Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This

What mama didn't say was that there would be weeks like this.  I speak with hesitance because it is not yet Friday at 5pm, so I am running the risk of this black cloud over my head lingering for another day or two.

 

Let's start with Sunday.  My husband was making meatballs for himself for dinner and I hadn't helped him at all.  Since he is recovering from foot surgery, while the meatballs baked, he sat on the couch with his foot propped like the doctor had ordered.  When the oven dinged, I decided to do my best Wife of the Year impression and plate his dinner and bring it to him.  Being 5'1, I didn't have far to bend down to remove the steaming hot meatballs from the oven.  How did I know they were steaming?  Because I stuck my face thisclose to the pan as I pulled it out of the 400* cooking box, and was immediately pelted with hot, stinging, flesh burning steam.  And in a move of further brilliance, I promptly put an ice cube on my burnt face to numb the pain.  Which it did, as it also created a bright red blister.  ON. MY. FACE!

 

When I awoke on Monday, I briefly forgot about the meatball war wound from the night before until I caught a glimpse of it in the mirror as I ran to the bathroom for a tissue to try to stop the massive amount of snot running out of my nose. If it was just a face blister, or just a runny nose, I could deal.  But somewhere along the way, I also picked up some sort of virus that caused one eye to swell, water uncontrollably, twitch, and fill with goop.  I'm a fundraiser by trade and therefore rely on working with the public and being charming and put together enough to sell them on writing checks to my organization with multiple zeroes in them.  You don't charm too many checkbooks by sucking up your snot in an attempt to give your chapped, Rudolph impersonating nose a break while also sporting a closed-from-mucus eyeball and a face blister.

 

Tuesday saw me armed with concealer, antihistamine, and tissues, and cowered in fear.  And by 'cowered', I mean attacked in full force.  After having a complete meltdown on the way out of the house because the living room was dirty, I declared that I was going to have a better day. I drove to work, where I received word that I had 1900 pieces of mail to get out of a co-worker's car and shipped to my volunteers in another town within the hour, or I would have to fold, stuff, seal, and stamp them myself.  The co-worker and I went to her car to load up and bring the letters inside, where we were greeted by our ever persistent protestors holding disgusting signs and screaming sexual slurs in between quoting Bible verses and telling me that I need to get to know Jesus (if I wouldn't get fired for responding to them, I would LOVE to tell them all about Jesus and how I'm certain He doesn't condone their sick actions).  Awesome.  Back in my office with the sea of bulk mail and the clock ticking, I sorted the letters and logged into my database to get the lead stuffing volunteer's mailing address.  I wrote her address on a post-it  and stuck it on the top box, loaded up the minimum of 40 pounds of boxes onto my weak girly arms, grabbed my purse, and navigated my way through 3 badge pass doors. The moment I stepped outside, I was welcomed by 28* weather and 35mph wind as I watched that sacred post-it with the all important address tumble and toss on the breeze through the parking lot.  I rushed to my car, set the boxes down on the hood and ensued on a seemingly hopeless mission to catch that neon pink office supply with confidential donor information on it.  Oh and did I mention that I forgot my coat at home?  No less than 7,000 goosebumps and 5 failed grab attempts later, I found myself 23 parking spots away from my car, clinging onto that sweet, sweet post-it.  I breathed a sigh of relief, composed myself, walked back to my car, and tucked the address safely inside one of the boxes.  After digging through my purse for my keys, I hit the unlock button and tried to get into my Jeep.  Hmmm, it didn't work. I tried it again, and again, it didn't work, so I decided I would open the door the old fashioned way and put the ignition key into the door key slot.  It fit, but it wouldn't turn left or right.  I removed the key and tried the sequence again with the same result.  So I abandoned that idea and tried the backseat door.  Locked.  Passenger front?  Locked.  Passenger rear?  Locked.  Trunk door that I was prepared to climb through?  Locked.  Freezing, defeated, out of breath, and arms scraped from the boxes, I collected all 40 pounds of them and walked them inside where, through tears, I asked another co-worker to keep an eye on them while I tried to break into my car one last time before calling a locksmith.  They agreed, and I ran out the door, set my eyes on my car, and immediately turned back inside and grabbed my boxes of letters.  Still standing where I had left her 15 seconds before, my co-worker looked at me puzzled until I responded with, 'That's not my car!  Mine is 2 spaces over...' Try walking out the door with dignity after that whole display was caught on 4 different security cameras.

 

After some more tears and a much needed lunch with my sweet husband who can make even the worst day better, I had a pretty quiet day on Wednesday and thought that my run of bad luck was winding down right along with the cold I was starting to beat.  And then it was bed time.  It has come to my attention that I am a snorer, and seeing as how I have never been able to breathe well through my nose, I decided it was time to try some breathe-right strips.  After my nightly bath, I adorned my nose with one of the ever so attractive strips, kissed my husband, and went to bed.  What seemed like hours had passed and I found myself in a terrible nightmare.  A bad guy had shot his way through my place of work, killing all of my co-workers and looking for me as I hid under a desk in the tiniest ball I could get myself into.  I could hear his footsteps.  Closer.  Closer.  Closer.  And then he GRABBED me!!!!  I screamed and karate chopped him with all my might, and then I could hear a distant voice saying 'It's okay!  It's okay!  You're okay.'  I opened my eyes to see that it was my husband who was soothing me, and it was my husband who I had just karate chopped in my sleep.  When I have nightmares, he says my breathing gets very heavy and erratic, and during this particular nightmare he said that I started to hold my breath in between the gasps so he had put his hand on my chest to make sure I was still breathing, and my subconscious thought he was a murderer who needed to be chopped in half and screamed at.  I'm lucky to have a partner who not only makes sure I'm still alive in the middle of the night, but one who also comforts me after I attack him for doing so.  It took me a long while to settle down after that, and my sleep the rest of the night was minimal.

 

So that brings me to today.  Still tormented by a face blister, too much snot in my nose, scrapes from the bulk mail I had to carry way too many times, and the latest and greatest - a giant bruise on my nose from the breathe-right strips and a guilty conscience from abusing my husband in my sleep. 

 

Tomorrow HAS to be better, right?  Right??  RIGHT?!!!

 

Fundraising Defined

In light of the many 'What I Actually Do' posters floating around Facebook and my lack of graphic design talent (and also my newfound inability to think of ANYTHING interesting to blog about that doesn't involve my Cute Guitar Guy), I made my own de-constructed take on the world of being a fundraiser:

What My Friends Think I Do:

 

What My Mom Thinks I Do:

 

What Society Thinks I Do:

What Donors Think I Do:

                            

                                                    

What I Think I Do:

                                                  

 What I Actually Do:

Who Hires These People?

So the IT saga continued as my work Blackberry would not connect to the internet, therefore hindering me from accessing my e-mail, therefore defeating the purpose of me having a Blackberry.  After 10 days of trying different things, most of which included taking the battery out and putting it back in (SERIOUSLY! Is that all they teach you at IT school??), Bill* gave up and told me I was on my own.  Apparently, this is acceptable behavior at my place of work.  Days earlier, I sent a grant application to my GRANTS MANAGER to complete and submit, and she e-mailed me back flatly saying,"I'm not doing this."  I was unaware that not doing our job was an option.  They should add that to the handbook.

Back to Bill from IT deciding that he didn't want to work on my IT problem anymore, he told me 'you'll have to go to Sprint and see if they can fix it.'  Fine.  I'll deal with it myself.  After getting to the Sprint store and waiting in line for twenty minutes, I'm told that the 'blackberry guy' is at another store across town, but is heading to the store I am at and will be here in about fifteen minutes.  I can go wait in the blackberry line behind 6 other customers.  If I were running a business that saw customers needing help with a specific product on a daily basis, I might think of hiring more than 1 person per city who knows how to fix said product, but that's just me. 

An hour and a half later, as it is finally my turn with the nice Sprint Blackberry technician, I explain the problem and hand him my phone.  He looks at the phone, then back to me, then back to the phone.  "Great", I think, another idiot for me to deal with today.  And then in a surprising turn of events, he said to me, "Ma'am, you don't have an account with Sprint.  Your service is through U.S. Cellular.  You'll have to ask them for help." 

Another hour at U.S. Cellular, it turns out that Bill never ACTIVATED MY ACCOUNT and that is why I have no service.  I drive back to work, login to my desktop, and find an e-mail from Bill saying "Actually our service is through U.S. Cellular, not Sprint.  My bad. Hope you get this in time."  Yeah Bill, I figured that out, and no I didn't get it in time.  Know why?  Because my Blackberry that you've been working on for a week and a half wasn't freaking activated!!!  Can we maybe move that to the top of our troubleshooting handbook??

So technology slowly working itself out, I headed home for a nice relaxing weekend at my sweet new apartment on the water.  As I started my day cleaning and doing some laundry, I noticed that it was getting very, very dark inside.  So I stepped onto my porch and saw this progression of weather:

10:05am - clouds rolling in

10:11am - wind starting to pick up

10:15am - house-shaking thunder and HUGE winds

10:18am - torrential downpour with bending trees and howling wind

10:32am - storm completely over, sunny skies, ducks back happily swimming in the lake

10:35am -

                          Good work, National Weather Service.  Thank God you and Bill are here. 

Dear Help Desk, You Suck.

I know that I shouldn't criticize something I don't understand, but I'm saying it - I think the IT department in every place that I have ever worked gets paid way too much for doing way too little.  When I call the help desk, no matter what the problem seems to be, I'm told to turn off my computer and turn it back on.  Flames could be shooting out the back of my monitor and I bet dollars to donuts that their solution would be to reboot.  I feel that this is the IT equivalent of a doctor telling me to 'rub some dirt on it and see if that fixes your broken arm.' Thanks, boys. 

Given the circumstances of the boxed answer I am so used to getting, I reserve all help desk calls to situations involving fatal errors or denied access.  Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending 6 of the 8 working hours of my day on phone with Bill*(names have been changed to protect me from getting the virtual finger from the help desk folks the next time I need their overpaid expertise.  But you know who you are!) from IT trying to gain access to the new system that we are supposed to be using.

I may not be a computer genius, but I know enough to know that this isn't a great start to the day when trying to login to a remote desktop:

Again, I had no idea what this meant, but I knew it needed fixed so I called Bill and explained that my parameters apparently needed corrected. Bill seemed nice enough, but it wasn't until after making me restart the computer 4 times in a row and reading him the same error message all 4 times that he decided I might not be an idiot and could have a valid problem.  I feel that this call could have been cut by 5 - 5.5 hours if we could all agree that if the problem persists after 2 reboots, maybe we should move on to the next troubleshooting idea, no?

After sufficiently reaching the apparent reboot quota before actual problem solving commences, Bill decided to shadow my screen. Having never met Bill in person, I didn't expect him to know that I am the cutie in the bottom right corner of the picture I use as my desktop background and the other cuties are my friends:

However, I also didn't expect his reaction to be, 'Oh you have 5 daughters?  I have 5 daughters too.'  Really Bill?  I sound old enough to have birthed 5 women ranging between the ages of 25 and 50???  This conversation is not off to a great start.

After taking control of my screen and going through the exact same process that resulted in the exact same error message I had been explaining, I sat silently while Bill talked his way aloud through a whole bunch of technical mumbo jumbo that I didn't understand.  Twenty minutes later, during which he repeatedly declined my offers for him to just call me back when it was fixed, he had an a-ha moment and proclaimed 'Oh my gosh - I forgot to give you paramaters to login to Citrix properly!  I can't believe I did that.  I'll fix it right now and you'll be set.'  So the problem was exactly what the error message that I had been reading to you for an hour at this point said?  Well who could have seen that one coming???

Another reboot, another screen sharing session, another login, and another error message:

So I'm in - I just have no resources. My internal reaction:  'No problem, Heidi.  Bill is a trained professional and will fix you right up.' Bill's vocal reaction: 'Ooooh.  That's not good.' Other than a medical specialist, a system administrator is the #2 person I don't want to hear that response from.

Fast forward TWO hours of listening to Bill ramble on some more about what it might or might not be, and yes, several --- 3? 7? 92? I seriously lost count --- more reboots to make sure that the computer fairy hadn't magically fixed it for us, Bill figured out that he had forgotten to give me (and only me out of the 23 new staff rolling over to this system) the permissions required to have resources.  Easy fix, he assured me.  Give him 10 minutes and then repeat the reboot, share, login process that I am a recently certified expert at, and I would be good to go.

................................Drumroll, please................................

Wah- Lah!  A real, remote desktop with access to my home desktop in the top left corner.  Fantastic!  I have access to e-mail, the intranet, timesheets, the database --- everything a fundraiser like myself would need! 

Bill being the concerned IT professional that he is asked me to login to the timecard.  This is what we found:

That's right.  3 Heathers and the wrong Heidi.  It has taken 4+ hours to get me into the desktop, and now I don't exist in the payroll system?  Bill said he would look into it as soon as we established that everything else worked.

Back to the desktop, I notice that not only do I not have a shortcut to the database, but of my 4 icons, the only 2 that work are the payroll system in which I don't exist, and this one:

This icon takes you to appointment scheduling and patient records.  The problem?  I am a fundraiser, not a clinician. 'Bill?  Why do I have access to clinic stuff, but not to anything pertinent to my job?'  Bill: 'Oooh.  Looks like I gave you the wrong desktop.  And uh, ummm..hang on.  JB!  JB!  Can I get a consult over here?' Next came muffled whispers between the two, and then Bill cleared his throat as if preparing to tell me that they had forgot to tell me I was fired and I don't actually work there anymore before he said, 'Yeah...I gave you the completely wrong accesses and we don't know how to fix it without deleting your profile and rebuilding it.  And that's going to take a while, so sit tight and I will try to get it fixed.  How about I call you the middle of next week to update you?'

No problem, Bill.  I'll just come to work with the inability to log my payroll, access donor records, enter donations, or do anything required in my job description, but never fear - I can color code my e-mails and if I get bored, I might schedule a few IUD removals for myself.  Give me some gloves and those tong-like things; I'm sure I can figure it out.

Bad news: I don't exist in the work system, have no access to anything important, and apparently sound like a 70 year old woman on the phone.  Good news: When this gig goes south, I'm pretty sure I can start a new career as an IT administrator.  Or a nurse practitioner.

Heidi - Can I See You In My Office, Please??

Recently, my company has 'merged with' (read: been acquired by) a larger chapter and beginning on July 1, there will be some changes.  Being as such, our new Human Resources department made a 3 hour drive on Friday to meet with us and go over the changes.

Things were pretty run of the mill; medical/dental/vision coverage, don't sexually harass your co-workers (I'm going to have to make a note to myself on that one), wear appropriate clothing, notify your supervisor when you will not be coming to work, yadda yadda yadda.  I was on board with everything until we got to this all important page of the handbook:

Ahh yes, one of my favorite subjects.  Let's take a look at our list:

Anyone else notice anything missing?  Because I can't seem to find 'Day After Thanksgiving' on here.  I asked if it was a typo, and was reassured that no, that was an accurate description of our holiday time.  Seeing the impending hissy fit about to happen, the HR Director told me not to fret, because we get our birthday off so it evens out.  Ummm, no.  If I am home on my birthday, who will shower me with love and adoration and presents?  When will my office be decorated?  THIS is what my birthday at work should look like:

He said that if I really wanted to come to work on my birthday that I could have any other day in that month off as my designated birthday day off.  Light bulb! Oh, I'm getting the Day after Thanksgiving off!!

This is how I proceeded to fill out EVERY piece of new hire paperwork (20 - 25 official documents) that I turned in at the end of our 5 hour meeting before HR had to drive 3 hours home. 

My guess is that they won't notice until today, so I am taking a personal day to allow them to cool off before what I can only guess is an upcoming one-on-one HR meeting...

Run Like A Girl

Well - I ran the Nike Women's Half Marathon on Sunday, and I lived to tell about it! There were hills, there was sweat, and there were more tears than I thought one person could produce.

What an experience!!! I felt GREAT until about mile 9 which is when I reverted to the emotional stability of a 4 year old. Crying and crying and crying and couldn't use my words to tell anyone what was wrong - I didn't even know what was wrong, I just wanted to cry! They say that you always hit a wall and mine was at mile 11 - I was tired, hurting, sweating, and just spent. I was crying and slowing way down when a patient who was also running the race came over, said, 'You can do this! You're doing this for me - you're running for my life!' and she cried and hugged me. Bring on the ugly cry! Holy cow, was that a moment. Suddenly 2 more miles seemed so incredibly easy!!!

They also say that at some point your brain goes to mush and you lose the ability to perform the simplest tasks. That moment was mile 12 for me. I had been texting family every 2 miles with updates and they sent words of encouragement and cheering to keep me going. After I sent out my mile 12 update, my phone was buzzing with responses and I looked at it and literally said to myself, 'I know that those are words. And I know that I know how to read those words...but I can't.' I COULDN'T READ!!!!! It was the most surreal twilight-zone-like moment of my life.

Finally, they tell you that you have a moment where you realize 'I'm actually going to finish!!!!' - granted, that moment for me came at mile 13.095 when I could see the finish line, but by gosh I knew I was going to make it!! My official finish time was 4:26:47 and the best news --- I wasn't even last! Sure, everyone I beat was probably either in a wheelchair or was missing a leg, but the point is I wasn't last!!!

Thank you SO much for all of the support during the past 4 months. You're fantastic and I really appreciate all that you've done for LLS and for me. Below is a link to my pictures from race weekend if you'd like to take a quick look.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2560059&id=10019966&l=9e929bbf33

GO TEAM!!

For all you LLSers out there!

You know you work for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society when:

•Your budget has a 102% increase in gross revenue, and a 250% decrease in expenses.

•You steal office supplies from hotels.

•People from the corporate world think you have an ideal job, but you’ve never been so stressed in your life.

•Your family knows to make a donation to your organization in lieu of holiday/birthday gifts!

•Your friends think you must be rich because you work all the time.

•Regardless of your title, your job responsibilities include everything you know how to do: grant writing, supervision, programming, catering/cooking, sewing, event planning, public relations, cleaning, interior design…

•In order to take an online training, you have to be on your computer AND a phone because those stupid thin clients don’t have speakers!

•You are extremely surprised if given a free sandwich during a lunch meeting.

•You look forward to receiving your mileage reimbursement checks because they are almost as large as your paycheck.

•You answer your phone at home like you would at work because you forgot where you were.

•When windows 2000 is an upgrade.

•First order of business every day is replacing your e-mail signature and Outlook folders because IT has said, ‘we are aware of the problem…please re-load everything yourself.’

•You have app support and the help desk on speed dial.

•You suddenly speak fluent Acronym: HO said the ED or FD will review the SWOT report regarding the IRR procedures with all PSM, TNT, MWOY, S&Y, and LTN staff – it’s in the ACM!

•Toilet paper is rationed the last 6 weeks of the fiscal year.

•Someone is diagnosed with ALL and you know that doesn’t mean that they have ‘everything’

•You know the difference between myeloma and melanoma.

•Opening Society Central means that your entire system will shut down.

•People introduce you as: ‘…from the Lymphoma and Leukemia Association/Foundation/Organization/Group’ or ‘ …from the Pennies for Patients Society’ and you just go with it.

•You’re constantly explaining to people how you get paid working for a non-profit.

•You can count the number of straight male colleagues you have across the country on one hand.

•Conferences are just an excuse to get drunk with your Peer Team and make fun of national staff.

•The printer/copy machine/fax narrowly escapes an ‘Office Space’ fate on a daily basis.

•No matter how many calls you’ve been forced to sit through, some people still don’t understand that it’s *6 to mute and #6 to un-mute.

Hips Don't Lie...Neither Do Photos

So my awesome (read: super lame and annoying) boss called me into her office at 4:55pm today to tell me how inappropriate and unprofessional I am because I put my hand on my hip and told her I'd be taking a few days off in the near future. When I apologized and said I didn't mean to be rude and that it's just habit that I put my hand on my hips, she told me that NO, I do not usually stand like that and it really 'pissed her off' that I did. End of story.

Rest assured, this has been a Miller and Higdon trait for many generations...I had little hope of escaping the widely adopted stance. Let's take a stroll down memory lane, shall we?

Here I am in Bullhead with my friend Christine:

And here I am on my 21st birthday in Vegas:

Here I am apparently ruining Ashley's graduation and wedding with my hand/hip combo:

Ugh. I'm so rude. How do my co-workers stand it when I act so inappropriately?:

Even when I'm on vacation in Hawaii, I just have to go and ruin everything...

Or visiting family in Iowa --- I told you it was a dominant gene embedded into our DNA:

We've even managed to pass the despicable trait onto the next generation *gasps in horror*:

WE MUST BE STOPPED!!! I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to any and all of you who have been so horribly offended by the Higdon Hand/Hip Hold. Seriously, I'll pay for the hours of therapy it has apparently caused you. Really, so sorry!

Teachers DO need a degree, right????

As many of you know, a big part of my job is working with teachers to coordinate a coin drive in their schools. My beloved mother is a teacher, and I am certain that she had to first obtain a four year degree before she was allowed to shape the minds of today's youth. What concerns me is that I see no possible way that some of the lovely educators I work with actually completed such a degree.

My first complaint is inattention to detail. In order to sign up their school to participate in the coin drive, teachers are required to first complete and return a very simple, one page registration form. This is important because I need to know how many boxes and how many Dear Parent letters to order for each school. After school name, address, and contact information (which has proven to be much more difficult to correctly answer than one would think), there is a line that says, "Number of classrooms participating:" --- the answer I am looking for here is a NUMBER, hence the word NUMBER in the description. The answer that I get waaaaaay more often than I should is "all" or "entire school."

My second complaint is not double checking their work. The few Einsteins in the group who actually know to write a NUMBER when I ask for NUMBER of participating classrooms instantly earn my love and adoration, however, I'm learning that I may be too liberal with my praise. If a teacher tells me that they need 40 collection boxes, I order 40 collection boxes. Seems simple enough. Until they call me 3 hours into their campaign in a panic saying, "I need 48 boxes, but I only got 40!!!" to which I reply, "I'm sorry - your registration form said you only needed 40" and they say very matter-of-factly, "Well I was just guessing." And how did that guess work out for you? Just fine, because YOU don't have to lift a finger. It's me who has to shift my entire day around to drive 8 boxes out to your school that is inevitably 50 feet from the freaking Utah border!!!!!

My third complaint is skipping over the directions. I know that this service learning project is not a teacher's first priority, and they are helping out of the goodness of their hearts, so I try to make their life as easy as possible where it relates to this coin drive. I provide each and every teacher with a folder complete with creative ideas, a tally sheet, a frequently asked questions page, and instructions on how to use coin star, among other helpful resources. If I had a dollar for every time a teacher called me and asked me EVERY single question on the FAQ page, we wouldn't need a coin drive to meet budget! What irks me even more, though, is when they call to chew me out and say, "The coin star machine is broken. You should really have a note that tells teachers to make a test deposit first!" and I apologetically say, "I'm so sorry! You should have gotten a page of instructions on coin star, and in bold, red print it says 'we highly recommend doing a trial run to make sure the coin star machine is in order' --- was your packet missing that page?" to which I get, "I don't know, I didn't read it." Really?! What happens when your students don't follow the directions? I'm pretty sure they either get a paper with an 'F' on it sent home to be signed and returned, or they spend their recess inside writing paragraphs about FOLLOWING THE DIRECTIONS!

And my final complaint is the wasting of my time with incorrect answers. I had one teacher order 29 boxes for a student body of 32. Knowing that this couldn't possibly be right, I called her to get the correct numbers, but she insisted that they were right. Me: "Your registration form says you need 29 boxes and 32 letters, but that didn't seem right to me." Her: "Nope, you got it. 29 classrooms and 32 students." Me: "32 students in each classroom?" Her: "No - 32 students total." Me: "In your whole school there are only 32 students, but you have 29 classrooms?" Her: "Yep. We're small." --- I still didn't think this was possible, so I gave it a couple days and then I e-mailed her, "Just wanting to confirm - you have 29 classrooms and 32 students in your entire school, right?" and I received a resounding, "That's correct!" So against all of my gut feelings, I ordered her 29 boxes and 32 letters. Fast forward to delivery day - I showed up with the promised supplies and some extra gifts to thank her, and she looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "We don't have enough letters - there are about 200 kids in our school and you only gave me 32. I know I said there were only 32 students, but that was just in my leadership group. I really meant 200 for the whole student body. Sorry. Can you bring more?" It took everything I had not to inflict bodily harm on this woman.

I don't get paid nearly enough.

These are the teachers we have? Really? These are the people who are molding the leaders of tomorrow? No wonder the stock market is in trouble. Pray for us all, people...

Are rules really made to be broken?

RULE: –noun
1. a principle or regulation governing conduct, action, procedure, arrangement, etc.:

Rules. Nobody likes them, except for the people who make them in some sort of attempt to assert their dominance and remind the rest of us that we aren't in charge. That's fine. I can accept that ours is a society of rules. And yes, I agree that some rules are dumb. Idiotic, some might say. And that's also fine. Where I have the problem is when someone sets forth a set of rules in a plastic placard at a staff meeting, and then blatantly disregards them.

Case and point:

Rule #1: All meetings will start and stop on time.
Outcome: It ran an hour and a half over schedule. On her watch. AFTER I talked through lunch instead of breaking like she wanted. We work for 7 hours a day and we were meeting for 3.5 of them.

Rule #2: All cell phones are to be turned off.
Outcome: Phone rang twice at the decibel of a 747 taking off above your head, she left the room to answer it both times, and not a peep out of the rule-making boss lady.

Rule #3: No gossip. We are too small and whispering is unprofessional.
Outcome: Approximately 1 hour later, the creator of said rule is sitting in the office across from me WHISPERING to my new neighbor --- It's not gossip if it's factual, right?

Rule #4: Dress for success.
Outcome: Oh, if only I had a picture to show you of her baggy t-shirt and jeans.

Rule #5: Personal lives are to remain personal.
Outcome: Remember when you told 3 staff members and 2 board members that you and your husband did so many drugs in the 60s that you don't even remember that decade, but you're pretty sure you had fun? Which part of that, exactly, was about business?


Ummm, hello? Kettle? This is Pot. You're black.

For those of you who were in the meeting --- don't mind my frustration, it's just my lower left brain talking. It likes to color code things. You wouldn't know that about me unless you got the 25 minute explanation...

Co-workers rock my socks

Past and present - my co-workers are some of the coolest people I have ever known. Whether we are drinking before helping one of them move their apartment into a storage unit,

or drinking just because -

we always have fun.

We like to go out to clubs with random naked women in bathtubs where the pastor's daughter brings a flask in her shirt, another person breaks out 'the box' on the dancefloor, and they all let me believe the dress code is a hoochie dress, when in fact they all show up in blue jeans.

We go to show openings together and end up in the same room as Michael Jackson's dad.

Sometimes they are on the radio for work, but end up describing themselves as a 6'2 bearded lady who is looking for a date.

Other times, they are squeezing in a quick check-up at a TNT kick off.

Once in a while, they just like to model.

They don't always take the best pictures

but they are pretty in real life -
Some of them live far away --

And sometimes, we like each other so much that some of them squeeze into the very back of a van on our way to dinner so that we won't have to be separated for even a moment.