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2002-07-18 - 8:51 p.m.

One of the hazards of office work, at least here in the administrative cube farm of Kryptonite University, is that you often become the unwilling audience for lots of other people's conversations. And one of the Murphy-esque laws of the work place seems to be: those who have the least to say usually talk the loudest. Mostly I try various methods of distracting myself so I won't have to listen to, for example, one of the clerks who recently did an all day monolog based on the list of Top 100 Movies someone had unfortunately sent her.

[Beginning with Movie Number 1: A plot synopsis, names of all the stars she could remember (which led to sub-genres of the monolog detailing other movies they appeared in and all pertinent information about them), when she saw it, where she saw it, with whom, her reaction to it, the reactions of all of her family members, whether she had ever rented it, plus any memories or miscellaneous personal associations the movie might bring to mind. I kept wondering if "Scream" was on the list and if I might be able to provide the audio simulation...]

Sometimes, though, it can be somewhat entertaining.

There is the Career Senior Clerk who has no concept of redundancy: "I misfiled it in the wrong place," she says (Does that mean it's in the right place?) "and we have to redo it all over again."

"Are you currently enrolled right now?" (or previously enrolled before?)

This is also the person who started the whole Catch 20 thing. And it has really caught on. I believe it has or had some distant relationship to the idea of "Catch 22." But this is a person whose only brush with higher education may have been a community college typing course, so I seriously doubt if it is a deliberately considered response to Joseph Heller's novel. From what I can figure out, a Catch 20 is just a Catch. But presumably it becomes much more official to have a number associated with it. It's a Real Big Catch.

"Sorry I can't do that," she says peering wisely over her glasses when I asked her to update something on our computer database. "Don't you see, it's a Catch 20."

And then we have the 35 year old girl-child who likes to write fantasy stories, who says: "It's just a *pigment* of my imagination." (And she's not talking about paint.)

And the little lady, height=width, who said she is starting an exercise program because this job was making her too *sedimentary*.(Oh, so that's *sediment* that settles in the butt. I always wondered....)

Our perpetual student, middle-aged, teeth-free, announced that "If I'm *consecutive* on the tests, I could still get a C." (Being consistent might also do it.) And she likes to make references to the *Arthur*" of a book. (Would that be the king, or....?) It's a little scary, re: the quality of a K.U. education, but then we knew that didn't we?

We had one work-study student who scared us all when she announced, "It's been seven years since I got arrested, so the *statue of limitations* is up." (Yikes... when did they put that up?)

A woman from another department comes in and begins a long story about her car accident. "They hit me right in my rear *quarter-pounder*," she says. It was a drama she recounted, complete with wild gestures, down to the last detail of getting to work late because of rental car red tape. "Rental car places are just like HMOs," she declares. "There is always a Catch 20."

Indeed.

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