In which I lie lie lie to my boss

I finished college a semester early, in December, just so I could save one semester's worth of tuition, which would have been about $2,000. I was living rent free in the garage apartment of some very nice people who lived in a fancy neighborhood not far from the Small Private School campus. Their only request was that I occasionally babysit their nine year old daughter, but if I had something else going on, they would say, "Don't worry! We'll have the maid stay." They were just nice, nice people who had some space and hated to see it being wasted.

In January, I started grad school in English at Big State School.

What a mistake that was.

I hated it. It was boring. It was not challenging. There was no writing. I did discover I have a knack for reading Middle English out loud. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" rolled trippingly off my tongue, but I could not believe that I was in grad school and we were reading the text in class instead of discussing it.

So I dropped out. I just quit. But I didn't officially withdraw - I just stopped going to class. There was method to my madness, though. If I were not a full-time student, I would not be on my parents' health insurance any more. I knew this even though this was 1985 and I was only 21, which is why I roll my eyes at the people who are shocked, shocked that they can't get insurance once they let their coverage lapse and then discover they are sick. This information was not a secret even 26 years ago.

The result of my not attending class was that I got an 'F' in every class. Every class, that is, except the PE class I was taking - squash and racquetball. I got an 'A' in that class. Even though I attended only half the classes.

The other result of my not attending - and getting almost all 'Fs' - was that when I started at Ut's graduate school of business five years later, I was on academic probation. I didn't even know it. They admitted me, but put me on double secret probation. I found out a year later when I was talking to my advisor and he mentioned I had recovered quite well from my earlier academic misdeeds.

I had found a few part-time temp jobs while I was still in school. One job was working at the bookstore during the book buying rush. For those of you under 30, let me explain. In the old days, you would go to class the first day and get your syllabus. That was after you had already stood in line for a few hours (at Big State School, anyhow) to get into (hopefully) and to register for your classes.

On the syllabus would be a list of the books you needed. You would go to the bookstore and hope that your books would be there. Sometimes, they wouldn't have arrived. Usually, there were almost no second-hand copies and if there were second-hand copies, they weren't much cheaper than the new books. You collected your books and then waited and waited in line to pay for them. At the end of the semester, you would try to sell them only they always seemed to change the edition - as if differential equations changes so much from one year to the next - so you were stuck with a book you no longer needed.

But the bookstore job didn't last. Now that I wasn't a student, I really needed work. I wasn't out too much tuition. At the time, I think grad school tuition was about four dollars an hour. Maybe that was undergrad. Maybe grad was $12 an hour. I think I paid about $35 an hour for business school. Whatever it was, it was a lot less than I paid for college and a lot less than anyone is paying now. I think tuition these days is a big racket and college kids are getting screwed.

I somehow found a temporary - tax season - job at the IRS service center. It paid almost seven dollars an hour, which was almost twice minimum wage at the time.

The money was especially good when you consider that we spent a few hours during training assembling our training manuals. You know - taking hunks of paper and putting them into a three-ring binder. I calculated the cost to the taxpayer of our assembling the books. Thirty new employees/trainees x two hours x seven dollars an hour = $420.

The state school for handicapped children did this sort of work for one dollar an item. So not only were the feds overcharging the US taxpayer for this work, they were depriving handicapped children of the chance to be useful and to earn some cash.

A lot of my cynicism about government work started while I was working at the IRS. There was a lot of waste. For example, we had to complete timesheets every week, accounting for our time in six-minute increments. How to complete the timesheet was a big part of training. There was a work category on the timesheet for completing the time sheet, which I found rather metaphysical. Wait. That's not the right word. What's the word for when what you are doing refers to what you are doing? I think there's a word. Maybe it's German. Some of the best words are German.

If I had stayed there - as my supervisor asked me to do when I told her I was quitting, I would still have a job today and would have one until I wanted to stop working and then I would have a very nice pension.

It was an easy job. Kind of tedious, with some moments of comedy. I was reviewing 1040xs, which is the form you complete when you made a mistake on your taxes, like forgetting to include a deduction. It wasn't always clear what the taxpayer was trying to do, so I would call to ask.

There is a feeling of great power in saying, "This is the IRS."

That gets people's attention. Nobody makes you wait. They get the person you are calling for.

I tried to use my power for good, of course. I felt so bad when this couple wasn't allowed to take the deduction for the two foster children they were raising. I tried to find ways where people would get more money back. Legally, of course. If people made mistakes on their returns, I corrected them. Nobody should be punished for a math error on his 1040x.

It wasn't hard. I started on time and left on time. I got paid.

That doesn't seem so bad now.

Hours were 3:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. Those hours were not a problem. Except for Friday. Not that I usually had anything going on Friday nights. My college boyfriend, Calvin, was still in Big Southern City. We didn't have the money to travel back and forth that much. Even with gas at 1985 prices, a 200-mile trip was daunting. 1985 prices went with 1985 wages.

One of my roommates was a drama major. She had a role in "Sweeney Todd" and my other roommate and I wanted to see her perform. I had listened when some co-workers and I were taking our break, drinking our cokes in the shabby little break room.

Taxpayers, you will be glad to know that although the IRS wastes money on putting together training manuals, they do not provide lavish break rooms for their employees. The whole office was grim, with a Brazil-like feel.

My co-workers were talking about their strategies for not returning to work Friday night after their supper break, which was an hour. "I'm just going to tell our boss that my car broke down," one said.

Another chimed in. "I have a friend who fell and hit her head in the shower once. I'll say that happened to my roommate and I had to take her to the emergency room."

In retrospect, there was probably no reason we couldn't have said, "Would it be OK to take the second half of Friday night off without pay?"

Actually, in retrospect, there was probably no reason I couldn't have gone to the play on Saturday night, instead. What was wrong with me?

But no. We had to be big fat liars.

I usually didn't leave work for supper. I usually brought something to eat and stayed in the break room. But the Friday that my roommate was in the play, I went home at supper time. I didn't leave anything at work.

And then I didn't go back.

I didn't even call.

Because my excuse was going to be that I had gone to take out the trash while I was home and had locked myself out of the apartment.

I have locked myself out of my car once in my life and I have never locked myself out of my home. Never. When I locked myself out of the car, I was lucky enough to be a college student (i.e., young and attractive enough to inspire gallantry) on the base where my dad was stationed. I walked back to the BX and asked one of the clerks to call the MPs for me. They came and unlocked the door. I owe you one, taxpayers.

But if I were locked out of my apartment (which I wasn't), then how could I call my boss to tell her that I wasn't returning to work that night? All I could do was wait for one of my roommates to get home and let me in. Oh the tragedy.

I went home. Met roommate #1. We went to the play.

I felt guilty the whole time.

As well I should have.

Shame on me. What kind of work ethic was that?

When I got to work on Monday, I found my supervisor and told her my lie.

She just looked at me.

She was no fool.

"I hope this doesn't happen again," she said.

I shook my head. "No, it won't," I promised.

And it wouldn't. I felt too guilty.

For the rest of my work life, I did not miss a day unless there was something genuinely wrong. I think I have taken five sick days in 14 years of corporate work. If I wanted to goof off, I just told my boss I was taking a vacation day. I don't lie very well.

In which I spend way too much time with a colleague who turns out to be a complete flake

This guy Rolando and I started working for the paper company on the same day in Miami. We were paid the same amount. I know this because he foolishly made a copy of his offer letter and left the original on the copy machine and oh like you wouldn't have looked. Honestly. Of course I looked.

We banded together in defense against some of the other people in the office, one of whom was a sweaty, pale blond guy who spoke no Spanish yet was in charge of Latin America sales and who told me during my interview that he would never live in Miami (he lived in Boca Raton) because he had children.

I was quite puzzled, as there were many people in Miami who also had children, including my next door neighbor Mousson, whose 15 year old son Rudolf overfed my cats when I was out of town, telling me, when I gently suggested that he might have given them too much food, "But zey were 'ongry! Zey were crying!"

Then I realized that Pat was just a big fat racist jerk and that his opinion meant nothing to me.

Rolando and I tried to become friends, but I realized soon that there was no hope. The first sign was the day he saw the book Army of Angels in my briefcase. I rode the train from Miami to Boca, where the office was, 60 miles away, and had a lot of time to read every day. This was in the mid 90s, when people were not expected to work 24 hours a day just because they had laptops and cellphones. I read. I even had time to read The Economist every week. Three hours on a train every day will do that to you.

But Rolando was not a reader. He was not a student of history. I'm not sure what he was.

I don't want to sound like an intellectual snob. I know there are many bright people who have not been exposed to things that you would think everyone is exposed to. The great IT guy who was always so helpful to me in Memphis had never heard of Anne Frank.

He had never heard of Anne Frank.

How do you grow up in the U.S. and not know that?

But he was a product of Memphis City Schools, which, for those of you who do not know about Memphis City Schools, is not the best school system in the world. The county mayor once gave a speech in which he said that every day, when he woke up, he thanked God for Arkansas and Mississippi just so Memphis wouldn't be in last place.

Rolando asked what the book was about.

"Joan of Arc," I answered.

"Who's that?" he asked.

Oh Lord.

Rolando had gone to private school. His dad was a bigwhig with an international company. Rolando had gone to the good schools in Venezuela and Colombia and the U.S. He got his MBA at Northwestern, which did not admit me, not that I'm bitter about that. Actually, I'm not. I still went to a top school and I paid only $5,000 for two years of tuition and fees.

Plus it probably didn't help my chances at Northwestern in my interview when I asked the alum who was interviewing me what made Northwestern ten times better than U.T. that they charged ten times as much tuition. The alum was not amused and sputtered that you couldn't look at just tuition. I shrugged. I was paying for this. I wanted to know. But Northwestern made it easy for me and didn't admit me. Whatever.

But Rolando, who was educated and who had gotten into a school that had not admitted me, did not even know who Joan of Arc was. For dumb.

But that's not what made him so flaky.

One day, when I mentioned that my friend Susan and I were going to the Keys on Saturday morning to go canoeing, he asked to join us. Sure, I told him. Just be at my house at 7:00 a.m. That's when we're leaving.

Susan and I waited. No Rolando. We waited some more. Still no Rolando.

I finally called the phone number he had given me. He was staying with his parents until he found a place and I didn't want to call so early, but I was worried that maybe he'd had an accident between his mom and dad's house and my house and wouldn't you want to know if you were a parent?

His mom answered. "He's still sleeping," she told me.

"Screw him," I told Susan. "We're not waiting."

That's still not the flaky part.

Rolando and I had to go to Cincinnati for two weeks of training. We decided not to fly back to Miami for the weekend in the middle but just to stay up there. "There's some cool state parks in Kentucky," I said. "We could go to the park, stay in the lodge and the company would pay for it."

Our boss said fine. He didn't care. As long as we spent less than tickets back to Miami would have cost.

We checked out of the hotel that Friday before driving to the park. Rolando had a $150 phone charge on his bill. He had called the plant in El Salvador on the hotel phone.

"Why didn't you use the company calling card?" I asked.

He shrugged. "It probably wouldn't save that much money," he answered.

"What!" I said. "You really think that the company wouldn't negotiate a better rate than the hotel charges?"

"Nah," he said.

He had another $40 on his bill for laundry.

"What laundry?" I asked.

"My socks," he said.

"Socks? But why?"

"I didn't bring two weeks worth of socks," he said. "I had to have them washed."

"But you could have washed them in the sink!" I told him. "Or there's a washing machine in the hall! You could have washed them yourself for a dollar!"

"Nope," he said.

I was stunned. Such disregard for company resources! Not that I hold any love in my heart for that place. Just yesterday, LinkedIn sent me the suggestion that I join the paper company alumni group.

"Just as soon as I join the 'All the guys who have ditched me' group," I muttered.

But I was always a good steward of my employer's money. Why would anyone deliberately waste money? Especially when it was not necessary?

We drove to the park in Kentucky. The lodge, unfortunately, had only one room available. We were going to have to share a room for two nights. Ick. Not pleasant, but not un-doable. I would just rather not have that level of familiarity with a co-worker. Fortunately, I had brought my usual frumpy pajamas with me. Not that I think he found me in any way alluring. I had met his girlfriend, who was 15 years younger than he and I were and about 20 sizes smaller than I.

By the time we got there, it was too late to do anything but eat and go to bed. Rolando had a long conversation with his girlfriend - on the room phone - while I read a book and tried not to listen.

The next morning, he got out of bed, wrapping his sheet around him to walk into the bathroom, holding it closed with one hand while he grabbed his clothes with the other.

He had slept nude.

When he left the bathroom, after his shower, the sheet and his towels were on the floor.

Leaving your wet towels on the floor is so damn rude.

I said something to him and he told me that the maid could pick them up.

Yes, he was a spoiled rich kid.

Hotels have signs now saying that they are so conservation minded and they care and they will only change the towels daily if they are left on the floor. Towels left hanging are a sign that the customer wants to re-use them.

I have no problems whatsoever with using the same towel more than one day in a row. It is horribly wasteful to wash them every single day. But it is a bit disingenuous of the hotels to claim that they care so much. They are just counting on most peoples' natural courtesy and good home training to hang up their towels. Still, it's smart marketing and I don't blame them for it. I do wonder, however, about people who can just toss a towel to the floor and leave it there. How were they raised?

After breakfast, we went for a hike.

Rolando hated it.

Trees! And limbs! In his way! Bugs! BUGS!

Oh for pity's sake. I hate hiking and am about as big a whiner as you will ever meet if I have to walk up hills when it's not part of a gym class, but this was not bad at all. It was just pretty mountain countryside with very clearly marked paths. Birds, flowers, trees. Hiking lite.

We trudged back to the lodge and had lunch. Went back to the room, which the maid had cleaned, although I had hung the towels because I just couldn't stand it. Rolando went to look out the third floor window - and jumped back, shrieking.

"What's that? What's that?"

I looked up from my book and squinted. "Oh. A squirrel."

"But it's jumping!"

I looked up from my book again. "Yeah."

"IT COULD JUMP INTO THIS ROOM AND BITE US!"

"I doubt it," I answered dryly.

"IT COULD BE DANGEROUS!"

"No," I said.

"We should leave," he announced. "I don't care if we have another night here. We should leave."

I thought back on the time we had already spent together: nude sleeping, towels on the floor, grouchy hiking and now, irrational fear of squirrels. How much more of this could I take?

I closed my book and stood. "Great idea," I said.

The End.

In which I work for a crazy boss

I know, I know. Everyone has a crazy boss at some point and I should consider myself lucky that this boss, Crazy Cathy, was only a short-term boss in a temporary employment situation. I was considering going into the Peace Corps and didn't have a whole lot vested with CC, but it was still a pain in the neck.

I was in Austin and had finished my MBA. Unlike my wiser fellow students, I had made no effort whatsoever to find gainful employment before graduation. I was aloof, sure that I would escape the corporate rat marathon that everyone else seemed so eager to run.

Ha. Stupid me. I forgot the part about how if you want to make a decent living, you have to work for your money. As in, they don't pay you the big bucks because it's fun to go to the office every day; they pay you because it's hard and you have to deal with idiots. Not all of us can be major league ball players or actresses. We don't have the talent to be athletes or the photogenicity to be on film. That leaves corporate cubicle dronedom, unless of course you are a trust fund brat and inherited wealth is a whole separate category that I won't address here as I have no experience with it, except that it wasn't until I got to college that I first encountered people who were from another socio-economic strata from mine. Most families on military bases are about the same income level and even if someone has wealth from another source, you wouldn't know because base housing is assigned by need and rank, not by wealth. One of my college classmates was getting some fancy car, though, and his dad was having it custom made. Actually, even being around students whose parents were paying their tuition and giving them spending money for beer was a novelty.

But I digress.

He who wants to eat must work and eating is my favorite hobby, which means work is a necessary evil.

Still, I didn't want to go back to another big company because I had just left a big company. I had this vision of working for a small company where life would be all rainbows and unicorns. So I waited until after I had graduated, then spent the rest of my savings on a ten-week traipse through Europe, Turkey and Israel, before I commenced my job search.

Surprise!

Nobody was hiring in the summer of 1992. At least, they weren't hiring me.

I started networking, as rumor has it that is how one finds a job.

I contacted former clients from when I had worked for the insurance company before grad school. One of them, Crazy Cathy, owned a small company with her husband. When I asked her to keep me in mind if anyone needed to hire someone such as I, she asked if I would do some work for her. Her human resources director had quit and she needed to hire a replacement. Would I go through the resumes and screen the candidates?

Sure. Piece of cake.

But there was more.

Each candidate in whom she might be interested had to be tested. If the person passed the test, CC would interview him. I graded the test as the candidate waited and knew right away if he would proceed further.

But CC wouldn't let me tell people that they were out.

I had to leave them hanging, which as anyone who has ever looked for a job knows, is a horrible feeling.

I myself had to take the test. I missed one question out of 20 or so. What do you call the person who runs a factory or an apartment building? Apparently, the answer was "superintendent," but considering I had never lived in New York* and every person I have ever heard of running a factory is called a plant manager or the like, superintendent was not the word that sprang to mind. CC said I had one of the highest scores she had ever seen. Whatever.

Once a candidate had passed the first test, he had to take a second one - a personality profile called the Birkman test. This test is not supposed to be used as a hiring tool, but that did not stop CC. She fancied herself a psychologist.

Here's the rest of it: the first test was an intelligence test.

In the state of Texas and I know this because I called the Department of Labor and a friend who used to be an HR director for Kraft and who had worked in Texas, it is illegal to give an intelligence test as part of the hiring process. Or, probably, it is illegal to consider the results of an intelligence test in hiring someone unless you can prove that intelligence measured in that way is a necessary part of the job.

I was quite uncomfortable with doing something illegal. I thought maybe CC just didn't know, so I mentioned my call to her. She was furious. How dare I! How DARE I?!

Yet I continued to work there. CC, who showed up a few hours a week, would call for me while I was away from my desk (OMG! I went to the ladies' room sometimes!) and would be livid when I returned her call. Where was I? Why hadn't I been at my desk?

She paid me to feed their cats while they were out of town, which was just fine except she charged those hours to the company instead of paying me out of her personal funds. Tax fraud. And - they paid their employees below-market salaries because they (claimed they) had profit sharing. Profits that were artificially diminished because she was charging her personal expenses to the company.

None of this was the last straw, though. It wasn't until the head finance guy had me go through all the customer files to identify California customers and their 1990 purchases so the company could remit sales tax to California that I lost it. It wasn't pulling the 1990 purchases - it was after I had spent three days going through every single customer file to make a photocopy of any California customer purchases, the finance guy said, "Now do the same thing for 1991."

"But why didn't you just ask me to do both of them at the same time?" I sputtered, incredulous.

He shrugged. "You're being paid by the hour, aren't you?"

"I'm not being paid to be bored and inefficient," I shot at him.

Then I burst into tears. "I used to make $75,000 a year and I had my own secretary!" I sobbed as I left his office, furious. Nothing more humiliating than crying at work, in front of a jerk, over something so stupid. He was right. I was being paid by the hour. I should have welcomed the extra work, no matter how excruciatingly dull it was.

Three hours later, the finance guy showed up at my desk. "We won't be needing your services any more," he announced. He waited for me to get my things and walked me out. Because you know, I was going to trash the place. I couldn't believe I had been fired from such a corrupt place. I should have reported them to the IRS and the Department of Labor. Jerks.





* Which was why the taxicab medallion example made no sense to me in Econ 102, and yes I should have raised my hand and asked what the heck a medallion was and why it had anything to do with supply and demand, but I was a timid thing when I was in college and my professor was intimidating.

In which a broker kisses me so I steal his biggest account

When I was working for the insurance company, I sold direct and also worked through brokers. Some accounts would take direct bids from the vendor, but many relied on a broker to collect and analyze the various proposals. Those brokers were powerful – you didn’t have a shot at the business if the broker didn’t like you.

I had a list of accounts I was supposed to sell and the only way to sell some of them was to convince the broker to let me bid.

There was this one broker, “Jim,” who controlled a few accounts I was interested in. The largest was a savings and loan with over 200 employees, which would have yielded a nice bonus – enough to pay off a big chunk of my student loans and let me eat meat more than once a week. (Well, I did eat meat more than once a week, but that was at lunch when I was entertaining brokers, prospects and clients on the company American Express. When I had to pay for food myself, it was rice and beans and peanut butter.)

I called Jim. We spoke over the phone. We met. We got friendly. We would banter. It was my job to make this guy like me enough that when his account went out to bid, I would get a shot.

I was bantering with a married man OLD ENOUGH TO BE MY FATHER. I was NOT INTERESTED IN THAT WAY.

In my mind, this was absolutely not flirting. He was MARRIED, for pete’s sake. Who flirts with a married man? A married man old enough to be her father?

Not me. I could hardly flirt with single guys my age. Flirting was not in my repertoire.

He asked me for a bid for the S&L. I gave him numbers. We didn’t get the business. We were a check bid. Big waste of time. But he did let me meet the prospect, which was rare. Most brokers liked to keep complete control and separate insurance company from prospect.

Over the next year, I kept in touch with him (and with the S&L finance lady). About eight months after the check bid, I ran into him at a park, where he had been coaching a kids’ soccer team. I said hi and he walked over to my car, bent down and kissed me on the mouth.

He kissed me. On. The. Mouth.

Omigosh.

I had no idea what to do.

So I said, “Well, bye!” and went home.

The next day, I marched into my boss' office and told him I no longer wanted to work with Jim. My boss asked why not. I told him that Jim had kissed me. My boss told me that I must have done something to provoke it. I told him I had no interest in provoking a married man my dad's age. My boss refused to re-assign the broker.

I was ticked. Remember, this was in the late '80s, before anyone cared about sexual harassment. Then, it was just part of doing business. Someone comes on to you and you don't like it? Too bad, missy. Deal with it yourself. And don't de-rail your career while you do it.

My friend B is a lawyer. She was at a work party with the other lawyers in her firm when one of the partners made inappropriate comments to her and was telling inappropriate jokes. When she protested, he looked at her, smirked, and said, "Don't forget I'm the one who does your performance evaluation."

She found a new job in Washington, DC, shortly after that. She didn't want to work in that environment and suing would have kept her from ever working as a lawyer in our state again. I'm not a big fan of lawsuits, but I am also not a big fan of people using their power inappropriately.

Back to me and Jim. I had kept in touch with the finance lady at the S&L. Her renewal was approaching, so I called to ask if she wanted us to bid again. She did. I prepared a bid. Jim asked me for one as well and I told him that I was working directly with the client.

I got the account. He lost whatever commission - 6%? 3%? I can't remember what the rate was - he would have gotten for 200 employees at about $90/month per single employee, $200/month per family. (This was a long time ago.)

Teach him to mess with me.

Unfortunately, the S&L went out of business three months after I wrote the account, so I had to return my entire bonus, but it was still worth it.

In which an insurance agent makes a pass at me and I don’t know what to do and I turn down his open-mouth eating boss for lunch and get in trouble

In one of my first jobs after college, I worked for an insurance company that no longer exists as I knew it then. Then, the company required that employees work from 8:00 to 4:00, with a half an hour for lunch, except for Fridays, when we all went out and took a little longer. People were allowed to smoke in their own offices, but if you were a cubicle person, you were out of luck. Shortly after I started, the company outlawed smoking on all company space, reasoning that as a health insurance company, they should be setting a Good Example.

We got a turkey at Christmas and the donut and coffee guy came around at 10:30 every morning, although I never bought from him because I was too poor, living in my wee studio apartment on Sunset Drive in Houston, taking peanut butter and cardboard sandwiches to work for lunch, making shoes out of duct tape, sweaters out of the dust bunnies under the twin bed I had hauled from my mom and dad’s house in the back of my Chevette hatchback and hair products out of cigarette ashes scrounged from honkey tonks and bacon fat.

We got 11 federal holidays and regular vacation. We left work at 4:00 without looking back.

It was another time.

A time when men made passes at lasses with glasses even at work and that’s just the way it was. Nobody told us that this was improper. Or how to handle it. We just accepted that was how some men (=jerks) acted and our responsibility as women was to extricate ourselves from the situation without making a scene or embarrassing the man in question, because of course the worst thing of all would be to embarrass a man.

I had an assignment where I traveled to Arkansas, New Mexico and all over Texas, working with the company’s insurance agents. My goal was to get them to sell more of my department’s product.

I went to Albuquerque to do a presentation to the office there. After I was done with the speech, I went out to lunch with some of the agents. One of them asked if I wanted to go out to dinner with him that night.

Not only did I not want to go out with him because I was horribly not attracted to him and because he was sort of a co-worker, but I already had a date with Kerry, the to die for cute room service waiter at the Marriott who was the self-proclaimed oldest student at the University of New Mexico, which couldn’t possibly have been true because he was only 26 and the average age at UNM was 28.

But I felt like I couldn’t tell this guy I had other plans.

So I did the next best thing. I wanted to say I thought he was too old for me, but I knew that was tactless. Instead, I told him I thought I was too young for him.

Smooth, huh?

When we returned to the office after lunch, I sat at a desk to work. He walked up behind me and started to rub my neck.

Yes, you read that correctly. He put his hands on my body and began to move them.

I had no idea what to do. What to say.

I hung up the phone, stiffened, and said nothing. Pointedly said nothing.

He stopped.

I went back to work. I said nothing and did nothing, but saved my revenge for the next man who crossed me in such a way, because it takes me some time to figure out how to react. I’ll tell you about the guy who got the vengeance for two later. I also did not return to that agency.

Then his boss called me into his office and asked if the two of us could go to lunch again the next day to discuss strategies to improve sales.

I had eaten lunch with the manager already. He chewed noisily, smacking his lips with his open mouth full of food. He grossed me out. I only speak with my mouth full of food when I have something really, really important to say, like interrupting someone to tell a good joke. This guy just made it a habit.

Again, I did not know what to say. The appropriate response would have been something like, “Oh that sounds great but unfortunately, I already have another appointment.”

Instead, I said, “But I was going to go shopping at lunch!”

Which was not true. I had lunch plans with Kerry as well. If I wasn’t at work, I was hanging out with Kerry. (Whom I have recently found again on facebook and is as cute as ever, 20 years later.)

When I returned to Houston, my boss called me into her office.

“So and so from Albuquerque called me,” she said carefully.

My heart sank.

“You shouldn’t tell a manager you are going shopping instead of meeting with him,” she said. “It is your job to meet with these guys, you know.”

“I know,” I told her miserably. Then I explained how he was such a pig.

She sighed. “You need to always have a good excuse ready,” she said. “Don’t let it happen again.”

It didn’t. I made sure I had an excuse.

In which I rent a room in a group house in Washington DC with the three post-college guys who lived like post-college guys

I had to move out of the room I was renting from Crazy Carmen in D.C. I had gone to Washington D.C. after I got out of the Peace Corps in the hopes of finding a job in international development. What I discovered was that someone with my background - master's degree, one foreign language, international work experience, Fortune 50 company experience - could find employment as a secretary. A temp secretary.

The key to a good job was connections, of which I had none. Connections could be developed if one was willing to stick around town long enough, working for almost no money. The people who did this were subsidized by their parents, I suspect. Those of us who had to pay for our own health insurance, car insurance, rent and food on $11/hour from the temp agency had a harder time making ends meet.

I first rented a room from Carmen, a Peruvian woman who was a full-time secretary with benefits at the World Bank. Not a bad gig. The secretary thing, I mean. I temped at the World Bank for secretaries who were on vacation. I don't know if my workload in their absence was anything like what they did, but I had about six spare hours a day after I distributed the mail, printed the boss's emails for him and sent a few faxes. One of the secretaries for whom I subbed passed her spare time looking at internet porn, if her internet bookmarks were any indication.

Note to people who take vacation and are replaced by temps: Delete your porn bookmarks.

Note to temps: On your first day, when the head secretary is showing you around and tells you "there's the bathroom" and "there's the break room" and "here's where the mail goes," realize that the first two statements are for your information but that the last one is so you know where to put the mail when it arrives because for the first time in your life, you are a mail sorter and deliverer, which can be a humbling experience after you have had significantly more responsibility than making sure Mr Smith's mail doesn't go into Ms Carr's box but hey, it pays the bills (sort of) and you are not in a position to be choosy.

I was one of two tenants renting an upstairs bedroom and sharing the upstairs bath. Carmen was reluctant to let me use the kitchen, but acquiesced when I promised I would just make oatmeal in the morning and maybe make a sandwich in the evening. For my $400 a month, she also reluctantly agreed to let me use the washer and the dryer. I was not, however, supposed to sit in the living room. Or have overnight guests, male or female. For $400 a month. For one room. In 1995.

I was not a housemate, as I presumed. I was a renter of one room. One. Other than that, I was to stay out of her sight.

I moved out after she accused me of ruining her ceiling. The plaster on the ceiling underneath the upstairs bathroom fell off because the bathroom floor leaked. The other tenant would bathe and leave the shower door open. The water dripped off the shower door and onto the floor, where it leaked through.

When I noticed this problem, I bought a squeegee and used it on the door every time I showered. I suggested that the other tenant do the same and told Carmen about the problem, suggesting she might want to have the grout re-done.

They both ignored me and after a month, the plaster started to fall.

According to Carmen, this was my fault. That the floor was destroyed because of my one month of showering and squeegeeing and not because of the other tenant's year of not squeegeeing.

And I didn't just move out; she evicted me.

Maybe I am the "X" here. Two destroyed bathrooms and I am the common factor.

On to the group house in Arlington. A DC tradition: a bunch of people who don't know each other sharing a house.

I shared the house with three men in their 20s. Two lived downstairs and had their own bathroom; two of us were upstairs and shared the other bathroom. Knowing that I would be cleaning the bathroom anyhow, I negotiated a deal with my floormate that he would let me use his phone (I did not want to install my own phone - remember, this was in the days before cellphones) in exchange for my cleaning the bathroom.

But I had no such power over the kitchen.

Three guys in the mid-20s vs me.

They won.

Honestly, how could I expect someone to move the pizza box two feet from the counter to the trash? And to use the drain trap when rinsing dishes? If you do that, gunk gets caught in it. That's gross. Easier to let the food wash down the drain and clog the sink.

I finally got tired of the whole thing and moved away. I wasn't patient enough to wait months or years to meet the right person to get a decent job. I had done my charity work; now I wanted to make real money. And I was tired of sleeping on the floor on my blowup mattress and sharing a bathroom with strangers.

In which I develop a crush on a guy who makes porn movies

After a year and a half of excruciating job search post Peace Corps, I finally got an offer from a large company in Miami that was really a corporate finance/mergers and acquisitions sweatshop but I didn't know that and even if I had known, I would have taken the job anyhow because I needed to be employed with dental and a pension. Beggars can't be choosers. I was tired of looking. I was tired of temp work and being told how to send a fax.

Head secretary: You need to wait for the FAX CONFIRMATION NOTICE.

Me the Temp: Yes, I know.

HS: And if the FAX CONFIRMATION NOTICE IS 'YES,' then you know it went through. Otherwise, you have to re-send.

[Repeat simple instructions like this at least twice more with me impatiently saying, "I know, I know."]

Me: You must be used to working with really stupid people. [Oh yes I said that.]

I don't know if recruiters thought I was going to come to work swinging on a vine, wearing dreadlocks and Birkenstocks and singing Kum Bay Yah, but that is not me. I took high heels and suits with me to Chile. Yes, I had to send them back to the US once I realized that I would be traipsing through the mud pretty frequently, but I was not the stereotypical Peace Corps volunteer and I have yet to meet someone who fits that stereotype, so really, it shouldn't even be a stereotype.*

Anyhow. I moved to Miami and made no friends at first. The other singletons at work were pretty much all Florida State and University of Florida grads who were still into being Florida State and U of Florida grads. Being a University of Texas grad, I had no interest in mere Florida alums. We did not have much in common.

One Friday night, I returned home after another long day working for The Man in the Sweatshop that had over 100% turnover in my year there, so it's not just me whining here. Nobody liked working from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. The light on my answering was blinking. Yay! Someone had left a message for me to meet at happy hour! Finally, they wanted to be my friend!

It was a sales pitch from a septic tank company.

Fools. I rented. Why would I want to build a septic tank?

There was this guy. Mark. He had a wicked dry sense of humor and seemed fairly intelligent. And he was nice looking, in a rugged, broken nose way.

I liked him.

I tried to flirt with him.

He didn't flirt back, but he would have actual conversations with me. We would goof off for ten or 15 minutes a day, just chewing the fat.

I kept waiting for him to ask me out.

He didn't.

He did, bless his heart, express his condolences after my dad died (two months after I started the job). When I burst into tears after he told me he was sorry for my loss, he backed out of my office, apologizing that he hadn't meant to remind me of the sadness. But at least he had the guts to say something. Most people didn't, even though everyone in my group knew why I had been gone for two weeks. My VP said something in passing, asking, "Oh. Were you and your dad close?" when I got a bit emotional.

Yeah. We were close. That's why I was upset that he JUST DIED. Sheesh. Are there people who laugh off a father's death?

This was the same VP who didn't understand why I thought it was inappropriate for a manager in another group to take his team, which included two women, to Hooter's for a meeting.

"They have good wings," he shrugged.

I asked him how would like it if his seven year old daughter would someday work there.

The blood drained from his face. He got it.

Back to Mark.

We would talk. We would laugh. I silently willed him to ask me out. But no.

Then. He said, "I'm having a New Year's Eve party. Want to come?"

Omigosh. What to wear? I was so excited. Jeans and a shapeless gray sweater that flattered me in no way whatsoever! That's the ticket!

I arrived at his apartment, which was in a high rise overlooking the bay. Very nice. There was a woman - not the kind I am, but the kind with long painted fingernails and long tousled hair and long legs wearing high heels with her tight, dark blue jeans - standing next to him.

"This is Tanya. We date," he announced.

As my heart was falling to my knees, he introduced me to a man who looked like him. "This is my brother, Tom."

Oh. The brother who used to be a priest and had left the priesthood? (Mark had told me the story.) Well, that's just the kind of man I wanted to meet.

I left the party early. Mark was upset that I wasn't more interested in Tom. "I don't introduce every woman to him, you know. I wouldn't have introduced you two if I didn't think you were worthy of him."

Maybe those weren't his exact words, but that was the sense. He meant it to be a compliment, but I got the message: He was not interested in me That Way.

OK fine. I retreated. We continued our friendship in which he would say things like, "I've never been able to talk to a woman like this," to which I would silently respond, "Yeah, that's because you date empty-headed bimbos who look great on the outside but don't have any staying power. And they probably can't even cook."

One morning, my boss, Luke, who is still a friend and is one of the best bosses I have ever had, called me into his office. He knew I had a crush on someone at work because I would ask him for guy advice but I wouldn't divulge the name of the object (subject?) of my affections.

"Close the door," he said.

Uh oh. I was in trouble.

He paused, cleared his throat, then said, "I'm not sure how to tell you this and I wasn't sure I should, but I talked to my wife about it and she said I had to tell you."

Oh good grief. What was it?

"I know who your crush is on."

Well big deal.

"And I learned something about him that you need to know."

He took a deep breath. "He makes porn movies."

What?

"I was scuba diving last weekend and ran into Bill (another co-worker who was a buddy to Mark). We were talking about taking photos underwater and he started to tell me about how he makes these movies and they do casting calls and how would he shoot scenes underwater? It took me a second to figure out what he was talking about and then I couldn't believe it."

Luke was a strong family man. Three boys whom he took camping and sailing and swimming. A wife he adored. A son they had lost shortly after birth after being warned mid-pregnancy that he would not live and whose name was (and still is) included in the signature to Luke's Christmas card. Sunday school teacher.

Not a porn-movie-making kind of guy.

Bill, apparently, was unaware that Luke would not be impressed by the idea of making underwater porn movies and continued to wax enthusiastically about his Art as Luke tried to figure out how to leave the conversation gracefully.

"Mark hangs out with these guys," Luke said. "I wouldn't be telling you this if I weren't sure. I'm looking out for you like a big brother would."

I believed him.

I stopped talking to Mark. My not-talking was conspicuous enough that Mark came by my office to ask me why we didn't talk any more. "You're the only woman friend I've ever had," he said. "Why don't you come by any more?"

"Oh, just busy," I lied.

Which I was. I was busy taking the staples from the autocollator out from the left-hand side of the presentation for the board of directors and re-stapling on the right because evidently, somebody, sometime, had mentioned in passing that that was how the board of directors liked their documents stapled so that was part of the job of financial analyst. That, and to calculate what the company profits would have been if they had sold the aircraft division ten years ago, the point of which was lost to me, but then I am not a captain of industry driving a business into the ground.

But I had never let my busyness get in the way of goofing off with Mark.

I had to harden my heart. I wanted to ask him if it was true and maybe should have, but how do you ask someone if he really does help make home porn movies and then expect to get a truthful answer? I trusted Luke more.

I didn't speak to him again and then quit the job a month later. Ta, ta porn guy.




* Except for my friend Henry's roommate in Chad who got high on nutmeg all the time. Yes, nutmeg. He must have smelled like banana bread. Or just nutmeg.

In which I have a chance to be Mrs Robinson but no

When I was still working for The Man, slaving away in my no-privacy cubicle in the converted warehouse in the part of town where people were carjacked at stoplights and we were supposed to call security if we had to go to the parking lot after dark, a colleague, Billy, asked me to lunch. Although I usually ate lunch at my desk* and then ran to the JCC gym for a quick workout,** I agreed to go. I had known Billy for five years - since his starting at the company right out of college. We had worked on several projects together and he was a great kid. Going out to lunch with him sounded like a lot more fun than going to the gym.

When we got to the restaurant, Billy told me this was his treat. I protested, but he insisted. I stopped arguing and accepted graciously, although I think lunch between colleagues should be dutch treat. But it’s ungracious to argue when someone makes a generous offer like that. When I offer to buy lunch for someone, I mean it, and find it insulting to have the person make more than a token protest.

We had a nice conversation. On the one big project we had worked on together, I frequently made brownies for the team. “No brownies for you!” became a mantra when I was teasing someone. Billy told me there was a guy on his team now who was always bringing elaborate desserts to work and that he – Billy – wanted to make something even better. (Men are so competitive. I would never try to outbake anyone for say, book club.) Did I give dessert-making lessons?

No, I told him, but I would send him some recipes. And, I said, he might want to consider taking some cooking classes – that would be a great way to meet girls! Then I got nosy. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No, not right now,” he said, blushing. He was a quiet, reserved guy – not the sort who would be out on the town all the time, I would think.

“We’ll have to figure out a way for you to meet a nice girl,” said yenta me.

Then he told me that he had gotten a cat and we compared kitten and cat stories. “You need to come over and meet my cat,” he suggested.

“OK, sure,” I said. I didn't mean it. I wasn't interested in going to his place. But what do you say to something like that? No, I don't want to come over to your place to see your cat? I spend enough time at work and spending non-work time with co-workers is just like work?

He told me about the vacation had taken to Milan. I was interested to hear about it. “I have photos,” he offered. “You can come over and see them if you want.”

“Email me some!” I said. Enough with the making me go to his place! He was a tech guy. Did he not understand the wonders of the interweb?

But then I started to wonder. No! I was THIRTEEN YEARS OLDER than he was! I was completely misreading things.

I suppressed my thoughts. Crazy, crazy, crazy. What would a 26 year old guy want with a 39 year old woman? I'm not Demi Moore, you know. It's not like I can pay for a perfect body (OK, she was starting with a decent canvas to begin with) or help his career. I was imagining things, letting my ego get in the way of reality. Who wouldn't want a man 13 years her junior to be attracted to her, even unrequitedly? I was seeing things that weren't there that I sort of wanted to see but then really didn't want to because that gets messy.

We returned to the office. I emailed a few friends and asked their opinion. I asked my brother. They all said that given the facts as I had stated them (not that I have ever been known to exaggerate), it sounded like Billy thought I was One Hot Mama, and I use the word "Mama" on purpose, although I have no children.

There was a new young woman in accounting. I called her. "I know a really nice guy," I said. "Do you want to be set up?"

Nope, she told me. She had a boyfriend.

Oh. Like she shouldn't do a capital analysis of all the available investments to see which is the best one? Serial dating is really bad for evaluating options. She should date a lot of guys at once.

But she was unconvinced.

It didn't matter, because I had emailed Billy first to ask him if I should ask Accounting Girl if she wanted to meet him.

“I’d really be more interested in getting to know you better,” he replied.

Oh.

Sheesh.

How was I supposed to respond to that, impressed as I was that he was willing to put himself out there and flattered as I was that he was attracted to me?

1. I wasn't interested in him, age or not.
2. I had to keep working with him.

Hadn't my responses to his bait about cooking, cats and photos been enough to put him off, even though I hadn't thought that he was flirting at first? Could I tell him I had to wash my hair? Why was I being forced into this awkward position? MEN! If you throw out hints inviting a woman to your place and she pushes back and she also offers to set you up WITH SOMEONE ELSE, that means she DOES NOT WANT TO DATE YOU.

Sigh. I had to deal with this.

The meanest thing to do is to string someone along.

So I lied instead.

I emailed him, telling him how very flattered I was, but that I was involved with someone else, which was sort of - OK, not really - true. The flattered part was totally true.

He must have been OK with what I said because not only did we not have a problem in our working relationship after that, but he continued to email me for a good two years after I was laid off (a few months after his proposition) to check in on me. Or maybe to see if I had changed my mind.




* Take that, the four men (and my only peers in the office) who went out to lunch without me my first day of work at this company. I had taken the train the 60 miles to work. (Don't move to Boca! they told me. We're moving the office to Miami any day now!) I did not have a car with me or any other means to get to a place where food was sold, other than my feet, and considering I was 1. wearing high heels and 2. did not know the area at all, that wasn't a good option. I had not brought lunch with me. There was a small snack bar in the office building that sold junk food. The man who hired me plus all my new colleagues walked past my office. We're going out to lunch, they said. See you in an hour or so. Yeah. I felt welcome. I ate pretzels for lunch. The next day, I brought my lunch. Jerks.

** And to watch the hot, hot, hot Israeli cop who finally asked me out - OK, he told me I could ride around in the cop car with him and asked for my contact info, but that was a request for a date as far as I was concerned - but then told me that he was married but only for a green card, which, as you know, is a deal breaker for me. I don't do immigration cheating. Why are these guys so attracted to me? Cheaters, I mean? Even if he was lying about his marriage and it was a real marriage and not a green card marriage, then he was sort of cheating on his wife with his flirting with me.

In which I stand up for myself to the guy who grabbed my butt and he gives me a $20 tip

It's time for a post where I don't look like a total idiot. One where I am woman hear me roar.

So few of those.

So many of the other.

But then as my former boss and current friend Kurt said, "Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."

One hopes that as I am now into my 40s, I have had enough experience and can coast on good judgment for a while.

My freshman year in college, I worked as a cocktail waitress over Christmas break. It was probably illegal. A neighbor owned the bar and wanted some extra help and I wanted the work. Was it tips only? I might even have been off the books, except at that time, tips were not taxable so it wasn't such a big deal. It must have been a tips only deal, because I don't think I was old enough to be working in a liquor establishment. I was 18 and drinking age was 19.

Well. There you go. I'm a scofflaw from way back, Miss Goody Two Shoes who has otherwise always declared all her income and gets really mad at those who don't because they are making the rest of us pay more. But even if I had been paid an hourly wage, I wouldn't have made enough to pay taxes anyhow, so there you go.*

It is easy to make money as a cocktail waitress. All you have to do is remember what people are drinking and be able to do math in your head. I also discovered it helped to card the women, who grumbled about, "Don't I look old enough to drink?" but said that just for form's sake because what woman doesn't want to be thought under 19 years old?

And I discovered that I got better tips when I wore a skirt than when I wore pants.

One evening, as I was leaning over in my short denim skirt wiping a table with club soda, for that is how you get the stickiness off the surface, a man casually grabbed my butt as he walked past me.

I stood suddenly, startled and flabbergasted.

Nobody had ever grabbed my butt before. Not even a boyfriend, of which I had had two if you count the gay swimmer. I had certainly never had an unsolicited butt grab.

What to say? What to do?

I thought about it. This man's behavior was unacceptable. My body, my butt.

I marched over to him. He was standing with some friends, laughing.

"Excuse me," I said firmly.

He looked me up and down. "What?"

"Do you have a daughter?"

He looked confused. "No."

Rats. There went my plan. Wait. Improvise, adapt, overcome.

"Well, if you did, how would you feel if someone did something like that to her?" I demanded.

He sputtered, "But it just looked so cute!"

"How would you feel?"

He said nothing as I walked away, vindicated. Ha. Showed him. He wouldn't be grabbing any more butts, would he?

Six minutes later, he was at my side. "Here," he said as he handed me $20.

I thought about the implications. Was I selling out? Letting him have forgiveness for $20? Should I reject his plea and his money?

I took the money. Twenty dollars was $20. He would think twice about grabbing if it was going to cost him that much every time.





* When I was a Peace Corps volunteer, I, and all the other volunteers I knew, got an earned income credit after filing our taxes. I was so outraged at the stupidity of this that I returned my check uncashed with a letter to the IRS. They were oblivious. Perhaps they thought it was OK to use taxpayer money to supplement the stipends of volunteers who were living just fine in Chile or 3rd world countries. I doubt that was the intention of the people who created the program.

In which I make the mistake for the 2nd time of becoming somewhat involved with a man at work and then realize I am not interested in him

Don't get your honey where you get your money. I had learned that lesson when I was 22 and working in Houston. I dated the nicest guy for a short while. He was lovely, but it just wasn't a match. That's the purpose of dating, right? To find the right fit? But when you don't fit, life is easier if you don't have to see each other at work every day at the 10:00 a.m. donut cart. Yes. We had one of those. And the company gave us each a turkey at Christmas, which did me no good because sheesh, what did I know about cooking turkey? But they also, I think, gave cash to those employees who did not want a turkey and cash is my favorite color of present.

Anyhow. You'd think at the age of 41, which was when the second work/dating event happened, I would have known better. I did know better. But where else was I supposed to meet men? I was at work from 7:30 to 6, then I went home, cleaned the bathroom, cooked supper and went to bed so I could get up at 5:00 to go to my exercise class at 5:30 a.m., and no, except for the instructor of the class, there was nobody there who was 1. single and 2. attractive. I will tell you how I humiliated myself with the instructor later. That rule is don't get your jelly where you get rid of your jelly roll, or something like that.

I had known Dick for a few years. As co-workers, of course. I always thought he was married. It was hard to tell because most of the men did not wear wedding rings. Not because they intended to cheat on their wives, although a significant number of the senior executives were on number two aka former secretary, but because I worked for a manufacturing company and when you are in a factory, you should not wear jewelry. My dad worked on airplanes for his career and never wore a ring.

We had never flirted. I had stopped flirting at work years ago because it brought me nothing but trouble. Even when I thought I was just having fun banter, the man in question sometimes mistook my intention and then you have a headache. Easier just to be professional, cool, slightly distant. Better to be a bitch than a tease. Either way, you're not one of the guys, but it's easier to get things done as a bitch. I think.

It wasn't until I learned that Dick had been a pilot in the navy that I started talking to him about non-work issues. How had a navy pilot, the best pilots in the world, ended up at my company doing what he was doing? Why wasn't he a commercial airline pilot making three times the money with ten times the status? I asked him these questions, although far more tactfully, and he explained that when he left the navy, it was when the airlines had scaled back hiring. He needed a job, any job. But my image of him was changed. Top Gun and all that, although Tom Cruise is not fit to polish a real pilot's shoes.

Then our mutual friend Lucy told me that Dick liked me. Yes, it was second grade. I was supposed to check "yes" or "no" and send the note back.

Isn't he married? I asked.

Divorced, she told me. Recently divorced.

Happily ignoring that red flag, I embarked on a full-scale flirtation that included instant messaging (although not emailing, because I am not that stupid - but maybe I am - do company computers keep IMs?) in the afternoons.

Finally, he took me out to lunch. I insisted that we go where nobody from work would see us. He was a little nervous, but I attributed that to his probable lack of dating in the past 20 years. Or 25. He was older. Bad habit of mine.

I kept waiting for him to ask me out on a weekend date. He had to ask. I was not going to. I was D-O-N-E done with asking men out. If he wasn't interested enough, then too bad.

A few days later, he wanted to meet for breakfast. Stop! Not like that. We met at a Denny's on the way to work. In the parking lot, he grabbed me and planted a big ol' smackeroo on my lips.

Oh. My. Gosh.

Horrible, horrible kisser. I mean, awful. How could anyone make it to that age and be such a bad kisser? I tactfully pulled away, telling him that I had an early meeting and had to prepare.

I asked Lucy about him. Did he like me or not? Why wouldn't he ask me out for supper? I didn't mention that he was a bad kisser because she was good friends with him and that seemed mean. After the kiss, I wasn't that interested in seeing him again anyhow, but I wanted to know what the story was.

"He still lives with his ex-wife," she told me.

What?! I said.

It was something about the alimony and not being able to sell the house and she didn't necessarily want a divorce and drama, drama, drama.

What a mess. Now I really had no interest in getting involved. Bad kisser, drama, so much to not like.

I ended it. Over. And once again, I had to work with someone who wanted to date me.

But then the problem solved itself when I was laid off. Lovely.

In which I get drunk for the first time in my life and neck with my boss's married boss in public

Y'all, this story is almost too embarrassing to write. This is even more mortifying than the Affaire Gomez. My consolation is that most people probably have some story that makes the blood rush to their face in shame as they think about it. Most of us do not escape our youth without at least one really stupid, humiliating, this is not how your mother raised you stunt. If you did, I commend you. You are a far better person than I.

The other consolation is that humiliating, stupid acts make great copy.

When I was 23, I lived in Austin, where I worked for a Big Insurance Company. Every year, BIC had a conference in Houston for the entire region, which included about ten field offices. Part of the non-work activity that year was a wallyball tournament. Wallyball is volleyball played in a racquetball court, if memory serves.

The four of us from Austin won the tournament. Seven games or something like that, and we missed supper to play. We were hungry, dehydrated and victorious.

We went up to the bar to celebrate. Our co-workers had a head start drinking, but we did our best to catch up. I don't know what goes on at company offsite events these days, but in the mid-80s, people drank and smoked and nobody thought this was bizarre.

I had never been drunk before.

My team started doing shots of tequila.

Tequila is nasty, but once you have two or three shots, it's not so bad.

I had seven shots of tequila. On an empty, dehydrated stomach.

Then my boss's boss, Marv, who had been flirting madly with me for the past two days, started buying me beer, a fluid suitable only for making fish batter in my view, and making a straw with a rolled-up $20 bill for me to sip it.

In my defense, let me say that Marv was 15 years older than I, should have known better, and was fired a few months later for sexual harassment. Did anyone get fired for that in the mid-80s? He must have been really bad.

Marv encourages me to drink more.

I do.

My judgment went out the window.

One of us started kissing the other. I would guess he started kissing me because even drunk, I don't think I would be stupid enough to kiss my boss's married boss in front of all my co-workers.

Yet I did it.

The only saving grace was that my co-workers were drunk as well and nobody was paying attention to me. Becky R, the VP, who was 38 and really should have known better, was throwing up in the ladies' room. She was not my friend and she might have noticed and remembered, but she had problems of her own.

I got tired of kissing Marv and turned toward Steve, an unmarried peer. "Oh, you're cute!" I said as I lurched toward him.

In an act for which I will be eternally grateful, my friend Doug, who also worked in the Austin office, grabbed me and said, "You're not going there." He then marched me back to my room, threw me inside, and left me.

Someone had vomited on the bedspread.

I am pretty sure it was not me, as my roommate for the conference was already sprawled on the other, unvomited-on bed. I tore the linens off the bed, threw them into the tub, and slept on the bare mattress. The next morning, I rinsed the linens as best I could and left a $10 tip.

That did not stop the hotel from telling BIC that their custom was no longer welcome.

During the meetings the next morning, I thought, "I don't even feel bad! People talk about how awful it is to be hung over, but they know nothing. This is easy."

Then I leaned over to get the water pitcher and almost fell to the floor. That's when I realized that the reason I did not feel hung over was because I was still drunk.


PS No, my mother does not read this blog.

In which I make the mistake of talking to my boss about my love life even though it's obvious he is interested in me and then he asks me out

After I finished grad school and before the Peace Corps, I did temp work.

For one assignment, I was sent to Big Computer Company, which was testing their user manuals, although you would never have known it to read one. The manager gave me a series of tasks and the manual, then observed through a two-way mirror as I worked.

One of my tasks was to add a hard drive to a computer. I looked at the appropriate instructions, discovered they were crap, literally* tossed the manual back over my shoulder, and figured out how to install the hard drive on my own.

When the manager, Mark, was debriefing me, I told him that his problem was that the people writing the manuals were techies who already understood the process so well that they didn't know how to explain it to non-techies, much like the full professors teaching freshman chemistry. They have forgotten what it's like not to know.

Techies also think the rest of us should learn the hard way because once we do, it's so much easier. That's my brother's rationale for DOS versus Windows. Really! Just go through the hassle of learning DOS because once you've committed forever to understanding it, it's a piece of cake.

No thanks. I want something that is easy and intuitive from the start. The beginning of marketing a product is appealing to the user's laziness.

I also pointed out that the writing was not good. What you need, I told him blithely, is someone like me: someone who knows nothing about your product but who knows how to write and who will include instructions such as, "Now hit 'Enter.'"

I was hired (as a temp) for $15/hour, which was not too shabby for temp work, especially in 1993.

I soon discovered that much of my job was hanging out with Mark, a sweet, slightly nerdy (which is OK), 37-year-old Mormon virgin who had taken all the classwork for a PhD in psychology but had not written a dissertation. His job was to run the testing lab at BCC. There wasn't enough work, so after I would spend a few excruciatingly dull hours alone in a conference room editing manuals and then putting the changes into the electronic file, which was on the mainframe and for which one needed to use HTML because BCC was not going to be caught dead using Microsoft products, no matter how much their own product stank in comparison, Mark would find me and we would gab.

I asked him all about Mormons and why couldn't he have caffeine. He told me that it wasn't necessarily a restriction against caffeine but against stimulating beverages, which some in the church maintained were hot beverages and others maintained were caffeinated ones. Still, this did not put the church into schism as the one cuppers and the two cuppers of the Church of Christ have seen happen, so it must not have been an essential difference. What it meant for Mark was cases of 7 Up in his office that he got at Sam's Club.

The soda worked well to wash down the ranch flavored corn nuts that he also bought by the case and had stacked precariously behind his desk.

We talked about the Jesus Jammies. He was not so eager to discuss theories of the jammies or even tell me what they looked like** but I'm sure he was intrigued and perhaps convinced at my suggestion that the man who originally came up with the idea also happened to find himself the owner of a factory that made underwear.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my friend Laura had set me up with an acquaintance from work. I had gone out with this guy once or twice, but he wasn't as interested in me as I was in him. He went out of town one weekend and returned to tell me that he had been in San Francisco with another woman.

She is beautiful, he told me, but I can talk to you.

I took that about as well as any normal woman would.

I shared all the acquaintance drama with Mark. All the, He loves me, He loves me not baloney that insecure, low self esteem women do when A Man Is Not Calling. The proper response, of course, is To Go On With Your Life, but I was young and stupid back then and made many, many mistakes.

Mark was interested and wanted to know more. This was OK. We were just friends, right? I had sensed some interest, but he was my boss. He would never do anything unprofessional.

Like ask me out.

So I kept telling him all my romantic woes and he kept sympathizing and I didn't get a whole lot of work done, although I got done all the work Mark gave me. It was boring. Mark was not so busy either. We goofed off together and nobody saw us because BCC was housed in a building with passkey-only grim gray hallways and hidden offices. In my time there, I saw only three other employees once I was past the lobby.

Contrast this to 3M, where I had had another temp assignment. Their building was open and airy with whiteboards and markers at every hall intersection to encourage the engineers to collaborate whenever possible.

Guess which company has had more innovation?

Back to Mark.

After Acquaintance and I decided there wasn't enough room for both our egos in a relationship, I told Mark it was Over.

He promptly asked me out.

Actually, what he said was that he was kinda interested in maybe hanging out with me and did I want to go out to supper sometime?

And in one of the dumbest career moves of all time, I told him no.

Seriously. How bad would it have been to go out to eat with a 37-year-old Mormon virgin? He'd already made it clear that he was not going to marry outside his faith (we had talked about the lack of hot Mormon girls in the area) and if he'd made it to 37 intacta, he probably wasn't going to blow it now. Plus I had only two months to go and I could have pretended to be a Nice Girl who doesn't sleep with men before marriage. One dinner a week to keep a $15/hour job?

I was a fool.

He wasn't.

I got a call from the temp agency the next day. BCC no longer required my services.



* When I say "literally," I mean "I really and truly did the thing I said," not "figuratively."

** I know now because of Big Love.

In which I take a job in the heroin district of Tijuana

This blog is evolving from an all about my in-laws and my wedding blog to a blog about the men mistakes I made before I met the wonderful hottie Primo and now to just life disasters in general. To get more in-law material, I would need to visit them or tell stories that are not mine to tell as long as the people involved in them are alive.

Anyhow, I do have more dating drama to tell you,* but I thought you might like a change of pace and one of my post-Peace Corps job stories instead.

When I returned from the Peace Corps in 1995 (I was a business volunteer in Chile), employers were not lining up to hire me. I know. Shock. Thank you every Peace Corps volunteer who has shown up to work in Birkenstocks, singing "Kum-Bay-Yah." You do no favors for the rest of us. I had legitimate business accomplishments to show for my two years (increased revenues and profits, reduced accounts receivables, which matters a lot in a country with high inflation, reduced expenses, etc, etc), but nobody cared.

So I loaded up my car and went to Washington, DC, the Mecca for those with apparent lack of accomplishment, which is what Peace Corps seemed to indicate to so many in the private sector. No luck there, but apparently I was a good enough temporary secretary at the World Bank that they were calling my mom and dad six months after I had left DC to see if I wanted more work. Yes. Because secretarial work is what I have aspired to all this time.

I went west. My Peace Corps friends Marty and Janet lived in a big San Diego house. Most of my things were in my parents' basement, but I loaded in my car some key items: all my high-heeled shoes, an inflatable queen-sized mattress and my grandmother's china.

No. I don't even remember why I felt compelled to haul a set of china from Minnesota to California. Surely there was a good reason.

In San Diego, I checked with the University of Texas alumni association for alums in manufacturing who might have some advice about international manufacturing work. When I called this guy, whom we shall call, "Bob," he invited me to come see him. I am all about the networking, so I went.

He explained that he had a small maquila just in Tijuana where he was building a revolutionary product for which he held the patent. He had some engineers and some skilled workers, but he didn't speak Spanish and didn't have someone to help him negotiate the Mexican bureaucracy. Yes, he had his Mexican liaison, but he needed to delegate some of those responsibilities.

Was I interested in seeing the operation?

Well yes!

I drove to Tijuana with Bob and his American engineers the next day. The factory was indeed what he had said: a small operation making a prototype of the product.

After I had looked around for a while, Bob asked if I would like to work for him. $1,000 a month plus 1,000 shares of stock a month. The stock was currently worthless, but soon - soon, we would all be rich!

Yes.

But I realized that I could not afford to live in San Diego for a mere $1,000 a month. Even in 1995. Staying with Janet and Marty for the duration was not an option. Houseguests and fish, etc, etc.

So I spent my first day looking for an apartment in Tijuana. I found one in someone's back yard. Small, but newly renovated and clean.

And without a toilet.

The landlord said, "You stay at my house until I install the toilet. Manana, I install."

Foolishly, I gave him my money.

The toilet remained uninstalled as the landlord played cards with his buddies and I slept several nights in his youngest daughter's bed. She, in turn, slept with her older sister.

Meanwhile, at work, my big accomplishment in the first few days was to get a shower curtain put across the opening to the toilet so I could pee without everyone watching.

I suggested that fire extinguishers might not be such a bad idea for a place where men were welding, but Bob did not jump on that one. One of the engineers said that Bob and his wife could pinch a penny hard enough to form copper wire.

I accompanied the Mexican liaison on various errands. I got to weld. At 4:30, when the factory closed, I went to see if the toilet had been installed in my apartment, then I went back to my landlord's, twiddling my thumbs trying to think of ways to kill time.

The engineers pulled me aside. "We're retired. We have pensions. We can wait this out," they told me. "But you're young. You need something that's going to pay out sooner."

The Mexican liaison dropped me off at my toilet-less apartment and recoiled in horror. "This is the main heroin-trading area here!" he told me.

How did he know? I demanded.

"Because all of our laborers are on a work-release program from the heroin rehab center and this is where they come to buy drugs!"

I looked at my toilet-less apartment, at the box of china sitting in the corner next to the inflatable queen-sized mattress and my shoes, and thought, "What am I doing?"

The next morning, I told Bob I was quitting. I told my landlord I wanted my rent back and amazingly, he gave it to me, albeit very reluctantly.

Then I returned to Texas and surrendered to the placement office at the business school at UT.





* The man I met in the airport who was older than my mother and had jumped out of helicopters behind enemy lines during Vietnam and who would call me from Japan and New Zealand and talk for hours but couldn't be bothered to tell me he didn't want to see me any more once I had slept with him. Oh yes. I will tell that story, even if it exposes more of my Bad Choices** about men, just because it's a good story.

** "Bad Choices," as someone wrote about taking her dog onto the plane and letting the dog out of its carrier so that the dog was free to run down the aisle and poop. The writer noted that the dog had made Bad Choices, but I would place the blame elsewhere.

In which I have a horrible job interview in Fairview

May 2006 I have been trying to find a job. Really. I do need a job. I don't know yet that I am going to marry Primo and become a gold digger of the first order. A money sucking, bon bon eating, soap opera watching* gold digger. Yes, I married Primo just so I wouldn't have to get a job. Sly and Doris were right.

Anyhow. I apply for this job in Fairview because I am thinking I should move to the city where Primo lives so we can date and get to know each other and if I'm going to do that, someone else should pick up the moving tab, sell my house and pay me a good salary.

Much to my surprise, the Acme Company calls me for an interview. I have a phone interview first. The recruiter asks me how I feel about long hours and tight deadlines.

Oh please.

If I tell the truth, which is how everyone feels about long hours and tight deadlines (they are a sign of managerial incompetence and I don't want to work in such an environment), I won't get a second interview. Why bother to ask such a question? Everyone is going to lie and say, "I LOVE long hours and tight deadlines!"

OK, they're not going to say that, but they are going to say something like what I say, which is that sometimes they are necessary.

Only they're not. If you have decent planning and management. Which my former employer did not and apparently Acme does not.

They like me enough that they fly me to Fairview for more interviews. Which go OK until I meet this woman Meg who comes into the room oozing something. Hostility? Anger?

She is wearing denim pants with a wide belt, a jacket with heavy shoulder pads (Honey! 1984 called and it wants its jacket back!), and clunky shoes. On the right (i.e., cute) woman, it could have looked ironic, but on Meg, it is Dykefest 2006.

I look great in a red tailored suit with a just above the knee skirt. Black pumps.

Is she mad that I look better than she does? And if she's a lesbian, why would she care? It's not like we'd be playing in the same market. If she's straight, then I say, Honey, you’re the one who’s dressing ugly on purpose, OK? I didn’t pull those clothes out of your closet, put a gun to your head and make you wear them. If she's lesbian, then so what? The zenn** diagram of our sexual objects does not intersect.

Meg asks me right away if I have any questions for her. I am thinking, Don't you ask me questions? You are supposed to be interviewing me, honey. Do some of the work. Plus I had just had a 45-minute conversation with the first interviewer and we had covered a lot. More than a lot - first interviewer and I were supposed to talk for only 20 minutes, but we really hit it off. Maybe that's why she's hostile: she's getting to me late. Who knows?

So she asks me a question. What is my weakness?

Stupid me, after saying, "I didn't think people really asked that question in interviews," I give her a real weakness instead of a fake, job-appropriate weakness. She smells blood.

She asks why I want the job.

Duh. Because I am unemployed.

Why do I want to live in Fairview?

I hesitate. I don't want to tell them my boyfriend is here or they will lowball me on the salary. Later, I realize that this is a stupid attitude because no Fairview employers can understand why I would want to move here and telling the truth about Primo makes them far more disposed to me. Plus, I can't bear the lying.

I ask what she likes and dislikes about the job. Then I ask her about the employee gym (which she brought up in the first place).

“Why don’t you ask me about the project?” she asks impatiently. Well excuse me! I get sidetracked for one little second! But I think asking her about what she likes and doesn’t like about the job are perfectly legitimate questions. Not to mention FIRST INTERVIEWER COVERED THE PROJECT.

She tells me that she lives in Big City 90 miles away and commutes to Fairview. “Every day?” I gasp.

“No, I have an apartment here for Monday through Friday. I own a place in Big City 90,” she answers. “I’m used to being in a much more diverse, liberal city.”

“So you really live in Fairview and go to Big City 90 on the weekends,” I say snidely.

“No, I live in Big City 90!” she protests.

We don't like each other that much. At all. Primo and I pick the conversation apart later and we figure that either Meg sees me as competition or is threatened by me, which is totally hilarious because I am so not ambitious. Maybe she thinks I would challenge her – she kept talking about “visibility” and “high-profile,” stuff I couldn’t care less about. She can be the queen bee as far as I’m concerned. I just want a fun, challenging, interesting job, but the path to the corner office is clear. I am not standing in her way.

I leave and send email thank you notes to everyone who interviewed me. For some reason, Meg's is kicked back to me. I somehow got the wrong email or something. I re-send, but to no avail. Within two days, I have the traditional go to hell email from them, which does not break my heart too much because they had misrepresented the job on monster.com and the actual job was something I did not want to do. If you are doing an SAP conversion, you need to say that in your ad is all I am saying because that way the people who want nothing to do with an SAP conversion ever again as long as they live will know not to apply for the job and waste your time.

They also all talked about getting like 120 factories all over the world converted in a year or two which meant spending lots of weekends up all night long while the conversion happened. No thank you.

And everyone was in tiny cubicles. Smaller than the cubicle I had in my old job. Smaller than the office I had before my spineless boss let another department take our offices and put us into cubicles 13 miles away in the neighborhood where people were routinely carjacked.

However. I am still unemployed and it's because they didn't want to date me. Which stinks.




* If we hadn't cancelled our cable because Time Warner was charging $70 a month for us not to watch TV, I would be watching soap operas. Well, I'd be watching them now. Primo still has TV in 2006. But he still doesn't watch it. I don't even like to do the math on that. It makes me a little bit sick to my stomach.

** K pointed out that I mean a Venn diagram, not a zenn one. Yes. I do. Thank you. What would a zenn diagram look like? The sound of one hand clapping?