Tales of the BossLady are anecdotes I wrote several years ago when I was working for a, shall we say, rather eccentric woman in the real estate business. Though I have long since moved on, I present these little stories as I originally wrote them, in the present tense, as if I were still slaving under her kooky and mercurial whip.
BossLady rather abruptly started talking about Feng Shui one day. We’re still sitting around in our makeshift “office,” post-hurricane, watching boxes and file folders and other detritus build up around us, and one day she just…asks me if I know anything about Feng Shui.
I replied, truthfully, “Well, I know about it, but I don’t really know anything about it.” One of my relatives had expressed an interest in Feng Shui years ago, and I had gone with her to a Feng Shui store (yes, they exist). I know that it’s the art of object placement, and that certain colors of certain items in certain sections of certain rooms do different things to the energy, or something, when they’re facing a certain way. Or something.
Actually, I immediately started thinking of that episode of “Sealab 2021,” “Murphy Murph and the Feng Shui Bunch.” BossLady and Captain Murphy share some alarming similarities.
Anyway, BossLady said that she had heard a lot of great things about Feng Shui, so she ordered a course on it. She made a few noises about how she thought it might help the business. I said, “Mmmmmm,” for lack of anything better or more polite to say.
The following week, a box came to the house marked “FENG SHUI.” She was very excited when I told her the box had come (it was a really small box, about the size of a small town’s phone book, so I’m guessing the “course” consists of a small book and a CD-ROM or two), and I expected to have to listen to her yap about the Magic of the East and how it has So Much To Teach Us, but I never heard another word about it afterwards.
If she has since Feng Shuied the “office” in any way, it has been so subtle as to escape my notice.