Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

TWIL: How I Have Failed at Work for a Decade

This "transparency" thing is taking over at work and people are being really frank.

A long-time co-worker shared with me that when she started she had been warned to never ask me questions.

I confess, I would often hear new workers asking other people questions when I was right there. Me. Me, the expert. Or Me, their mentor. "Why aren't they coming to me? I know the answer. I love one-on-one training. I love teaching. Am I intimidating or something?"

I was surprised to hear from my co-worker that the word went out among new employees that if anyone asked me a quiet question in an email about, say, "How do I make a pivot-table in Excel," I would march to that person's desk and say loudly, "DON'T WORRY I WILL BE GLAD TO SHOW YOU HOW TO MAKE A PIVOT-TABLE IN EXCEL," and everyone would know of their ignorance.

While I am delighted this co-worker told me this "funny" story,  I am also dismayed to learn I have had this reputation for years. Really dismayed.

Also, I cannot WAIT until the next time this particular co-worker asks me anything. "OH YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE THAT TEMPLATE IS LET ME GET EVERYONE ON  A TEAMS CALL AND WE CAN ALL HELP YOU."

Zoom Rules

I notice that Zoom work conversations are more intense than in-person conversations. (Or at least, what I remember of in-person conversations.)

Rude people are ruder, for one thing. I suppose they sense no one is going to bop them in the nose. (Or possibly, "we" sense no one is going to bop "us" in the nose.) No immediate consequence, because there's no immediate feedback, becuase no one is making eye contact, because on a grid of six people you can't tell who is looking at you. One person is looking up and to the right, another down and to the left, and only psychopaths look directly at the camera.  When a friend is on screen I've been tempted to say something completely outrageous and slap a post-it to mark where they looked when they looked at my square. 

I've also "pinned" a friend, where you make the friend's face take over your entire screen, but I can't do that for long. I feel like I'm violating them, get creeped out, un-pin them.

I wonder if we'll all stop making eye contact in real life, and all be recklessly rude when this is all over. 

TWIL: Three Bears

I was stewing about two co-workers who share nothing but a job title. One is too slow, one is too fast; one is flight, one is fight; and the only thing have in common is that neither appreciates the other. 

"His porridge is too cold, her porridge is too hot," I grumbled to myself, then wondered what I was thinking about, because I had almost forgotten about Goldilocks and the Three Bears. 

That led me to Wikipedia, where I learned a number of things I didn't know.

• Goldilocks is a 19th century story. I thought all fairy tales went back to Middle Ages.
• In the original, Goldilocks was, per Wikipedia, "an obscene old woman." Hello, I'm right here. I found the original, and I would protest she is not obscene, just profane. 
• My need to have a third bullet here goes back to a literary "rule of three."

Since the day I learned about Goldilocks, the two coworkers appear to be joining forces and assigning each other work appropriate to their personalities, so I don't have to request they promote some other wee baby bear so the porridge is just right. 

Now Available at Work

I have some rules for work.

One rule, Don't be Friends Above Your Pay Grade, has recently been amended to Don't Flirt Above Your Pay Grade, because I can't go about cutting off any more friends.

Another rule is Don't Alk-Tay About the Og-Blay at Ork-Way. (Which, translated from the PigLatin Don't Talk About the Blog at Work.)

When I started at TeddyJ years ago, they were very strict about the internet. Systems were in place to block YouTube, most coding discussion boards (except for StackOverflow), and all the blogs, including this one. 

A few years ago YouTube opened up. (I immediately inaugurated my laptop by watching a cat video.) Then the discussion boards. 

And most recently, I got to this very blog via my TeddyJ connection.

I don't know how long it will be out there. It seems very unwise.

HR Burka

At some point in the last 20 years, HR departments codified their sexual harassment rules and banned "unsolicited compliments" from the opposite sex. Thus, if I I look nice, the women on my teams can all agree that I look nice, and the men stay silent, as if they cannot see past the impenetrable HR burka.

If I see my friend has shaved his beard and looks 20 years younger, I have to keep quiet, but of course I don't.

I mean, I've been the target of the "nice blouse" compliments. I know compliments can be creepy. But most of the time they're nice. I think there should be an exception of some kind for old friends. Or perhaps a facial hair codicil. 

(I didn't get in any kind of trouble for my compliment, and my friend took it graciously. But still, it felt odd that I was lobbing compliment bombs across the male/female border.)

Work Icebreaker

Meetings at TeddyJ often start with icebreakers. I was born with my built-in icebreaker: my extra thumb. 

I was in a meeting the other day, and the instructor presented us with the oddest icebreaker.

"What's something you did before you were eighteen that you're proud of?"

Completely blank. I truly did not do a thing I was proud of in my youth. I struggled to think of anything, but the thoughts that surfaced were all "kept my head down" and "did what my mom said." It came around to me too soon.

"Nothing," I said. "Survived? I can't think of a thing I did." And she replied that a lot of kids don't survive, so now I'm Aborted Suicide Attempt Girl.

I realize now I had two good options:

1. Lie. I could have published a book of poetry or given a stranger CPR.
2. Say "I was born with an extra thumb" because that still works. I did it before 18 and I'm proud of it.

 

Face Shaming

Earlier this week I was in a small six-person meeting. I looked exactly like this.

Someone on the call was making chit-chat and remarked, "We can tell what Ellen did yesterday: she got some sun."

"No ... Why do you think I got sun?" I was genuinely perplexed. 

"Because of your face. You got a sunburn."

I explained that no, I had no sunburn, that was just my face. And then I blamed the cholesterol medicine, not because I believed it, but because I hoped it might embarrass him, and it did, and I was glad. 

And then I balanced things out by poking my face to prove my skin became white. This amused them. So I was gracious and didn't let them know that for God's sake don't comment on an older woman's face. 

Kindness

Our work project meeting took a break for lunch, and while I did turn off my video, I did not mute. For the past three years this would have been fine, because lunch is when you do the laundry, and make dinner. Who stays at their desk listening to the phone at lunch?  

Who? People at work in the work building having the same meeting from inside a big Zoom-enabled meeting room.

I spent my lunch hour having not one, but two, loud arguments with Gary. And then I came back to my desk in the guest room and saw a teams message that said "Everyone can hear you."

Oh no.

I immediately got on and demanded to know what they'd heard. They claimed they coukdn't really hear anything. I said, "But you heard The Tone, right?' 

They admitted they heard a tone, yes. It only occurred to me after that they could have been listening to Gary bellow as well as my snippy responses. 

I later found out that my team leader was also sitting in the meeting room as everyone enjoyed the entertainment and said, "Out of kindness, can we just mute Ellen's audio?" which was kind.

I survived it, I learned from it, and I don't have to see those people for a few more days.

Forgetful

I was asked to give a status on my current work projects.

These are my thoughts, in order:

Well I had a meeting yesterday. What was it? It was for that project with that woman with the tall hair. The Doomed Project. What's the actual name of the project? What's the status of that project?

I was able to answer after I recalled the name of the woman with the tall hair, Diane, and my status was: "I had a meeting with Diane to discuss her project."

But then the manager said, "So that's XJT. How's it going on the AGW project?"

Crap, I completely forgot I'm on the AGW project. To to be fair, we've only had one kickoff meeting and it was yesterday afternoon. 

I replied the status was much the same as it had been yesterday afternoon and he moved on.

I was still shook that I had blanked out complexity on my two projects when someone reported on another project.

Damnit. I'm on that project too. What is wrong with me?  Why have I forgotten all my projects? 

This amnesia seems to be specifically work-related. I'm still aware of the outstanding list of projects in the hopper for the house. Back in the work office I had a physical list I updated every day. Maybe I need to institute that for the home office.

Team Name

We are all reorganized now at work. I have two bosses now, one for my skill development (both work skills and god help me, social skills) and then another for my task assignments. All the people under these two bosses are then broken up into "high functioning teams" that are then assigned to projects.  There was a lot of team binding thrust on us the first time we tried this: not so much this time around. 

However, as a team we are expected to get a team name. I suggested "The Flying Wallendas," another high functioning team.

While we were discussing on Microsoft Teams the Wallenda family, and if they were good role models, and how many deaths per performance would knock you out of the role model category, and how St. Louis has its own branch of Wallendas at Circus Flora -- while we were doing that our development boss was looking up gifs of the Flying Wallendas and came up with a clip of Karl Wallenda walking a tightrope. 

He did not watch the entire thing before posting it.

And then he did.

And then "NOOOOO! Don't look at that! Not the message I wanted to send AT ALL." Because of course it was one of the times things did not go well for the Wallendas. Karl fell off the tightrope, bounced off a taxi, hit the pavement. 

Of course that sealed the deal, we had a team name just so our boss would relive his embarrassment every time he had to refer to us.

Just yesterday it occured to me Cheech and Chong would be another high performing team. Don't know if that will knock the Flying Wallendas out of the competition.

 

In Which We Were Fired

I was fired once, actually fired. I don't mean semi-fired, like when I disappeared from the schedule at the IHOP, or when my teaching contract was not renewed after I refused to change a kid's failing grade. I mean actually actively fired, pack up, turn in your badge. 

I was a cashier at the university cafeteria, and I was called into the office by my boss, Mr. W____, who asked me to explain how my deposit was 400 dollars short. I couldn't explain. I counted out 800 dollars, wrote 800 dollars on the envelope, slid it into the safe through the slot. And now he was saying there were only 400 dollars in the envelope? 

How could that be? A mystery. 

My boss did not find it mysterious. He fired me, and there were tears, tears all the way home, tears on the phone to my then-boyfriend Gary, who said, sympathetically, "You are clearly upset! So I won't see you tonight. I'll talk to you tomorrow." 

A week later I was in my former workplace, eating lunch, and a fellow cashier told me that since I was last there another person had been called into Mr. W____'s office, again with a short deposit envelope, only this time Mr. W____'s boss noticed a pattern. After Mr. W____ refused to take a lie detector test, he himself was fired. 

Cocaine? Gambling? We wondered, but that would stay a mystery.  I had already nabbed a better job in the library days after I was canned, so I was actually better off. (In addition, Gary learned that when your girlfriend has been fired that is not a reason to break your date.)

I never had trouble getting a job after that, though I never tried for another job where I handled money. I never tried to clear my name, because I felt anyone who knew the situation knew the resolution. The nice thing is, nothing that awful has happened since. 

Personal Work Idiocy

I was put on a team at work, we were given new software, and tasked with making a little practice project. We put about four hours of work into it.

Toward the end, I was just playing with the software. I added our new project to my list of preferred projects in my new workspace, and then I changed my mind, and deleted it from the list. Let me be clear. I deleted it from the list.

It even said, "Are you sure you want to delete this? You will not see it again."

A more accurate warning would have been, "You will not see it again, you, nor any of your kin: it will be gone from not only this list of preferred projects but all the world and all its bytes will be scattered to the ether." 

Because it was not only gone from the list, it was 100% gone.

And because I am compelled to confess all my sins, I told everyone on my team immediately, then I told everyone on the larger team, then I publicly applauded myself for having only done it once in sixty years, then immediately remembered the time I deleted an entire project directory and then I had to tell everyone about that too. 

Why am aI compelled in this way? Good thing I've never done anything criminal. Or good thing I don't remember it if I did.

Seducible Moments

Someone at work introduced a new term, "seducible moment," the moment when you might gets users to commit to what you want. 

Everyone giggled, but by the end of the day even modest young ladies were using the term.

It enraged me.

What I want to do now is to use the term in our next big meeting, but slowly, in an impossibly dry, pointed  tone, with a raised eyebrow, the left one, because it goes higher, so people will know Grandma does not approve of this horseshit.

After years of suppressing my sexuality, prohibitions on my attire, finger shaking and eyebrow raising, now I have managers tossing out sexual terms. First we were told our projects weren't "sexy" enough, now our moments need to be "seducible." 

And this was a male manager introducing the term. Isn't he being suppressed? Isn't he being told never compliment a woman's blouse, never make a double-entendre? Have the tables not turned? No. No, of course not.

Alternatively, reckless cursing has been introduced by the female Big Boss. I wonder if any older men who work for her resent that they had to change their cursing behavior in front of the opposite sex for years and now the ladies are doing it.

I mean, really. (Clucks disapprovingly.)

Not Missing Much

Work officially re-opened last week. I retired my bra-free denim shirt to conform to the revived dress code. 

You wouldn't think they would care what I wear on a Zoom call, but they say they do.

And then I steeled myself for the phone calls. "Ellen, where are you, it's a party and everyone's here and we're having a pot-luck breakfast." But the big reunion day came, and the single report from the office was that no one else was there.

Since then, some leaders have attended planning meetings in person, and my guess is that next month there's going to be a push to get everyone back into the expensive, recently re-designed buildings.

I think of Mom saying "If you're too sick for school then you're too sick to play." Well, if I'm too vulnerable for a concert then I'm too vulnerable for work.

I'm just rehearsing for a fight no one will have with me. It seems as if we'll all just stay propped up in our beds in pajama bottoms and fancy shirts. 

Co-worker Owns Me

I was in a meeting when someone mentioned that April showers bring May flowers, and of course I responded with,"Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote!"

And then I stopped, because that's all I know of Canterbury Tales, just the "April showers" part written in Middle English. 

A co-worker answered, "The droghte of March hath perced to the roote" and then proceeded to rattle of the rest of the entire canto without stopping for breath.

I laughed so hard I wheezed. I have never been so delightfully one-upped. 

I mean I assume he was quoting the rest of it, he could be saying some Swedish Chef gibberish and passing it off as Middle English. 

Zoom Dress Code

The TeddyJ powers that be are making optimistic plans to have us all back in the office in April. I think it's April. I didn't pay close attention because I will not be going back in the office, thank you, no. I'll change over to home-based; the pay is the same.

For those going in they are making one remarkable adjustment, the office dress code is dropping to business casual. (This after I got myself down to five suits that fit. Those five suits no longer fit, but by April they could.)

You ask why I care about the dress code if I am not going in to the office. Well: there is now a Zoom dress code for people working off-site. Two rules:

• no T-shirts
• no denim shirts

So, goodbye to 20% of my wardrobe right there. My denim shirt (the one I bought to allow for bra-free days) is now struck from the roll, bra or not.

I put it on immediately after I read the email. Perhaps I can wear it out at the seams by April. And I fully intend to protest by wearing nothing but underwear downstairs. 

Snow Queen

Years ago our department re-framed the Christmas Party into a "Festivus" party. Now that we have merged with the HR department, we attend a "Winter Celebration'' party.

I was excited about the Winter Celebration, because the invitation encouraged us to wear winter-themed costumes.

I planned on donning my tiara, my rhinestones, a white boa, and a blond wig. Then I intended to  powder my face as white as I could with flour or cornstarch or something. So, I was all set up to attend the party in costume as the Snow Queen from Narnia. I confess that all I remember about the Snow Queen is that she is evil and offers children Turkish Delight, but if one has a tiara, what is one to do? One must be a queen.

That was my plan, then I checked the invite and it just says "wear your best winter attire" which is NOT the same as "come tarted up like the Snow Queen." Additionally, I  saw a Zoom image of all the attendees from last year and every person is wearing a holiday sweater as their holiday costume, with the exception of one party-pooper: me. I didn't even change my Zoom background. 

So, I guess I'm conforming this year. I don't think I even have a holiday sweater. Maybe I can be the Snow Queen just to amuse myself. 

(Thankfully I found a classic Santa hat when I was digging in the costume box for the blond wig, so I am going with that.)

Zoom Protest: A New Form of Business Communication

There's a new thing going on at some Zoom meetings at work. Let's say the leader of a Zoom call drops some bad news. The team in the call behaves with utter professionalism, no one breaks stride, but one by one their zoom backgrounds turn to:

A Kermit-sipping-tea meme with an annotation referencing the bad news.

A Before-and after meme with an annotation referencing the bad news.

The This-is-Fine meme with an annotation referencing the bad news.

A photo of a dumpster fire. That one was mine. I didn't annotate it with the bad news, because by then it was clear what we were protesting, and because Grandma here didn't know where the meme generators are.

I am so delighted by this new form of quiet protest that allows the work to continue without the typical interruption for ten minutes of complaining that I am ...

Icebreaker

In the past, icebreakers at work were easy. "Say your name, your department, and one interesting thing about you --" and boom, born with an extra thumb, on to the next person. 

Ice breakers are harder now, because we have zoom meetings every day, and the extra thumb has very little impact after the first time, so we have fifteen minute debate topics.

Cake or pie? (Pie won by a slim margin.)

Thanksgiving: Buy or bake? (Fifty-fifty.)

Nina or Pirate? (There was no debate, we were all Ninjas.)

Given that the daily meetings are only 30 minutes long, I thought it was odd they devoted half the given time to Would You Rather Fly a Dragon or Be A Dragon (fly), and I was initially impatient.

After six months, it dawned on me that it was actually beneficial to begin the day arguing. If I start the day telling Joe he's a fool for preferring cake, it's much easier to say "I think you are also wrong about the placement of the copyright on that PDF" at the end of the day. 

Are they doing this on purpose? I don't know. I suspect they are. Perhaps we could debate that when we are all back from Thanksgiving break.

Swirly

Twice in the last week I've heard a new term at work. 

"Swirly."

It means the swirl of chaos. "Everything was fine until the boss came in and then the meeting got all swirly." Additionally, "I don't know if it was the finger-pointing or the swirl, but that situation fell apart." 

Is this just a TeddyJ term? Where does it come from?

Halloween Costume

I vaguely remember a work email that says we can dress in costume during a zoom party the Thursday before Halloween.

The only thing that comes to mind this year is to put on my paper hazmat suit, and the swim goggles, and the air filter mask Gary used one time when killing bugs and go as Me Leaving the House.

Kind of a downer though. 

I could fall back on my fallback, which is Madonna. This is a recent photo.

I have a wig I could braid, a kimono, and then add a chunky necklace around my head. And on a zoom call I could have the original photo as my background.

It feels, though, as if I should do something with the opera mask or the fez I bought in November 2019, too late for Halloween that year, the last Halloween in Normal time.

I can't decide. There are two opportunities: the work party on Thursday the 28th, and then of course there's still the Friday before the 31st. Creepy mask sans fez might be good to just slip on for the work party, and then Full Madonna for the next day.  

Hard to say. Nice to be able to acknowledge the holiday, anyway.

Work Love

Last Monday I dryly said something snide and a co-worker I had only met a week earlier said, "Oh, Ellen, I love you." A few days later I heard the same declaration from my boss.

This made me uncomfortable, because in one week my female coworkers said "I love you" two hundred percent more often than my family ever said it when I was growing up. 

Sure, I ate it up quietly last week, but it seems to me an "I love you" comes pretty cheap these days. When did this start? Did it start with Leo Buscaglia and Princess Diana? Is it because they promoted hugs, but now we can't touch each other as freely, so we toss out "I love you" as casually as "Gesundheit?"

Mind you, I am all for not touching; I'd take a casual I love you over a hug any day. You can't ignore a hug. You can't skate past it with a question about deadlines. 

I suppose it's all a reflection of the more open, transparent culture we're trying to adopt at TeddyJ, and that's fine. I'll just need some time to reciprocate.

Ring Light

I don't remember the first of my coworkers to purchase a ring light or halo light for the Zoom calls. Pretty sure it was post-pandemic. 

All I know is that it breaks the first beauty rule, which is to deceive. Because I can see your fake lighting. Because you wear glasses. 

Or, sometimes, even without the glasses. Look at this pupil.

That's the pupil of Ed Robertson from Barenaked Ladies.

 

He's clearly working, and he's paid to look like a rock star. I am not.

However, my duties have recently changed, and now I work a lot on Zoom. A ring light might soften my scowl lines, but it can't conceal the wattle which now accounts for a third of the real estate on my face.

And you know what else? I see that you all have your laptops stacked up on books to give you a flattering Streisand camera angle but I only do that when the zoom call includes the Bigwigs. I am keeping my laptop on my belly as I lounge in bed. This is what you get:

I once cared about the wattle, but now I see it as a second and third smile. And to be perfectly honest, I will brush my hair and change out of that t-shirt before work. And of course I'll add a Zoom background so I don't look as comfortable. But that's all you're getting, work people. At some point Ring lights can only do so much.

Sweats

I spent last week buying new clothing. First of all, Gary complained that it had been a year and a half of me wearing pajamas to do gardening and to get the mail.  (As a man at work asked me to clarify: “He’s just now annoyed by this, or it took him a year and a half to say anything,” which suggests that Gary is hesitant to complain, and at that I laughed uproariously.)

In my defense, I don’t sleep in tank tops and sweat pants like the Kids Today, instead I’m in large tailored cotton pajamas with piping, buttons, and patterns. If I was to switch to comfy clothing that can transition from day to night to middle of the night to the next morning then all the way to bed again, which is my intent, I would need some tanks and sweats.

My first purchase was a flamingo pink lightweight “sweat” suit, too thin to make anyone sweat unless t-shirts are too hot for you.

It was nice in that it did indeed transition from night to day, and as long as I kept my laptop screen angled to display just neck-up on Zoom calls it looked like a nice rosy pink shirt.

It had only been half a day before I was in a Zoom call with just two other ladies and I found others carefully positioned our laptops and cameras so pajamas were disguised. 

I shared that I was also disguising my lack of bra, and angled my laptop for the full frontal.

Much hilarity. I’m always happy to go for the cheap shock-based laugh, but this time I blushed as pink as the shirt, because I haven’t seen the girls from that angle, so jumbled they looked like a Picasso painting.

So that prompted a few more purchases: Day-to-Night-Transitional sweats that have a little more substance, and what I hope is a similarly transitional sports bra. I suppose Amazon needs extra time to find a 40 DDD sports bra that zips up the front. 

Steve at Work

Sometimes you meet just delightful people when you are working.

Take Steve.

Only photo of Steve I have, appropriately

He changed departments about six years ago, and we’d catch up in the cafeteria, but it wasn’t the same as working every day with Steve, because Steve was hilarious on a daily basis, and I was lucky enough to sit next to him in all the seating charts. 

I didn’t know him at all until the first time I emailed him. His immediate reply was “Stop emailing me.”

Just for a moment, he tricked me. I was concerned that I had stepped over some line during the month I had worked by him, but no, that was just deadpan Steve. 

People at work were gobsmacked last week to hear Steve at Work had died, and then surprised again to hear it wasn’t from Covid, but instead from an aggressive bone cancer that took four months to progress from “a toothache” to death.

So here, I give you the Steve at Work Blog Compendium dating back to 2009. He read the blog and at times commented under an alias.

The boldfaced posts below actually star Steve, and below that are the ones in which Steve is a supporting player. I want to use them all as a reference when I get old and don’t remember my friend at the next desk.

Steve plays a prank

Steve surprises everyone

Steve eats at a food truck  

More Steve:

Steve rescues Late Mom’s book

Steve recommends a restaurant

Steve shaves his head too hastily

Steve eats odd things for breakfast

Steve steps up and eats his odd breakfast publicly 

Steve laughs at my idiocy

Steve tries to correct my idiocy

Steve makes a job aid

Steve stays quiet about the baby

Steve recommends The Woody

Steve gives breaking D.B. Cooper news

Steve organizes a dining event

Steve mocks two idiotic things I did in one conversation 

Steve gives breaking Hitler news

Steve is a target of soup cans

Steve and I bet

Steve baits the government 

 

 

 

 

More Work Shenanigans

So, the new thing at work is to be vulnerable. Bosses, executives, co-workers, we must all be vulnerable so that we can trust each other.

It feels very awkward to be in front of people and talk about my purpose in life and my greatest fears and what shaped who I am today. 

Jerry gets a lot of heat, or course, for ditching us, in fact he gets all the heat, and I’ve said that he was verbal and loving and then said we weren’t worth the $100 each in child support, so that’s why I don’t respond well to compliments and can’t talk to bosses about bonuses and raises without tearing up.

I had to make that song and dance again this last week, and there was an extra bonus question. Beyond “What affected you most as a child?” We were asked “What affected you most as an adult?” I said, “Well, getting MS - because it turned me into my father, everything I hate, someone who is overly emotional and talks without thinking.”

That surprised me. Still not as much as having an entire four hour work meeting devoted to childhood trauma, because that’s how the Kids Roll Today.

My Friday Night

I start a new project Monday, and I wanted to finish up my old project before I get absorbed in the new one. I worked on it all day Friday, and then all evening Friday, and then from midnight to 5:30 a.m., when I got two hours of sleep.

At about two a.m. I remembered the conversation I’d had earlier with the stakeholders. “Oh it’ll be a snap. Four hours at the most.” Hubris. Hu. bris. 

At three a.m., I remembered I was the only one in a hurry for this to be done, so I shut everything down and tried to go to sleep. 

At three-thirty a.m. I realized I was still working in my head, and it wouldn’t stop until I finished the last “little bit.”

Again, remember, no one wants this done but me. I am both slave driver and slave. When the birds began chirping I was still at the last little bit, thinking if I got it done then I could enjoy my weekend.  And guess what, I finished, but I didn’t test it as thoroughly as I should have. So, it’s not done.

Okay This Makes Two New Buzzwords

I was in a department meeting when a visiting speaker said, “I mean, that’s what’s you expect. It’s table steaks.”

Then she went on, but I was still hung up in this new phrase. Table steaks? Like ... table wine? Kind of a lower-grade steak you get a restaurant, not a fine steak/wine, but a table steak/wine?

And OF COURSE I had to go into the department group chat and say, “Did she just say table steaks? What does that mean?”

Of course, it’s some poker reference. Table stakes. I suppose it’s the expected ante or something? I don’t know. All I know is that add this to the Oregon Trail references and 1) I don’t know what anyone is saying at work anymore and 2) I have heard it used twice now in two days.

I’m going to quietly post this photo in the chat every time I hear it from now on.

Oregon Trail

Okay, there’s a new buzzword at work. Or buzz phrase. Or buzz cultural reference. 

It’s the Oregon Trail computer game. 


It was designed in the seventies, but it didn’t become a popular technique for teaching the  perils of the Oregon Trail until the Apple 2e version came out, just a few years after I graduated high school.

Instead, my history teacher taught us about the Oregon Trail with a five-day long slide presentation of photos he’d taken of the trail.  I can tell you the one thing that I remember: whenever he flipped to a slide of a lonely grave, and there were many, he would say, “This person probably died of cholera. And how do we get cholera, kids?”

”BY DIGGING YOUR WELL TOO CLOSE TO SOMEONE ELSE’S OUTHOUSE,” we would shout. 

Clearly there was cholera, and, as you see above, for the younger folks, dysentery  — but does anyone remember anything else about the Oregon trail?

The game certainly made an impression on the young(er) people at work: it is THE metaphor for a journey. And they can’t talk about it without making funny dysentery references.

“Cholera,” I whisper to myself.

Been a Year, Was Bound to Happen Sometime

Last night it was 3:30 am and I hadn’t been able to sleep yet, so I just decided to get my work  laptop and start working. I worked until oh, 11:30, when I needed to have an urgent video conference with my coworker Benjamin.

Frankly I am astonished this hasn’t happened before today. Here I am looking all professional.

NO zoom background masking the fact I am propped up in bed.

NO attention paid to hair or eyebrows.

NO attempt even to put on a heavy denim shirt to stay braless but modest.

”Benjamin,” I said, “You are a gentleman. I have just realized I am in my pajamas and you have said nothing.” 

He was gracious and demurred in some way and we moved on. I just stayed in my pajamas: the damage was done.

The Benefit of Brainless Work

Most of the time I have very interesting work projects. I have a database that routinely runs into its own limitations, and I have to test my limits wrestling it to my will. I enjoy that.

SadLy, I’m also I’m routinely asked to do things that require “Vision” and “Strategic Thinking” and other qualities I do not have. No longer will I win kudos for my skills at “Dealing with Reality” and “Wringing Success Out Of Limited Resources.”

However, I’ve fallen into a break. In the last week, while others are busy strategizing and visionizing, I have been doing a mindless, brain-raisining task: formatting about thirty Word documents. The only challenge is getting bullets, outlines, and numbering to play together in one document. 

It’s so dull that, get this: I’m not tired at the end of the day. Instead, I am dizzy with creativity. I feel compelled to write, paint, strum, and cook all at the same time. I usually end up with some combination of those every night. I don’t claim to do any of those things well, but it’s amazing how much more creative I am at night after I have trudged down row after row of monkey-drudgery during the day.

 

Makeup

The other day I had to meet with my great-great-grand boss (my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss), and out of sheer nervousness I put off any preparations until the last minute. 

As per usual, I didn’t put on makeup, and I found myself in the same position as before: side-by-side on a Zoom meeting with a young, lovely, perfectly made-up person. It was again like a twisted Before and After, if the Before is a red-faced wispy-haired man-woman, and the After is a gorgeous peach-faced healthy blonde.

This time I did not excuse myself mid-meeting to draw in my eyebrows, I just accused my new great-great-grand boss of not playing fair, and left it at that. The minute the meeting was over, I hopped up and put on FULL makeup, because I was just that demoralized. Then I took a photo of myself and sent it to her.

I was struck by two things as I put on full makeup for the first time in six months.

1. I have totally forgotten all makeup information. Not just how and where to apply it: I had to turn each object around to read what it was for. “This says eye-liner pencil. How does that differ from ‘brow-pencil’ — oh, that’s right, I draw a line beneath my eye lashes for some reason.”
2. Second, I look so much better with makeup. It’s a miracle product. Not so much the eyeshadow, which I just troweled on willy-nilly, or the eye-liner, which had dried up, but the foundation really is effective. It makes me have skin-colored skin again.

This is not to say I’m going to go around wearing makeup all the time again, but if I find that I am scheduled to have another one-on-one Zoom call with a young woman I might consider it.

 

Zoom Posters

So, we’re using Zoom at work now, and everyone else is is being all creative with their backgrounds. 

I decided to choose the most boring, safe-for-work background I could, then I jazzed it up with a Hang In There Baby poster from my youth.

I need other poster ideas, preferably ones like the above that will describe my current mood. The Demotivation posters would be great, but I fear the writing on the snarky subtext would be too small.

My work moods are desperation, overwhelmed, on top of it, bored, put upon, and competent. Any ideas?

Covid Communications

The young people at work continue to communicate with me in their youthful way.

There was one five-minute period recently during which they Skyped me, emailed me, and texted me, and while I was reading their texts the landline phone rang. (The landline phone was the hospital telling me that my brother was out of surgery and had just needed a little extra Valium to get past the emergence delirium. Now it’s just a two-week wait for the lymph biopsy.)

I was settling back down after all that when I found that one of them had texted me literally WHILE we were Skyping. I had to set her straight. I said it was like Dave and Buster’s here at my house with all the alerts and bells and notifications. Grandma can’t handle the mental overload. One communication method at a time, please.

During the 1917 pandemic there was no doubt some elderly bank official working at home, complaining that there were messengers leaving cards with the butler at the same time that the footman was asking him what he wanted for tea. 

Dress Code

The company dress code says that woman shall wear tailored suits or separates or dresses. The company dress code is largely ignored in my area. I’ve watched it morph from a) blazer, blouse, and pants to b) sweater, blouse, and pants to c) scarf, blouse, and pants to d) blouse and pants and I have a sweater in my locker. The men in our area stand pat with a) pants, shirt, and tie. 

Friday at 4:00 the email went out announcing the dress code shall no longer be ignored. It doesn’t affect me because I have four suits and a blazer and they all fit. In fact, there are days I make a special trip in to the office so I can get some suit use during this golden age of relative slimness. 

This policy leaves me with nine sweaters and casual tops that can no longer visit the office, with only the weekend to wear them. You say, “Certainly you can wear those in the evening,” and I respond, “What, when I’m dressing for dinner? It’s pajamas at five p.m. here.”

Thank god they didn’t do this one year and thirty pounds ago: I’d be spending the savings on new clothes.

Special Super Secret Event

I was plugging away at TeddyJ, rolling the rock up the hill, when a company email came in offering a Special Company Event Opportunity.

I registered for it the instant I read the first sentence, not because I wanted it so much, but because it's the type of thing other people want, and you have to grab those opportunities immediately.

What was it? A chance to have my photo taken with the Stanley Cup. Not me drinking out of the cup or anything, mind you, just me and nine TeddyJ strangers photographed in the same frame as the Cup. I'm a fair weather playoffs kind of hockey fan,  not like my Dad, who bought season tickets for a decade plus before he realized they would not be winning the cup until after he died.

While I say "The" Cup, Wikipedia says:

There are actually three Stanley Cups: the original bowl of the "Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup", the authenticated "Presentation Cup", and the spelling-corrected "Permanent Cup" on display at the Hockey Hall of Fame.

The Presentation Stanley Cup has been whoring around touring the city since the St. Louis Blues Hockey team won earlier this year. It already visited Friends #2 and #4 at their new place of employment. For the first month after the big win it dropped in at random bars and drew huge crowds via Twitter and Facebook.

TeddyJ had two stipulations:

1. “You are not allowed to touch the Cup.” Fans touching the cup at certain times in the season is supposed to be good luck. As for players touching the cup, the rules are so convoluted they get their own Wikipedia page.)
2. You shouldn't ”share with people outside TeddyJ that the Cup is coming until after the event," because they didn't want to draw crowds of rowdy true hockey fans ready to beat down the doors of the TeddyJ headquarters.

But, now the event is passed, the photo has been downloaded, and the secret can be revealed. Be jealous!

And yes, that's a photo of Dad I'm holding up.

New Term

I was at work and invited someone to pedeconference. This person was too young to have watched The West Wing and wasn’t familiar with the term. They were familiar with “walk and talk,” though.

Later that day, I had a lot of urgent work to get done and I had a meeting at the same time. I elected to stay at my desk and keep working on the urgent project, but use Skype to teleconference in to the meeting. That happens often enough that I think we need a term for that too.

At first I thought, ”Skype and Type”, but it turns out that’s already taken. We are warned not to “Skype and Type” because hackers can work out what you are typing because each key on the keyboard has a distinctive click.

German, language for expressing all the thoughts in one word, fails us because “type”, “telephone” and “meeting” are spelled ‘typ”, “Telefon”, and “meeting” (or else Google Translate is feeling to lazy to translate, or ”zumfaulumetwaszuschreiben”.)

I settled on the simpler and less obvious “TeleCON”. Because I am conning the people in the meeting.

I feel that a better term is still out there. 

 

TeddyJ Visitor

Last week I was sitting in my pajamas, developing some on-line training for my job at TeddyJ, when the doorbell rang.

I was wearing my pajamas, but a bra had come in the mail earlier and I had tried it on, and Gary was in the house snoring away at 2 pm, so I went ahead and opened the door.

"Hello," the nice young man said, "I didn't mean to wake you."

"I wasn't asleep. Just working at home."

"My name's Nick, I'm with TeddyJ -- " and I burst into laughter. Certain TeddyJ employees sometimes go door-to-door soliciting business, and here was one on my porch.

I said, "You're the reason why I'm working at home. I work at TeddyJ. I am writing computer training for you right now. You come in here. Do you want something to drink?"

So, we had a nice talk, about how he has to ring doorbells, and I have to program courses that are widely ignored, and then after fifteen minutes of this Gary woke up and came into the kitchen to see what was going on.

The young man asked Gary what he does.

Gary said, "Oh I'm retired. I live off her money, and she gets her money from you ringing doorbells, so thank you."

"Nice," the young man said. I wonder if he went back to his office and complained that he's out slaving away to support this old couple who sleep all day in their pajamas.

I Find Myself in a Book

I worked almost twenty years for my previous company, code-named Elliott. The very impressive founder of that company wrote a book a few years ago, and instead of writing a biography of her life, she wrote a biography of her company. She even dedicated it to the employees.

I immediately went to the index to find myself, and there I was. I am quoted as saying something so banal that I don't even remember saying it. 9In the early 90s, she announced some cutbacks (mainly to her salary, if I recall), and I evidently said something about how I had been struck that our company had escaped the recession up to then.) I think she wanted to include me and she didn't want to mention my bra-flashing, or countless screw-ups, or the long email I sent the entire company about my grandmother's turtle (referenced here) that she said she re-read on occasion.

At any rate, I felt quite smug and had a lovely time reading about the years I spent there.

 

Work Story

Our entire team took part in a phone meeting the other day. The bosses called the meeting to let us know that our leader of ten years was moving on, and our leader's leader — our Grand Leader — aka Rex Dangervest — wanted to weigh in and say reassuring things.

Suddenly the phone meeting went into echo mode, probably because someone started listening to the meeting on speaker, so that speaker phone picked up the audio and echoed it. Picture someone calling in to a radio show while still listening to the radio.

So there were two minutes of the Boss of the Boss, bless him, saying, "I want to reassure you all (reassure you all) that we will do everything we (do everything we) can (can) - wow, this echo is really distracting (this echo is really distracting) ... " and so on.

At the end he said, "Any questions? (Any questions?)"

One young co-worker answered, "Yes, I couldn't hear, could you repeat everything you just said?"

I can’t tell you if he laughed, because everyone else’s laughter was too uproarious, but I really do fear we might be pushing the boundaries of Big Boss Dangervest’s good humor.