He Sat In A Wet Seat!

This post takes a personal spin...but I really felt I had to share this ridiculous story!

I went to visit a friend from college last weekend, and we decided to go bar hopping. A few drinks into the night, we found ourselves at this trendy bar called HiJinx.

The two of us are standing near a side wall, just talking, when this guy comes over and stands with us. What's weird about it is that he stood there for a couple of minutes and said nothing while the two of us continued our conversation...occasionally shooting confused glances in his direction.

After a few minutes of this, my friend, Nicole, said, "Hi. Why are you here?"

Random Guy replied, "I just wanted to meet you two lovely ladies."

Nicole said, "Okay then, you have two options. Either stop being so creepy and introduce yourself...or leave. I suggest the latter."

Random Guy then proceeded to introduce himself and ask us a few questions about ourselves. The conversation was going nowhere...not to mention the fact that neither of us are actually on the market anyway...and that we haven't seen one another in ages, leaving much catching up to be done...so I made a lame comment about needing to use the bathroom so the two of us could sneak away.

After a few minutes of hiding out in the restroom, my friend and I scurried across the bar and grabbed a booth. One side was dripping with spilled beer, so we sat together on the opposite side and picked up our conversation where we left off before Random Guy had appeared.

A few minutes later...he found us.

He started to slide into the seat across the booth, until he noticed that the seat was soaked. He then came over to our side and tried to squeeze in. I said, "Sorry. There's really not room over here."

Random Guy said, "C'mon. You wouldn't ask me to sit in this, would you?" as he gestured to the soaked seat.

Nicole said, "No. We're not asking you to sit at all." Then the two of us went back to our conversation.

So after a series of mini-events that should have indicated that he wasn't getting anywhere with us...he actually sat in the beer-soaked seat! He was cringing as he did so.

My friend and I giggled a bit, but continued to make no effort to include him. Eventually the poor guy got up and walked away...ass completely soaked.

Dumbass.

Top 10 Actions To Prevent Yourself From Getting Promoted

1. Constantly point out how productive you are and question why so-and-so isn't doing as much as you.

2. Seek out ways to attract the attention of your boss...asking unnecessary questions, sparking small talk several times a day, making jokes about laziness, etc.

3. Make comments like, "I'm glad I don't have to worry about that!" upon noticing a challenging task your boss is tackling.

4. Insist that you take your break exactly at your scheduled time each day with no flexibility for the day's events. When asked to adjust your schedule, pout.

5. Tell your supervisor daily how well you think she's doing and how well she handles everything. Word of wisdom...kissing up has to be subtle to have the desired effect.

6. Go out of your way to avoid face-to-face communication with the person responsible for deciding whether to promote you. Instead, go out of your way to communicate about all issues via email only.

7. Refer to the higher position as being "easy" and claim that you already know most of what you'd need to learn already.

8. Assume that you're the top candidate simply because nothing explicitly negative came up in the interview for the promotion. And, more importantly, start a rumor that you're going to be offered the promotion.

9. Demonstrate your comfort with showing authority by bossing around co-workers and looking for mistakes in their work. Suddenly become the office tattle-tale.

10. Offer to get a head start on the promotion's responsibilities or to assist in some of your boss' projects...even though you haven't gotten the promotion yet.

As you can guess, there is a promotion available where I work...and I'm one of the key decision-makers involved. We have many internal applicants. There are two applicants in particular who display nearly all the above traits between the two of them. One even caught me in the restroom the other day over the lunch hour, and she immediately launched into an explanation of how she "just like" realized last night how "like" great she'd be for the position.

Help!

She Has No Inner Monologue

As I mentioned in a previous post, we've been doing some remodeling in our building. I'm back in my usual spot; however, I've had a couple of visitors stationed near me while their area is worked on.

My most recent visitor was Michelle. A former co-worker, who also became a good friend of mine, used to share her cube with Michelle...and she was constantly going on and on and on and on and on about how annoying she was. I've never worked closely with Michelle, but I have worked with her somewhat on projects. I've always really liked her...she's very energetic and fun.

But now I know what my friend meant. Michelle, apparently, has no inner-monologue. Every few minutes, she makes a comment out loud about something she's just read or is working on. And it's not one of those rhetorical comments that you can acknowledge with a chuckle or a grunt and move on.

After making a comment, she'll glance around her monitor and stare at you until you make a comment in response. And if it's a thoughtless "uh-huh" type comment, she'll keep staring at you as though she's looking for more.

You can't simply ignore it either. If you act like you didn't hear the comment, she says it again. And with more emphasis.

And she does it SO often! Throughout the day...literally, several times an hour.

How my friend was able to get anything done, and maintain her sanity, is beyond me.

An "Inspirational" Leadership Quote...About Sperm?

I recently attended a leadership conference.

One of the last sessions of the conference was intended to be an uplifting "rah-rah" fest to get everyone excited. To inspire us to be charismatic leaders, we were each given a small card with about a dozen quotes that we could keep in our wallets and refer back to when we need a little encouragement.

The second quote on the card reads:
Think of sperm swimming upstream. For all but one of them it's going to be a very bad day.
~Howard Anderson

What?