Those Little "Oh crap!" Moments in Life

By now, most of you know that I recently went back to work for a company that I used to work at as a contractor. Well, actually, the location is the same, but the company was bought out by Mega-Corporate, so the theology is different, but the general culture and politics are the same.

At any rate, when I worked there previously, I was a writer of all things product oriented. Now, I'm back and while I still basically do that, my official title is much for "official" sounding and I have more responsibility.

OK, so stage set...on with the story.

I was brought in on a project today because...well, it's my job now. There were two papers being written for a single subject, but each with a slightly differing focus. Due to some daylight savings time scheduling issues, I went ahead and dialed into the 2 p.m. call just to make sure that I wasn't supposed to be on it rather than the 3 p.m. call as my MS Outlook showed.

During the call, one particular high-level guy at my office was talking about some changes to the paper (not the one I was supposed to on the next call for) and someone mentioned my co-worker who was supposed to be on the next call, but for whom I'd taken over. Well, someone said, "Oh, she's delegated this to some Chris person who will be on the next call." Well, this high-level person said, "Yeah, well, Chris is just a writer."

Now, writers by nature have thick skins. It comes with the territory; otherwise anytime someone edited or critiqued a story, we'd be popping the anti-depressants and calling 911. So, this didn't really phase me, but ever since I saw this particular high-level person walk out of the bathroom stall with papers in-hand, not wash his hands and then proceed to put those same papers on my boss' desk, I've really just not liked the guy. I tell ya, it was straight out of a Seinfeld episode ("I'm sorry sir. This book has been in the bathroom; you can't return it.").

So, I un-mute my phone and chime in, "Oh John, that's not entirely correct." There was a pregnant pause at which point he attempted to backpedal while simultaneously attempting to ascertain my new role while explaining to everyone on the call about my former duties.

I tell ya, it was priceless. Others on my team seemed much more distraught over the whole thing, but I surprisingly had a very "zen-like" calm over it. Dunno why.

So that was my fun for the day. To his credit, high-level person called later and apologized. That was nice of him, but I still won't shake his hand.