Did my boss out me as an alien on Friday??

Coworker: I don’t know how I feel about the G train, though I hear it’s getting better.  I even see real people on it sometimes.

Me: Hey!  I take the G train and let me tell you, it’s full of real human beings.

Boss: Are you sure about that Joanna?

 

What a hoot that stuff was!

Today at a work conference I grabbed a bag of potato chips from the afternoon snack basket.  About half-way through the bag I noticed that they were low fat chips made with Olean.  That’s when I thought to myself:

“Isn’t that the stuff that makes you poop your pants?”

 

I’ll cajole myself on this one

My work recently gave all of us brightly colored umbrellas with the organization’s logo on them.  On the one hand this is great, because umbrellas are pretty handy, and it’s a nice one.  On the other hand, whenever it’s raining we look like a bunch of dorks walking around with the same umbrellas. 

To make matters worse, there’s a girl in my office who has the same trench coat as I do.  The other day – in our grey trench coats and blue umbrellas – we felt a level of embarassment that I think is reserved for twins whose parents force them to dress the same.  There’s a special level of hell reserved for those parents.

 

Mental Note

The new guy at work is definitely not named Gustav.  It sounds a lot like Gustav, but remember not to call him Gustav.  Gustav is a German name, and his name is an Indian name.  His name might even be the Indian translation of Gustav.  If you can’t remember his name don’t call him Gustav – because that’s not his name.

This definitely isn’t going to help the problem.

 

… and it’s over!

I locked myself out of my hotel room once this trip.  Which was well below the average for my group.

 

Work Retreat – Day Three

Today the hotel I’m staying at made my roommate’s bed much better than they made mine.  Really everything you could do to differentiate two identical beds had been done.  Her bed had 5 pillows on it — mine only had two.  Her bed had a runner at the bottom and, though I’ve always found those things weird and annoying, my bed didn’t even have one!

I have three hypotheses:

1. My roommate made her own bed this morning.
2. They saw me arrive in the lobby and thought “this girl is no nonsense” so they got rid of the nonsense from my bed.
3.  There’s a conspiracy going on.

I think I’m going to have to wait and see what happens tomorrow to see if this conspiracy is for real.  I’ve gone from 5 pillows down to just 2 overnight.  At this rate they’re going to show up at my apartment and steal a pillow off my own bed tomorrow.

 

Work Retreat! Day One

I’m wondering what would happen if I tried to steal the giant flat-screen TV from my hotel room.  While yes, they do have my credit card on file for “incidentals” it seems like that’s more a missing towels and $6 candy bar type thing.  I can’t imagine the hotel insisting that I ran off with a 40″ tv - because people just don’t do things like that.  

Could I take it and deny it?

We’ll have to see… this TV is really nice.

 

Wow that pipe had a lot of water in it!

Well, that’s a predictable and boring conclusion to the flooding story. 

I don’t know what I was hoping for.  Maybe something like “Meteor”,  ”Swamp Monster” or “Glacier”.  But none of those things really exist.

 

The building that cried wolf

Today a co-worker came by my desk to grab a signature and then rushed out into the hallway.  I heard him shouting:“Oh no, what’s going on?  Emergency!  Emergency!  Do you need help?  Oh no!!  Get out!”

In response, I sat calmly at my desk and continued working, like everyone else in the room.  If working in a building with regular fire-drills has taught me anything; it’s that I’m not going to bother getting up from my desk until someone explicitly tells me I have to.  Now that I think about it, I think fire drills have taught me not to panic (or even react at all) to emergency situations.

It wasn’t until warm murky water started sliding up to my desk that I realized something was wrong.  And the first thing to go through my head was: “Wow, there’s an emergency here.  Why didn’t anyone tell me about this??”

When I left the building the water was still coming in pretty heavily.  On the one hand my bag and a few boxes got wet, the electronics might be damaged, and who knows if that water was clean.  But on the other hand I was allowed to evacuate the door by my car rather than having to sign out at the security desk, so I think we can call this a victory!

Stay Tuned for Tomorrow’s Post: “Wow that (TBD) had a lot of water in it”

 

They call me “Miss Hutko”… or, “Nosferatu”

One of the more interesting parts of my job is videotaping classrooms.  Last week I walked into a kindergarten lesson and smiled at the kids, setting up the video equipment.  One of the kids was adorable.  He couldn’t have been older than four, and was staring up at me wide-eyed.  I gave him another smile and his jaw dropped open.  He cried out in a quavering voice:

“She has vampire teeth!”  

At that moment I was shocked and awed – what the darndest thing to say.  I did the responsible, adult thing to do – I pretended that I hadn’t heard a word he said.  In the days since I have shared the comment with several of my coworkers.  The hardest part of doing so is the inevitable fact that after telling them the story and having a good laugh their eyes drift away from mine and go lower… until, eventually, they are investigating my Draculaesque teeth for themselves.  After this predictable turn of events my boss said to me:

“Oh, you know what?  You do have vampire teeth.”