Work Stories

It’s been two weeks of work and you’ve yet to hear funny stories. OK, let me confess to you, that most funny stories you will hear from work will be at my expense because just in general I can be rather clutzy and I tend to have a filter problem, as in sometimes there are large holes in the filter from my brain to my mouth. I might say something that most people would normally just think. And it kinda gets me in trouble sometimes… or makes people laugh… or both.

What makes these things all the funnier is that this company really is made up nearly exclusively of men. My girlfriend I work with, she works Mondays. I work the other days. There are very few female analysts or engineers. I’ve been counting. So far, I’ve counted two… out of 3 floors… and one of those is me… and one of those is my girlfriend. Women add a different flavor to things. Our sense of humors are different and we view things from a different perspective. It’s not a more correct one, just a different one.

And then again, I never have problems poking fun at myself. So any stories from work, will probably have something to do with my saying something I have no business saying out loud or something stupid I have done. Just think Elaine from Seinfeld and you pretty much get the picture.

Here are two stories:

On Wednesday, I’m sitting at my buddy, K.’s, desk and we’re working on something mundane and out of the blue he blurts out, “Does Son#1 still believe in Santa?” He does. He is 9 and this is his last Christmas believing in him, although I think deep down he knows. I said something like, “Yup. This is the last year. Kind of hard to believe he’s this old already. I mean, just last month I had THE talk with him.”

K. sat there for a minute and finally said, “Wait. He believes in Santa, but you’ve had the s-ex talk with him?”

I thought for a moment, never having thought of it that way and replied, “Ummm, yeah. I guess so.”

K. looked at me aghast and said, “Do you not think there is something inherently wrong with a kid understanding the fundamentals of s-ex, but still believing in Santa?” and then he burst out laughing. And then of course I laughed because he has an infectious laugh and because… well… he is right. Something DOES seem wrong with that!

On Thursday this happened. All over our building we have these big gray boxes that say something about shredding. I was told, ‘when in doubt, shred’, which means I’m frickin’ shredding anything and everything written on paper that I no longer need from process notes to yellow stickies. This entire time, I thought these big gray boxes were shredders.

I walk up to this co-worker of mine, who I will have to write on one day as this guy cracks me up, he looks like Mr. Magoo, funny as hell, and I said something about not understanding the shredding thing. He looks at me funny and I said, “Well these are shredders right?” He starts to laugh and he sticks.his.hand.in.one. I’m freakin’ out; I’ve jumped back and he’s laughing harder. He nearly has tears in his eyes and he said, “D., did you REALLY think these were shredders? They’re just big damn boxes. Someone else does the shredding.”

I stood there a moment and said, “Hmm. No wonder they are so quiet. (he starts to laugh again) Why do I have a feeling that I am NEVER going to live this down?” and before I can leave I hear him say, “Hey, did you know that she thought these were all shredders?...”

I fully expect to walk in one day and see one guy plunge his hand into one of those boxes, pretending it’s making a grinding noise and screaming like it has his hand. I will be LUCKY if it DOESN’T happen!