Month: November 2013

When ‘Awkward’ Doesn’t Quite Cut It*

Imagine having an extremely “proper” person as one of your colleagues. Also imagine, if you will, being in constant fear of doing your job incorrectly and being negatively judged by said colleague for…well…for pretty much everything.

Now I would like you to envision yourself showing this boss a technical diagram you having been working with for a project on your laptop. You might also be the same person who creates, manages and edits content for this blog on the same laptop…all in one general folder.
The colleague leans closer to your screen, while standing behind you and clicks a few buttons to get a better look.

“Oh, whoops!” he exclaims. “I’m so sorry.”

You quickly look over and see the following image encompassing your entire laptop screen:

nice profile pic 12

Of course you turn bright red and aggressively stutter that there is no way that the photo is being used for anything other than snarky amusement and you don’t even know the guy (a comment that always helps)! But the damage has already been done. And then he attempts to tell you a completely unrelated story about how one of his co-workers once saw a photo of his lunch or something on his computer. Which just makes the current experience even worse.

You just lived as me for a bit. How does it feel?

* Special thanks to Amanda for assuring me that a short tweet can be converted into an informative blog post.

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Sneakers: The Pathway into My Heart

Many years ago, I was out shopping with a few of my friends and we went into a sporting goods store so I can try on and purchase a new pair of sneakers. I don’t remember much about the footwear, other than the fact that they were Nike and I liked them and made my purchase pretty quickly.

sneaker salesman
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2276941/Dont-Nike-salesman-sacked-job-trying-sell-old-company-issue-trainers-Facebook.html

Months had passed since the day of purchase and I found myself cleaning out a bunch of junk from my closet one evening. I discovered the Nike box that my sneakers had come home in and opened it to see if I had put anything inside of it before throwing it away. Right before I closed it, I caught a glimpse of a small piece of thick white oak tag – the kind of material used for price tags – with some writing on it. Here is what it said, scribed in block letters with a Sharpie marker:

“If you free, beep me at 917-123-4567. Your code is 0123.” *

1312430137_beeper
http://1day-at-a-time.blogspot.com/2008/02/pagers-beepers-from-not-too-long-ago.html

I had no recollection of the person who helped me with my sneakers, nor did I have any idea if that person was actually the guy who slipped me this romantic message. Come to think of it, this person may not have been a guy at all. The note may have not even been for me – maybe it was a code written for someone else. In any case, I was completely horrified that someone had taken such a chance with love, and never did beep that…person. I had forgotten that this even happened for a long time and the memory recently came back to me, and got me wondering.

This sneaker salesperson wasn’t taking much more of a risk than anyone ever has when presenting their photos and personal details within an online dating site. He might have done this with every pair of sneakers he sold and just waited for someone to actually beep him. It’s an easy way to meet girls without having to look in their eyes and subject yourself to rejection. Kind of like the proverbial “wink” on match.com or sending the menorah of interest or whatever people do on jdate.com these days…

I should have kept that little piece of paper. It would have been fun to see if the beeper was still hooked up.

* Sorry, I don’t remember the actual numbers written. But yes, I do remember his impeccable grammar.