I’m right here. I’ve been right here all along.
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Archive for ‘January, 2011’
19 results.
Tales of the BossLady is a series of rantings and ramblings that I wrote several years ago. I was employed by a pair of Realtors, one of whom was relatively normal and one of whom was a constant source of eye-rolling, head-shaking, and double takes. I present these entries as they were originally written in my private journal, in the present tense and with all the geekier-than-thou superiority of my former self.
I was once asked (well, I partially volunteered) to make a system for BossMan and BossLady to keep track of certain sales leads in a certain way. Because I’ve got some experience in creating and maintaining databases online, I thought this would be relatively simple, but BossLady’s hosting provider is a little different from mine in how they set things up.
In an attempt to temporarily get away from making a lot of technical comments, let me tell this story via an analogy. It’s a food-related analogy that I think a lot of people would understand.
So let’s say, rather than an online system to track leads, I’m supposed to make a certain chili recipe. BossLady knows I’m good at this sort of thing, even though she has never made chili from scratch herself. (She always just buys the ready-made stuff.) And so I do my best to make the chili, but then I realize that I don’t have all the ingredients I need. So I say to her, “Well, I’ve got a problem here, I don’t have the right kind of beans to make this chili recipe.”
Her response will be, “There’s a can of tuna right here in the pantry.”
I’ll shake my head and go, “Huh?”
And she’ll repeat herself, “There’s a can of tuna right here, what’s the problem?”
Me: “That’s not what I mean, it’s the BEANS that I don’t have.”
BossLady: “If you don’t know how to open a can of tuna fish, I can show you.”
Me: “Huh?”
BossLady: “See, here’s the can opener, and you just open the can, and there’s your tuna, and you can add the mayonnaise and the relish, doesn’t matter which one you put in first…”
So I’m standing there, trying to make chili and knowing that I don’t have what I need, and here’s this person who I thought knew at least a little about the basic components of chili even if she can’t make it herself, and she’s my BOSS so I can’t just call her a moron and forget about it, but I can’t make chili with tuna either and I’m between a rock and a hard place.
Ultimately she decides that I’m the moron and makes her own stupid chili with tuna, and it sucks, but she’s proud of herself.
This happens all the time, except instead of beans versus tuna, it’s HTML versus DNS or Outlook versus network configuration.
The thing that really gets to me about these exchanges — and they really do happen with alarming frequency — is that she always makes those little comments like, “If you don’t know how to open a can of tuna, I can show you.” I don’t know if she really thinks I’m an idiot or she’s just puffing herself up so she can feel smarter. Considering the unfettered delight that she expresses whenever I actually do something wrong or don’t know something, I’m guessing it’s the latter.
New feature! Because I wanted an excuse to put up more stupid little pictures, and hey, why not?
Like any WordPress-based site, CMcL started accumulating spam comments as soon as it got going. The wonderful Akismet plugin catches ‘em all before anybody else sees them, but some of them are just so adorable and hilarious, I couldn’t keep them to myself. I thought it might be fun to collect some of the more entertaining entries here, as well as the occasional insult that gets tossed my way like a rotten egg. These comments are presented exactly as I receive them, except for URLs and most of the names, so as to cancel out any incentive people might have to spam. Bad commenters! No linkbacks or keywords for you!
I’ll probably do two or three of these a week on Saturdays.
Comment: “I apologise, but, in my opinion, you are mistaken. Let’s discuss it. Write to me in PM, we will talk.” — Re: Star Trek
I don’t know how they do things in Latvia, but over here we conduct our Star Trek Wars in PUBLIC, doggone it.
Comment: “It is remarkable, it is a valuable phrase” — Re: Property Folder
More Latvian funtimes.
Comment: “I do not generally reply to posts but I will in this case.
my God, i thought you were going to chip in with some decisive insght in the finish there, not go away it
with ‘we go away it to you to decide’.” — Re: Where?
This is a new one to me: Spam that actually kind of insults you instead of complimenting you?
What’s a little incomprehension between dollar store managers? (This was pre-BossLady.) Susan was calling my store on behalf of a customer at her store. Failing to get anything other than “silver champagne flutes” out of her, I eventually assumed she meant the big ones, and told her how many we had. She then proceeded to tell her customer that we had plenty of packs in stock, meaning she was talking about the little ones all along. If iPhones had existed back then, I would have written an app for throttling someone across town, wirelessly.
Yes, in today’s flourishing economy, employers are falling all over themselves to hire people who don’t have their own phones. They have plenty of time to leave messages with friends. Friends also have plenty of time to drop everything and relay important phone messages to the aforementioned phoneless people. This is not at all an unreasonable burden to place on a friend. Furthermore, this is a perfectly sensible suggestion for a helping-people-pay-their-bills charitable organization to offer to someone asking for help.
Fine, we’ll just go to the movies then.
Tales of the BossLady is a bunch of entries from a private journal I used to keep about the antics of a woman I worked for. This all happened several years ago, when I was younger and cockier and struggled under the crushing yoke of being paid to suffer an eccentric fool.
Okay, pop quiz time. Imagine you’re a person who is living in the Deep South and running a business. There’s a bigass hurricane headed your way, and you’re planning to evacuate. Do you:
a) Take the computer with all the important files with you;
b) Back up the important files on disk and take those with you; or
c) Put a plastic garbage bag over the monitor and hope for the best.
Remember, you “almost have a Master’s Degree in Computer Science.”
Yes. I am in fact completely serious. It’s tragic, isn’t it?
Next question: With the help of your assistant, you’ve managed to salvage the important files from the wet computer. But there’s another hurricane coming, and you’re planning to evacuate again, and this time you’ve backed up the files on disk. Do you:
a) Take the backup disks with you;
b) Give the backup disks to your assistant to keep them safe; or
c) Stash the backup disks in a loose pile on a top shelf in your living room directly beneath the skylight and hope for the best.
Don’t forget about that Almost Master’s Degree, here.
I just….I don’t have the words.
No, see, it’s funny because you’ve been struggling with depression and it made you totally crazy. Geddit?
A month or so later, the dog in question was indeed returned to the shelter and euthanized. For some unaccountable reason, the fact that I was right did not make me feel better.
You kids will pry my abacus from my cold, dead hands. FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS.