Wednesday December 16th, 2009

The exercise:

Your prompt today: name calling.

Mine:

We had our monthly division meeting at work this morning and they brought someone in to talk about changes that are coming in at the start of next fiscal (April 1st). It was a good presentation and there were lots of good questions raised and I think it went pretty well.

But boy, let me tell you: I would have been a lot happier if my name wasn't brought up quite so much.

"You should talk to Marc about that."

"You need to meet with Marc, he's the one that knows the details of that."

"Marc is the one that takes care of that for us."

Okay, I get it. I'm about to have a crap load of work dumped on me. Can we move on now?

The really funny thing, to me at least, is that as of right now my contract runs out mid-January. Yes, I know they'll offer to extend me again beyond that. But... that doesn't mean I have to say yes.

Mwhahahahaha...

Yeah, alright, of course I'm going to say yes. It's a good position and I'm lucky to have it. I'll thank you very much to stop ruining my delusional power trip with reality.

4 comments:

Greg said...

Finding out that everyone thinks of you when they have a problem (at work, anyway) is usually a good sign -- you've got brand recognition, and for the right reasons by the sound of it. It's also the best kind of praise -- sincere and voluntary. Good work :)

Of course, where I work the conversation is much more likely to go: "That sounds difficult and soul-destroying -- give it to Greg, we haven't managed to break him, yet."

And just referencing back to yesterday, you played goalie in indoor hockey? You're madder than I thought you were! I (now) know that you get all the pads, shields, landmines, etc., but it still seems to be the only position where you regularly get hockey sticks very close to your head!

Name calling

"She's a ballerina," whispered her mother, pushing a strand of peroxided hair back behind her ear. On the stage, her daughter twirled in a pink tutu.
"She's a little whore!" whispered a woman behind the peroxide-blonde. She turned in her seat, her face ugly with anger.
"You can talk! Your daughter's so cheap she came free with a box of cereal!"
"And yours is so easy even the class spastic can do her!"
"LADIES!" hissed the head-teacher stopping her patrol at their row in the audience. "This may only be a nursery nativity, but less of the name-calling, please."

morganna said...

Name calling didn't do much for me, (although I liked both Greg's and Marc's) so I'm sharing something I was working on a little earlier for a poem.

The idea is to take a phrase and write down as many synonyms and facts about the phrase as you can think of. The phrase is "Our beautiful world."

Our beautiful world:
--our is a possessive -- whose world is it?
--the world of people
--3rd rock from the sun
--the blue green jewel
--home of world destroyers

g2 (la pianista irlandesa) said...

I like nicknames. I especially like coming up with them; for instance, one time my friend was approaching me at my locker. I couldn't decide whether to address her by her first or last name, so I accidentally combined them into "Janson!" It's stuck quite nicely. I've even conjured a few for myself, g-squared and the Irish Pianist, to name a few.

However, I never thought I'd get branded with one by another.

I was at lunch last year, and a friend of mine decided to say everything with a long "a" sound in it with more of an "aw" sound to it. It was most amusing, then she turned and decided to say my name the same way.
"GRAWWHS!!" she squawked. Almost the moment after it passed her lips she nearly collapsed with laughter. I found it pretty amusing myself, to be honest. She continued to use it, just as often as she used my name. Soon other people started to latch onto it, and because it was used so often I learned to respond to it.

A wide array of folks use it, it's been interesting: my close circle, music people, drama people, all sorts of folks. Perhaps my favorite part of it, though, is when a whole bunch of people call me at once: it sounds like a whole bunch of crows calling my name.

Most amusing, I think.
- - - - -
A few of my friends have interesting nicknames as well: Heen, Meems, and (one of my favorites) Wossl.

Marc said...

Greg - thanks :)

And yeah, I took a few whacks to the mask over the years. But it's totally worth it!

That sounds like a very charming audience for that nativity there.

Morganna - ah, no worries. I don't think it was one of my better prompts, to be honest.

And that's an interesting exercise of your own, I'll have to try it some time.

g2 - I suspect you know what I'll be calling you from now on.