PDQ
Hello World,
Well, everyone knows that I hate to be an alarmist, but just about the next thing we know, we'll be staring down both barrels of the merry, merry month of May, and it will be here way before you think, which is pretty darned quick. It's only a good thing that I have basically given up on the idea of accomplishing anything around here, or I'd find the prospect of this year quickly rushing by headlong to be a very discouraging one. Fortunately, I have a new and improved approach to reality, which is more of a "don't-call-us-we'll-call-you" variety, and I'm finding life in a delusional state to be much more to my liking. Sure, I'd be happy to join your committee! I have all sorts of time on my hands.
Speaking of time, it was a good thing that I wasn't pressed for time earlier in the week, when I needed to open a new organic lip gloss that Santa's elves had thoughtfully stuffed into my Christmas stocking. Now, I don't mind saying that I'm on board with the idea of protecting consumers from product tampering and all that, but honest to Pete, this confounded lip gloss had been wrapped in so much protective tamper-proof packaging that it took me 15 minutes to get into the darned thing. I mean, it's only lip gloss, for heaven's sake, it's not like the launch codes for the nuclear missile program or anything. Honestly, it was harder for me to get into this lip gloss than for Britney Spears to get an audience with the Pope (oh, hit that easy target!) as if contaminated lip gloss was the world's number one health crisis. (It's not.) But at least we can all rest assured that my lips are perfectly safe, so if I bump into Arnold Schwarzenegger in my travels and give him a big fat smooch, the world is in no danger of losing The Gover-nator. No hasta la vista for you, baby.
Anyone who works in an office or has a calendar would certainly be aware that Wednesday was that glorious day devoted to recognizing the contributions of hard-working clerical staff everywhere, the eagerly awaited Administrative Professionals Day. (Although Bill and I were at a building in White Plains on Tuesday that had a big sign announcing their events planned to observe Administrative Professionals WEEK, which even I had to think was over-doing it somewhat.) The person I report to must have decided that flowers or a card would be just too much of a cliche, so I ended up getting nothing at work, which at least had the distinction of being unexpected. Of course, there's always the Chamber of Commerce luncheon to look forward to, and even The Lord Himself knows better than to rain on that.
So there I was on Wednesday afternoon, taking a quick drive over to a local country club for the luncheon, and glad of it. The luncheon is at a different club every year, although all of the clubs are always lovely inside and out, with gracious appointments and sweeping views of the bay. This year it was at the Davenport, which I never remember being at before, so I found it a special treat. Also, I was the first person to arrive at the table I had been assigned to, so I was spared the usual sight of people already at my table fleeing my approach, hoping to escape the jinx of not winning any raffle prizes, that has long been attributed to me by my table-mates. That turned out not to be an issue, but for a different reason than anyone could have anticipated. We began with platters of fresh fruit, seeded rolls, cheese and crackers, plus waiters carrying trays of hot hors d'oeuvres of all descriptions. Once people started to settle down, the program got underway with some quick announcements, greetings, invocation and Pledge of Allegiance. Right away, I could see this was not your grandfather's Administrative Professionals luncheon of yesteryear, not by any means. In the first place, the spokesperson for the event was a young and perky representative of the Chamber of Commerce, who was charming and friendly, and everything she said was right to the point and made perfect sense. This was already a big improvement over every other luncheon I have ever attended, where the program is in the hands of an old crabby woman that no one can hear, and when you can hear her, she just seems to ramble on to no purpose. The other amazing improvement was that for the first time, the audio system worked perfectly, so you could hear every single word spoken by anyone at the podium, as if the country club had just gotten wind of the idea that the technology to amplify the human voice has been around for 100 years. This is in stark contrast to previous years of microphones being too quiet, too loud, too muffled, or marred by a variety of hums, whistles, squeaks, screeches and pops. If this was a brave new world for our luncheon, I have to say that I was all for it and then some.
The new Mayor was introduced and said a few (very few) words thanking all of us for our contributions to the local businesses. He quickly acknowledged that there were other dignitaries present, and proclamations and certifications in honor of the occasion, but he wasn't going to take up our time with that. In fact, he basically said that we could just take for granted that there were the usual proclamations for the event, as there always were, and after all, we all know who the dignitaries are who show up for these things, so we could just go ahead and greet them by ourselves and not waste everyone's time. Right from the beginning, it seemed that the theme for this new and improved luncheon was that it wasn't going to just drag on all afternoon as in past years, but get right down to business and get finished at a reasonable hour, so people could go back to work. With that as their goal, they probably should have sent out notices inviting us to the 2007 Ad Pro Quick Lunch instead. I don't mind saying that I haven't gone back to work afterwards since the director of our department stopped going with me, so I found this an unwelcome direction to be going in. But there was no slowing them down, and pretty darned quick they were serving us salads and entrees, at the same time as presenting awards to the honorees and scholarship recipients. For all of us old-timers, this was our luncheon at warp speed, with none of the old and boring trappings of days gone by.
Well, almost. In an unexpected twist, the luncheon's honoree this year turned out to be the CEO and President of the hospital where I work, and he received their Humanitarian Award, which even he admitted was far-fetched, but which he accepted in recognition of the excellent care provided by our clinical staff. Where everyone else had dispensed with long and boring speeches, out of concerns for time constraints, our CEO instead launched into a numbingly insipid barrage of blather about the staggering costs of providing health care to the uninsured in our coverage areas .... Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz .....
Where was I? Anyway, I'm sure he must have finished at some point, because the place erupted in applause, or perhaps it was snores instead, but in any case, something must have happened to wake me up ..... er, I mean the next thing I knew, they were starting to announce winners of the raffle prizes. Here's where that new-fangled idea of keeping the luncheon to a reasonable length really took a lot of fun out of the event. In years past, there would be about 100 small prizes, such as a discount coupon for a pizza, a dozen donuts, dry cleaning or a manicure, as well as a half dozen large prizes, including trips, appliances or a year's membership at the country club. It does take a long time to announce all of the winners, even if you do them in a hurry, but it's one of the most fun features of the luncheon, because with so many prizes, it's possible for a good proportion of the 200 or so attendees to win at least something. In this year's "quick step" version of the luncheon, they elected instead to go for quality over quantity, and there were only about 25 very nice prizes, plus 3 big prizes, and all of us hoping for pizzas, donuts or dry cleaning were plumb out of luck. I will say that it had the desired effect, because even with coffee and dessert, the luncheon was over by about 2:15, but it certainly didn't have the verve and excitement of years gone by. The one advantage was that no one asked me to leave the table for being a jinx, because so few people won anything that it was an unusual table with a winner, and not the reverse. I will admit that I found it small comfort.
However, I will say that their ploy failed entirely in its gambit to induce me to return to my office afterward, as I left the club with my (very tiny) bag of goodies, and went directly home with impunity. (I was going to leave impunity behind, but it was wearing tamper-proof organic lip gloss, so I figured it was okay.) I had some time on my hands, and unexpectedly so, and I put it to good use, pulling through piles of old computer media looking for some missing documents. I had boxes full of floppy disks going back to the Year of the Flood (no thanks to the weasels at Dinosaur Insurance, who insisted it was "an Act of God," of all things) and I sorted through all of them to find what I was looking for. I didn't (although it turned up later at work for some reason) but I did come across a remarkably pristine and original diskette for the new and improved AOL version 4.0 still in its original packaging and unopened after all these years. (The current version of AOL is 9.0, so that tells you something right there.) I said to Bill later that we need to hold onto that, because it's probably going to worth something someday. I'm thinking of asking our friends from the organic lip gloss company to wrap it up nice and secure for me, and be quick about it, once again making the world safe from 20-year-old steam-powered software. No, please don't thank me, for us Administrative Professionals, it's just another job well done.
Well, everyone knows that I hate to be an alarmist, but just about the next thing we know, we'll be staring down both barrels of the merry, merry month of May, and it will be here way before you think, which is pretty darned quick. It's only a good thing that I have basically given up on the idea of accomplishing anything around here, or I'd find the prospect of this year quickly rushing by headlong to be a very discouraging one. Fortunately, I have a new and improved approach to reality, which is more of a "don't-call-us-we'll-call-you" variety, and I'm finding life in a delusional state to be much more to my liking. Sure, I'd be happy to join your committee! I have all sorts of time on my hands.
Speaking of time, it was a good thing that I wasn't pressed for time earlier in the week, when I needed to open a new organic lip gloss that Santa's elves had thoughtfully stuffed into my Christmas stocking. Now, I don't mind saying that I'm on board with the idea of protecting consumers from product tampering and all that, but honest to Pete, this confounded lip gloss had been wrapped in so much protective tamper-proof packaging that it took me 15 minutes to get into the darned thing. I mean, it's only lip gloss, for heaven's sake, it's not like the launch codes for the nuclear missile program or anything. Honestly, it was harder for me to get into this lip gloss than for Britney Spears to get an audience with the Pope (oh, hit that easy target!) as if contaminated lip gloss was the world's number one health crisis. (It's not.) But at least we can all rest assured that my lips are perfectly safe, so if I bump into Arnold Schwarzenegger in my travels and give him a big fat smooch, the world is in no danger of losing The Gover-nator. No hasta la vista for you, baby.
Anyone who works in an office or has a calendar would certainly be aware that Wednesday was that glorious day devoted to recognizing the contributions of hard-working clerical staff everywhere, the eagerly awaited Administrative Professionals Day. (Although Bill and I were at a building in White Plains on Tuesday that had a big sign announcing their events planned to observe Administrative Professionals WEEK, which even I had to think was over-doing it somewhat.) The person I report to must have decided that flowers or a card would be just too much of a cliche, so I ended up getting nothing at work, which at least had the distinction of being unexpected. Of course, there's always the Chamber of Commerce luncheon to look forward to, and even The Lord Himself knows better than to rain on that.
So there I was on Wednesday afternoon, taking a quick drive over to a local country club for the luncheon, and glad of it. The luncheon is at a different club every year, although all of the clubs are always lovely inside and out, with gracious appointments and sweeping views of the bay. This year it was at the Davenport, which I never remember being at before, so I found it a special treat. Also, I was the first person to arrive at the table I had been assigned to, so I was spared the usual sight of people already at my table fleeing my approach, hoping to escape the jinx of not winning any raffle prizes, that has long been attributed to me by my table-mates. That turned out not to be an issue, but for a different reason than anyone could have anticipated. We began with platters of fresh fruit, seeded rolls, cheese and crackers, plus waiters carrying trays of hot hors d'oeuvres of all descriptions. Once people started to settle down, the program got underway with some quick announcements, greetings, invocation and Pledge of Allegiance. Right away, I could see this was not your grandfather's Administrative Professionals luncheon of yesteryear, not by any means. In the first place, the spokesperson for the event was a young and perky representative of the Chamber of Commerce, who was charming and friendly, and everything she said was right to the point and made perfect sense. This was already a big improvement over every other luncheon I have ever attended, where the program is in the hands of an old crabby woman that no one can hear, and when you can hear her, she just seems to ramble on to no purpose. The other amazing improvement was that for the first time, the audio system worked perfectly, so you could hear every single word spoken by anyone at the podium, as if the country club had just gotten wind of the idea that the technology to amplify the human voice has been around for 100 years. This is in stark contrast to previous years of microphones being too quiet, too loud, too muffled, or marred by a variety of hums, whistles, squeaks, screeches and pops. If this was a brave new world for our luncheon, I have to say that I was all for it and then some.
The new Mayor was introduced and said a few (very few) words thanking all of us for our contributions to the local businesses. He quickly acknowledged that there were other dignitaries present, and proclamations and certifications in honor of the occasion, but he wasn't going to take up our time with that. In fact, he basically said that we could just take for granted that there were the usual proclamations for the event, as there always were, and after all, we all know who the dignitaries are who show up for these things, so we could just go ahead and greet them by ourselves and not waste everyone's time. Right from the beginning, it seemed that the theme for this new and improved luncheon was that it wasn't going to just drag on all afternoon as in past years, but get right down to business and get finished at a reasonable hour, so people could go back to work. With that as their goal, they probably should have sent out notices inviting us to the 2007 Ad Pro Quick Lunch instead. I don't mind saying that I haven't gone back to work afterwards since the director of our department stopped going with me, so I found this an unwelcome direction to be going in. But there was no slowing them down, and pretty darned quick they were serving us salads and entrees, at the same time as presenting awards to the honorees and scholarship recipients. For all of us old-timers, this was our luncheon at warp speed, with none of the old and boring trappings of days gone by.
Well, almost. In an unexpected twist, the luncheon's honoree this year turned out to be the CEO and President of the hospital where I work, and he received their Humanitarian Award, which even he admitted was far-fetched, but which he accepted in recognition of the excellent care provided by our clinical staff. Where everyone else had dispensed with long and boring speeches, out of concerns for time constraints, our CEO instead launched into a numbingly insipid barrage of blather about the staggering costs of providing health care to the uninsured in our coverage areas .... Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz .....
Where was I? Anyway, I'm sure he must have finished at some point, because the place erupted in applause, or perhaps it was snores instead, but in any case, something must have happened to wake me up ..... er, I mean the next thing I knew, they were starting to announce winners of the raffle prizes. Here's where that new-fangled idea of keeping the luncheon to a reasonable length really took a lot of fun out of the event. In years past, there would be about 100 small prizes, such as a discount coupon for a pizza, a dozen donuts, dry cleaning or a manicure, as well as a half dozen large prizes, including trips, appliances or a year's membership at the country club. It does take a long time to announce all of the winners, even if you do them in a hurry, but it's one of the most fun features of the luncheon, because with so many prizes, it's possible for a good proportion of the 200 or so attendees to win at least something. In this year's "quick step" version of the luncheon, they elected instead to go for quality over quantity, and there were only about 25 very nice prizes, plus 3 big prizes, and all of us hoping for pizzas, donuts or dry cleaning were plumb out of luck. I will say that it had the desired effect, because even with coffee and dessert, the luncheon was over by about 2:15, but it certainly didn't have the verve and excitement of years gone by. The one advantage was that no one asked me to leave the table for being a jinx, because so few people won anything that it was an unusual table with a winner, and not the reverse. I will admit that I found it small comfort.
However, I will say that their ploy failed entirely in its gambit to induce me to return to my office afterward, as I left the club with my (very tiny) bag of goodies, and went directly home with impunity. (I was going to leave impunity behind, but it was wearing tamper-proof organic lip gloss, so I figured it was okay.) I had some time on my hands, and unexpectedly so, and I put it to good use, pulling through piles of old computer media looking for some missing documents. I had boxes full of floppy disks going back to the Year of the Flood (no thanks to the weasels at Dinosaur Insurance, who insisted it was "an Act of God," of all things) and I sorted through all of them to find what I was looking for. I didn't (although it turned up later at work for some reason) but I did come across a remarkably pristine and original diskette for the new and improved AOL version 4.0 still in its original packaging and unopened after all these years. (The current version of AOL is 9.0, so that tells you something right there.) I said to Bill later that we need to hold onto that, because it's probably going to worth something someday. I'm thinking of asking our friends from the organic lip gloss company to wrap it up nice and secure for me, and be quick about it, once again making the world safe from 20-year-old steam-powered software. No, please don't thank me, for us Administrative Professionals, it's just another job well done.
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 7:55 PM
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