I work in an office

OK so I work in an office. I work for a well respected, very conservative company that has a history and a reputation and a significant company culture. The way I got my job was my husband. He was an account executive for another very large, very conservative company that sold services to this company. The way I met my husband was as his driver. He was blind when I met him. His company allowed him to have a driver to take him on business trips. He had a Mercedes. Well, it was a station wagon.

Prior to meeting my husband, my work record was not all that stellar. I worked in Cleveland as a clerk for the Cuyahoga County Civil Courts, then as a receptionist at a Lort B Summer theatre company. Tom Hanks worked there too years earlier. He always mentions its where he got his start. During that same period I volunteered at the Natural History museum in University Circle, and worked downtown as a waitress at a fine Spanish restaurant that had a piano and a piano player in the lounge. Naturally, we used to date. One summer my sister and I bought a six pack every night for about a week (i think they might have cost maybe $2.50 at the time), and I couldn't pay the rent that month. That's how bad things were. Also, I had not held a job longer than six months. I was always amazed that I could show up at the bus stop on time, on schedule, five days a week. Trust me, this was an accomplishment. I was always complaining, to anyone who seemed to care, like my cousins who I'd run into downtown, or my boss at the History Museum, or the other gal I worked with there, that I needed to make more money, and I needed a better job. I had a college degree (yeah Philosophy, extremely marketable).

My husband helped me a lot. When I moved to Chicago to be his driver he helped me get a job at his company. It was low paying but a good start. All of a sudden stores gave me applications for credit cards. That was a first. Then after that, I had a friend who got me into her company, a pharmaceutical firm, as a documentation scientist. In college I dreamed of being a scientist. I would tell John's kids "I am a scientist". They were five and nine. They were impressed. It was cool.

I was a glorified proof reader, and even the janitors were scientists aka not Sanitation Engineers because we didn't have Engineers at this company. We had scientists. It was like that). No one needed to know this fact. This company also gave out Turkeys or Vegetarian baskets at Thanksgiving. Everybody would stand in line to get theirs. That was the only cool thing they ever did.

Then my husband and I got married and he helped me get a job at my current company. We were also trying to have a baby, which took like no effort and maybe less than a week. I really wanted to get out of where I worked. It was so poorly managed. So my current company hired me at six months pregnant. I was impressed. They wouldn't let me do training in downtown Chicago second shift when I was eight months pregnant. I respect them for that, because I would have done it because then I could have avoided my brother in law on the train coming home at 5, trying to make me feel better about being fat. "So Anne, where did you find that dress TENTS by OMAR?"

That is how I ended up in Minnesota. I transferred into a new job at this location in Minnesota. We did this twice actually, with a stint in Maryland in between. I worked in the field then and all the driving to see customers made it very difficult. I hated that job. What I do is what I have done since I started. I help customers with their software problems. My customer set has changed and become exclusive. Its all about relationships and good service. To the average person, what I do might put them to sleep or drive them nuts with boredom. I pull a freight train of technical and corporate jargon, and technical and administrative tasks. The nice thing is that I can leave it at the door when I go home because no one would understand me.
Often I will look for ways to find amusement at work. Who hasn't done this? One of my favorite has to do with a gal that worked in our group and then became my manager for a brief period of time. She is not my manager any more, and she wasn't always that good managing people, but she is a brilliant person, with a very colorful vocabulary and use of the English language. Af first I was always trying to figure out where her style came from. Was it some of the places that she had lived or languages that she spoke or what? Then I watched a show on PBS about American Dialect across the United States, and I discovered the source. She is from Texas! They have some of the most creative colloquialisms and they shoot from the hip.

For the whole time that she was my manager, and anytime I know she will be a speaker at one of our meetings, I bring a pad and pencil so I can take notes. Otherwise I never do. A napkin will suffice. When she was my manager, in meetings she would look at me and say "Why are you smiling" ..well here is why:

Bulltwinkies ( bs?)
Diddlysquat
Funky & Kinky to describe a technical process
poodle happy
poodle in a springtime shower
shmooze up the yang yang
wonder duds
goat rodeo and headless chicken parade
pain in the buns
scottish Japanese flavor (to describe an account)
up our neighborhood (like up your ass)
hounds at bay
I'll keep my cook out of the kitchen
whammy sticks (you can get hit)
blooming blazes - as in where the blooming blazes
gate guard - like gate keeper
whammy - system goes whammy
drink a lot of fluids but keep it below the knees
the whole shooting' caboodle = the whole nine yards

These are just some of the expressions she would use when discussing pie charts and service contracts and business strategy. I wish you could hear the context. I even have a few of my office mates collecting phrases for me. Occasionally they will come out of a meeting and hand me a little scrap of paper with some wonderful turn of the english language from this person. Eventually I plan to show her the list that I have been compiling, like when her manager asks for letters for her twenty fifth service anniversary. Not sure how I'll put it together though so she won't get the wrong idea. She might think I am well how do I put this nicely, weird (but not creepy - NEVER).