Elsie sorts out corporate politics with her truly dizzying logic.

WARNING!  Today's blog is rated roughly PG-15.  While there is no actual language, violence, or nudity, there are adult situations...so if anyone catches my kids reading this blog...stop them!



Good evening!

One of my favorite movies, in the top 200 anyway, is "When Harry Met Sally."  Billy Crystal was at the top of his game, Meg Ryan hadn't done that weird thing with her hair and stopped wearing bras...it's a great film.  One of my favorite lines from that movie is the conversation they have about whether or not men and women can be friends:

"Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her."

Sure, there've have been times I subscribed to this theory, but not recently, and certainly not in my work place.  There are just some thoughts that have never crossed my mind when it comes to my male coworkers.


Apparently, Elsie does not have the same such mental edit button.

See, NBM is casting about to find new and exciting ways to drum up business.  All business, as you know, is based on sales.  Doesn't matter what the business is, sales is the lifeblood, and NBM was, in the last couple days, looking for new sales and marketing ideas.

Elsie and I had a mini powwow yesterday  (Okay, she draped herself over the counter on my desk and I had to sit there, looking up her nose holes while she hacked and coughed and spittled through a fifteen minute monologue on why men suck.) and we came up with a few ideas.  Some of them were good...some of them were Elsie's.

Today, at the end of the day when frankly no one really wants to be facing customers, when we're just marking time until we can start the computer close down sequence, NBM was asking us for those ideas.

I gave him a couple mine, Elsie gave him a couple of hers.  NBM is not a demonstrative guy.  He is also really not comfortable around female coworkers.  Not all bosses are.  (Take my old Bossman, there was a guy who had zero clues about how to relate to women in a corporate world.  At least NBM, though he is awkward, he does try to carry on a conversation with Elsie and me every day.  The good news for him...I speak MAN fluently.)

But I digress.  Not all of our ideas were good ones, and some were down right goofy.  I knew that.  NBM knew that. 

Elsie...did not.

She got the distinct feeling he was ignoring our ideas.  (Maybe he was...so what?  It was something to do until I could legitimately shut down my computer.)

When he left for the day  (about nine minutes before I could) she took the opportunity in that nine minutes...nine minutes I'd hoped to spend looking at potential cover art...to explain to me her thoughts on why he didn't jump at our brilliant marketing ideas.

Was it because he's a pompous beast who only listens to men?  No...I would not say that of him, and she can't possibly say that of him. 

Was it because about 70% of the suggestions she and I made were neither serious nor good business? No, although I don't think she understood that NBM and I were joking when we suggested she put on a giant foam mascot's outfit and dance at the local mall to drum up business.

No...according to Elsie, the reason NBM didn't praise us for our remarkably brilliant marketing ideas was....

he wants to sleep with us.

Folks, do you have any idea how hard it is not to let out a big, gut clearing guffaw into someone's face?  I thought I'd wrenched all my control muscles two days ago when she announced that most of our coworkers...including me...were getting sick NOT because she's been a cloud of communicable disease for the last three weeks, but because Al Qaeda was using germ warfare again us.  Us...middle aged and aging women in a home remodeling business in Wisconsin.  Yes, we are the new target for Al Qaeda.

You see, Al Qaeda wants to hit us where it hurts most...crazy eyed older women.

Oh, and I didn't laugh in her face yesterday when she shouted for all to hear that she worked with a bunch of "uncircumcised Philistines" because remnants of the the deli lunch that NBM very nicely brought in were sitting willy nilly on a table.  (This is the same woman who only washes her dirty dishes in the office sink when the cloud of fruit flies is too thick to walk through.)

It doesn't matter that my office is a toxic waste dump. 
You left the rye bread out and it got dry.

So no, my friends, I did not laugh when she suggested that NBM wasn't taking us seriously because he wants to sleep with us.  No...I tightened my muscles and bit my lip and firmly said, "I highly doubt that's his reason.  Oh look, my ride is here."

The good news is that this restraint on my part is turning out to be something of a workout.  I was able to tighten my belt another notch today. 

I wonder if KRAM at Gold's will count it?