erase our notes before he saw them.

Robert made for hours of crazy room-full-of-contractors fun. And yet, he never knew. I hope he’s somewhere nice with real walls and better people.

I worked on a project with a woman who became the fourth person on my list of “deal-breakers” (people with whom I refuse to work – so far there are five). Her name was Felicia. I had a hamster named Felicia when I was a kid. I have fond memories of the hamster. 

Felicia – the human – was a combination of attempted bitch and idiot. Attempted, because it’s impossible to be both. (This might seem belittling. It is.)

She had Bible scriptures taped all over her overhead cubicle cabinets. I think it was her contribution to teach and help her fellow man, because they were all at perfect eye level for passers-by or visitors, but, of course, out of her line of sight. 

She loved to say things like, “I’m sorry if you feel that way” and “You’re not an employee here” and “I’m sure we can do better” and “You misunderstood me.” 

She carried her $1,500 (but who really knows) purse to meetings. Most meetings were twenty feet from her desk. And the damn purse always managed to make its way to the middle of the conference room table. (I used to love watching her repeatedly move it here and then there – all the while scouring the room for attention.)

She put MBA beside her name in her email signature.

‘Nuff said. 

Well, maybe just one more….

She was a certified personal trainer, and loved to talk about how cute that made her. She also fell asleep for hours at her desk every day. On particularly fun days, you could hear her snore. It’s hard to be impressed by a fitness expert with that kind of energy.

Then, today, almost two years later, a gift from the Heavens. Her name popped up on some networking website I ran across.

Her list of credentials and skills said many things, but ended with this: 

Creative and detailed oriented.

That’s no typo, my friends.