Sunday, August 27, 2006

Snafu

Mondays get me in the mood for fun work stories far more than the cold, hard, cubicle-oatmeal-reality. Stories where the punchline in question is not caused by me…though I do have plenty of my own…

Like the time my boss stopped in the hallway, stooped in her Manolos and fine Italian wool-blend and fished twelve dollars out of the piled trash. She straightened, scrunched her nose and said aloud, “Who would have thrown out money? K, do you see that someone threw out money in the trash?”

And I had to tell her…

Yes, I saw that someone had thrown money out. As a matter of fact, the very mention had suddenly jogged my memory to recall that I was the responsible party. And not only was I, her assistant, the absolute idiot who had thrown several crisp bills (bills! multiple!) into the garbage, but it was in fact, hers, my boss’s, money that I had thrown in.

I had her change from something she asked me to buy, and as I was throwing out the receipt, I tossed it all in, and had not noticed, and would not have noticed, for the saving grace and can-do-attitude of her pulling it out.

Ah, the workplace…

Runner up is the time I titled an email with the word “blah” in it, and sent it to all the important people in the company on my first week on the job. Why did I do this, you ask? Well because in my twisted mind, I had misspelled “temporarily” as in "the meeting will temporarily be postponed", but felt that spell-check was not picking it up, and instead decided to write “blah” to test spell-check, which by some unholy reason is actually in the spell-check dictionary and therefore did not pick it up as incorrect and it was sent anyway. Nice.

I’ve also said “Good Morning” at ten in the evening and addressed a coworker as “Mom”.

(It’s Monday, please share…)

9 comments:

Unknown said...

You win! Great stories : )

Katie said...

Called a man-boss not even the boyfriend's name, but the gay man-best-friend's. Also the poppyseed stuck in tooth day and the 2 keyboards ruined because of spilled beverages. Sigh.

Anonymous said...

On my first day ever being hired to key a movie I failed to sandbag a large mirror board, which weighs around 50lbs. I turned my back I swear for twenty seconds and the next thing I know it crashes down on the head of our bald lead actor, giving him a mild concussion. Had the angle been slightly different it would have fractured his skull. I still don't know why I wasnt fired, thank god I wasn't. I aint pretty enough to strip.

m said...

At my work, I have to test slot machines. Well I think it was my second week, I put in a game in the slot machine and it wouldn't turn on. It turns out that there are two switches to turn it on. LOL. No I'm not blonde, but I do have lots of blonde moments here at work.

Cheetarah1980 said...

Nah, I can't think of a thing that would beat the things you've done. I just sit here and try not to get fired.

Laura said...

I used to work as a camera operator for a local tv station, and the newscasts are always live. I've walked behind the anchor with my camera in the middle of a read ("Laura! Is that you?!" - director), panned off the anchors to get my next shot before the technical director punched off me ("Camera 2, what the hell are you doing?!" - director), and laughed out loud at what the anchors were saying...while their mics were still hot ("Who was that?!" - producer). Oops.

When I was a CG operator (the person responsible for the name popping up on the screen in a newscast), a nice old woman once got credited as Governor Brad Henry.

Anonymous said...

A friend was constantly calling her old boss, Dan, DAD.

He was not amused.

Anonymous said...

I've closed professional telephone conversations with "I love you!"

Anonymous said...

A few years ago, I was a brand new attorney at a big law firm. I was ecstatic about all the possibilities my new career held and perhaps a little anxious to make a good impression on my new colleagues. One day, when I had been there for about a month, I walked out of my office and went bustling down the hall to show my boss a document I had found that would be hugely beneficial to our case. As I rushed down the hall, I was carrying three large folders of documents. Also as a result of my eagerness to fit the part and make a good impression, I was wearing a suit with long cuffed, pleated slacks and gorgeous new pointy-toed shoes that I had not yet mastered. As I was heading down the hall, I spotted my boss speaking to two senior associates. The three of them looked my way as I came hurrying toward them, documents in hand. Just as I completed the sentence "John, you have to see this," the heel of my shoe caught in the cuff of my pants. I tumbled forward, documents scattered everywhere and my shoe went flying and hit my boss. My boss maintained a straight face long enough to say "that was quite a sight" and everyone burst out laughing. After that day, I no longer needed to worry about getting lost in the sea of associates. My boss never forgot who I was.