Reception Spotlight: All my girlhood idols

Reception Spotlight #3: Everyone I always wanted to be, doing things I will never want to do. 

This one doesn’t need a lot of explanation.  I’m Minnie, Kema is Daisy, and we both get to wear Janine glasses and do sing-a-longs with Disney princesses and  Dolly Parton about how much it sucks to wake up (and be bossed around by a huge rabbit).

 Feel free to sing along at your desk; leg-kicking is optional but recommended. 

 

(I sing this song a lot of mornings, and was overjoyed when this was the video that came up… Don’t judge me.)

Lepidoptimal 1.0

“Take this down, Barnabus,” instructed Serpentarius, Head Secretary Bird of the Southwest Branch.  Barnabus dutifully created a new document.   Serpentarius cleared his throat.

“I would like to address the unfortunate myth that continues to circulate among the higher-brained circles, one that perpetually undermines our best marketing efforts and clearly stands in the way of making our company a household name.  The common myth is that Monarch butterflies’ flight patterns are inherited, based on a combination of circadian rhythm and the position of the sun in the sky.  Naturally, a potential client who thinks migration routes are controlled by earth and sky remains unaware of the services Lepidoptimal Migrations offers and cannot even begin to consider us for their migratory logistical needs.  This matter has been addressed previously…”

Serpentarius trailed off and rubbed the bridge of his beak.  “That enough for right now, Barnabus.  I’ll continue that later.”  Barnabus nodded, a small flurry of bubbles around his gills the only sign of his quiet exasperation.  He added the dictation to the growing file of documents known as “pending” and returned to the email he had been composing.  The Head Secretary Bird had been more and more distracted at the office as of late, and he had been leaving more and more communications in mid-composition.  Barnabus knew that he and The Bos were under heavy pressure from the corporate office these days, but that wasn’t really anything new, and he didn’t think it explained all of Serpentarius’s flighty behavior.  But Barnabus wasn’t one to spend much time contemplating these things.  What he really needed to concentrate on was finishing the flirty email he was writing to that angelfish in Accounting.

***

Bos Grunnien stared at the sheet of paper on his desk with a heavy head.  By Animal Kingdom mandate, all companies had converted to a paperless system as soon as the technology made it feasible in the early 90′s, so the fact that Buffalo Thunder Development Company had sent him an actual letter through the mail indicated the significance of it.  A job offer.  A good one.  And it had come at the worst possible time.  Not that he hadn’t seen it coming—they had been gently courting him over the last three quarters—he just hadn’t seen it in writing.  What it made it worse is that he was tempted now.  He hadn’t been before.  He had been at Lepidoptimal for so long he couldn’t even imagine being elsewhere.  He was “The Bos” of the Southwest Branch—or at least that was the case until recently.  Rumors had started to leak last year that the company founder, Salazar the Caiman, was close to the end of his life and that it was very probable his son Sagan would soon begin acting as CEO.  The news had hardly interrupted business as usual, however, since most everyone at Lepidoptimal had been expecting it at some point.  Granted, no one was thrilled about it.  Yes, Sagan was a typical product of a cold, reptilian upbringing, and so his social skills left much to be desired.  Everyone acknowledged that.  Yes, some had hoped Salazar would give the reigns over to Legarto the Gator, his advisor of the last fifteen years, to give Sagan some more time to mature before he took over permanently, but ultimately they all seemed content to accept the inevitable.

But Bos Grunnien had known Sagan as a child, and he had seen the deeper evil lurking underneath.  He foresaw a dark future for the company.  And he could not work for Sagan.

The yak looked back down at the sheet of paper.  But could he work for a buffalo?

Amorale Project

yo:  You should do what I’m doing
it’s a contest
 Kema:  i don’t know. i can’t take failure right now.
 yo:  and what you do is ask everyone to submit a fact about themselves that no one else would know
 Kema: 
 yo:  and then
HAHAHAH
well you don’t compete
 Kema:  oh okay ::whew::
 yo:  and then you send out the blank sheet of facts for everyone to match up
 Kema:  oh fuuuun!!! is this a morale project?
 yo:  and you learn neat stuff about people, of gain meaningful insight into what they think is neat about themselves
yes and i assigned it to myself
 Kema:  that’s awesome.
 yo:  best entry so far:
“Once a woman flashed her breasts at me in the Target parking lot.”
 Kema:  i wish i wanted to know anything about the people here. i honestly. don’t.
hahahahahhahaaaa!!
 yo:  that was from the guy who told me he goes dancing and slowly strips down to his underwear and steel-toed boots
 Kema:  wow.
 yo:  see? you think you don’t want to know things, but then you find out how right you are!
it’s really great
this is going on the blog.
 Kema:  hahahaha
oh fanTAStic blog material.

He probably can’t help it…

This week I’ve been a little too busy to post.  Want to know why?  Because I’m so good with the database projects.  And by ‘projects’ I mean mildly computational tasks that really don’t even qualify as data entry.  I’m not done for the week, so I’ll keep this post brief— NOOOTTTT:

Highlights–

WEIRDOS

After being yelled at for not knowing whether someone had checked their voicemail today I looked up to see a visitor who had come in 10 minutes early.  I really didn’t have time to babysit him because I had a task to do (want to know what it was? Xeroxing a phone book. Large portions of two different books.) but I couldn’t just ignore him as he tried to make small talk with me about — of all things– March Madness.  I would say “Do I LOOK like I know about basketball?” but the truth is he wasn’t even looking at me.  He was looking at my boobs.  And in what I can only hope to Great God Almighty was a nervous tic*, he was licking his lips.

Just as I was shuddering and remembering my similar experiences at a think tank when I first came to DC, the parallel commentary that I enjoy on the public transport system, the creepy old man that waits outside our building listening to Indian music emanating from a ratty old radio by his ear on really low volume, and an array of delightful behavioral oddities in the ever-(r)evolving carousel of whack-o’s, my co-receptionist stood to greet him as well.  As she held out her arm to shake hands, he countered with this weird up-and-around-sweeping motion and they ended in this mildly Elizabethan wrist-clasp action that clearly neither of them enjoyed.  Then the guy he was supposed to meet with came downstairs to show him upstairs, and Visitor Dude  greets him by– uh, pretty much slapping him on the neck.  I think maybe it was supposed to be a pat on the back, but it was definitely a double neck-slap, hard enough to make Greeter visibly wince.  At that point I started laughing, and had to pretend it was from something I was reading on my computer (which would have been the case, if I hadn’t been working on the database projects… no laughter there.)  If I had a friend that worked here, we would have spent the rest of the day greeting each other with Judo Chops to the arm and Vulcan Death Grips to the neck. Nice to meet you! Hiiiii-YA!!

COMMUTING 

a) Got hit on by a rather aggressive lesbian on the metro.  Am not sure if this is related to short hair/workout clothes combo, or just a random  encounter.  Conclusion TBA.

b) Riding my bike to work takes the same time as the train and is way more fun; I fully intend to do so twice a week from now on– once for fun, once for time.  Fellow biking enthusiast and highly protocol-oriented sales agent is going to lend me his maps to find good alternate routes.   He wears a yellow windbreaker and his bike weighs about as much as my computer mouse, so our collaboration should prove interesting. 

ARTS & CRAFTS

For a company contest, I used highliters and whiteout to decorate a crudely-drawn outline of a human to make a ‘mascot’ for “Team Reception.”**  The whole thing was kind of tongue-in-cheek, but I I ended up winning a $5 gift card to Starbucks!  I traded it for cash to put in my co-worker’s cancer fundraiser jar, so all-in-all it was a good day.   From now on I will just sell my drawings for $5.  I accept PayPal and advance money orders.  I also take requests and dabble in watercolor.  I also like Brian Jacques.

*I may start using this as a way to write off all bad behavior, including but not limited to poor table manners,  corporate embezzlement, and ugly haircuts.

** Current budget constraints have really put our human resources department up against the wall when it comes to keeping morale high.  They used to just give stuff away all the time, but now we’re stuck with coloring projects– fine by me!

I never wanted you to be my soapbox.

Really. 

I’d wouldn’t write on this if i thought i was supposed to be a role model.  and i’m not here with an agenda. i’m here just to play.  But this one just can’t go without comment…  Stephen Colbert is involved, so bear with me.

I guess it was simply inevitable…  The Colbert Report has finally unleashed one of those scathingly hilarious WØRD monologues on something that is dear to me and essential to my worldview…  and to answer your question— yes,  it is painful to have your personal objections smothered so ruthlessly by over-powering laughter…  now i know how vegans feel  (heehee)… 

anyway, you can watch the clip at the link below.  Colbert roasts my absolute favorite book of all time, Atlas Shrugged:

 Colbert, you hilarious bastard.  you have obviously never read this book.

yeah, that stings…  but i was happy about two things:
1)  regardless of my loyalty to her ideas, i too find Ayn Rand’s comb-over hilarious.
2)  it gives me a warm feeling to know that so many people are reading that book.  it contains what i think are some of the most important new ideas in modern thought, and it’s enough to know that the ideas are getting around out there.

of course i don’t enjoy Colbert’s mockery, since it does give a terrible misrepresentation of the ideas in her book.  but this is hardly the place to discuss all that.  i’m not here to fight Steven Colbert.  but i am here to rally against the “going Galt” campaign that i’m hoping is small but Colbert says is growing… (a congressman, even?)   hey, i’m concerned about our economic policies, too…  but apparently, some readers of Atlas Shrugged are calling for a literal application of not just the book’s philosophy, but also it’s plotline.  in the book,  a socialist society preys upon the greatest scientific and industrious minds in the country and eventually forces them to go on strike in moral protest to the immense economic burden placed on them for some unattainable “societal good”  …  the strike stops the economic motors of the world, and societies all crumble into ruin…  and this is the solution these guys are advocating?   how embarrassing for them.    fortunately for the rest of us— since those people who came up with the genius idea of starting a “genius strike” are not the titans of today’s industry and finance (whereas the characters of Rand’s book are), and (like me) they were too busy scrambling for their little keyboards to log onto their little blogs and make a lot of empty threats to remember this fact— they end up just sounding like total pompous asshats who just want to feel important.  and that, ironically, is what anyone who opposes Rand’s objectivism philosophy would tell you they expect from an objectivist.  sigh. 

i choose not to call myself an objectivist for good reasons…  one reason is that i think being a staunch individualist is kind of all about not identifying yourself with a collective, so i think we’d get off on the wrong foot…  also, i’m never good at showing up for monthly meetings and that kind of thing.  also, i’m too afraid someone is going to write The Revelations of Rand soon…   after all, it’s been 60 years or so since that book was first published, so chronologically it’s about time for one of her disciples to write a gospel— don’t you think?  especially since they also seem to think we’re living the plotline of Atlas Shrugged?  and if some poor, misguided soul took on that task it would inevitably take on the style of Matthew’s gospel, twisting and reworking and recombining the ideas of the messenger to fit an agenda that would maim the original message.  which is what our blog-happy, alleged stockpilers of genius have done here.  bravo.

conservative?  self-righteous?  indignant?  insist you are the victim?  warn of an impending apocalypse?  dammit, guys, i hate it when you sound just like evangelical Christians.

also, here is a technically unrelated clip that i find much more encouraging and useful than anything anyone else has said on this post today. please if you have time watch that today.

This Blog is the Laffy Taffy of the internet

How many metaphors can I squeeze into these blog titles? The world may never know. This is the introductory post to a series of hilarious hilarious jokes I thought of and/or made at the office.  It won’t take a genius to guess the mood I was in when I thought of each one…

me:  i am unprofessional
antonio:  how are you unprofessional?
me:  fine, how are you?
badum-chiiing!  (drum-roll joke indicator)

Q: Why was Al Roker’s stomach feeling a little out of order?

A: Because it was stapled, but not collated.

 

Q: What’s funnier than the delivery man’s constant flirtation?

A: The fact that he owns several Porsches.

Waap waaap waaaaaaaaap (ubiquitous horn noise-sad joke indicator)

 

Q: What do my job and Paris Hilton have in common?

A: Free time and lots of extensions.

 

Q: What do you call an OS word-processing document that constantly freezes and deletes the homework you’ve secretly been doing because the auto-save is set to approximately once per year and your computer is stupid?

A: Microsoft Turd                                        

(see: unprofessional)

 

You might think that these jokes indicate a sardonic frustration that I aim at my poor unsuspecting/complacent co-workers.  Au contraire, mes blog readers!  I recently won the quarterly award for Service With A Smile, and you can bet that smile came from either random mental puns like these or candy.  Please feel free to submit your own office/work-related jokes below, which I will then write on candy wrappers for a home-made Laffy Taffy experience that parallels the sweet and chewy wisdom you find here.

Kema and I most certainly blog in these matching jackets. We are in the process of ironing out a sponsorship deal, but in the meantime we just like candy.

 

 

 

 

Are you ready?

Are you?

Are you really?

Because. . .

The first installment is. . .

Get ready.

Reception Spotlight– Role Models Whose Role Models We Can Learn From

Our last Reception Spotlight was such a monument to reception skills, it’s hard to find an example to follow.  So you know what they always say: When you can’t find a good follow-up, find two good follow-ups.

Wide Receptionists Terrell Owens  of recent kicked-off-the-Cowboys fame, and Santonio Holmes of recent easiest-Super-Bowl-win-ever fame both offer some spectacular and inspiring messages to their fans and viewers around the globe.  Between T.O. partying, mouthing off, calling his teammates derrogatory names, and bashing the NFL/hand that feeds him, he really sets a new standard to which all of us can aspire.  Santonio Holmes informed a gajillion Super Bowl viewers that he used to sell drugs of an unspecified variety, although I’d bet his merchandise had something to do with the cocaine his mom found in his truck when he was in high school.  I mean I’m no German Shepherd, but I think I smell a connection there.  Thanks for the example, Holmes!  Keep up the whining, T.O.!  Let us know if you’re ever looking for a job in Public Relations, because you clearly have a knack for knowing when to say and do what.

For Halloween I dressed as two bad role models at once.

… Ok so obviously I’m not a fan of either of these men in particular.  I’ll grant that each had their circumstances, but they aren’t exactly the kind of public figures I’d choose for today’s little ones to watch and admire.  T.O. came from a difficult childhood and has done well for himself despite those roots (I’m surprised he doesn’t celebrate this more often with his signature long provocative victory dances).  Holmes fell in with a shady crowd and managed to extract himself in order to pursue bigger goals (like dropping out of college a year early to play football, then getting suspended for marijuana posession).  But hey, they make a LOT of difficult receptions for their particular line of work (although I easily double their daily totals), and while I don’t really understand what their jobs are I can certainly pretend that I empathize.

Why did I choose them? Because each of these individuals only managed to get out of their original circumstances because of the singular influence and pro-active decisions of another person.  To illustrate, I’ve composed the following one-act plays:

Change for Santonio by Lindsay Bobindsay

Santonio and mom arrive at their apartment

Mom: Weird, our locks are broken again and there are more bullet holes in the door.  What ever happened to egging peoples’ houses?

Santonio: We live in the ‘hood and that somehow explains poor behavior.

Mom: Hmm.  Well I’m going to get another lock from the car.

Mom returns

Mom: Hey, is that Colombian bam-bam in the bed of your truck?

Santonio: … Aw, come on, all the guys at school are doing it!  How else will I afford my awesome shoes?

 Mom: We’re moving. You can buy our new door with money from the paper route you’ll be getting.

There’s No I in Team, But There’s a Pal in Principal by Lindsay Bobindsay

 

Jerry Rice and his former flat top

T.O.: ♪ doop de doop ♫ I am not at school, this is fun!

Principal: Terrell! What are you doing?

T.O.: *sprints off*

Principal: Holy shit, that kid can run.

    ࠉ    ࠉ    ࠉ    ࠉ    ࠉ    ࠉ    ࠉ    ࠉ

Principal: Terrell, how would you like to come to school? — er— I mean come play sports?  At school, but not like “in” the school.  Outside on a field. Where I found you earlier.

T.O.: Like Jerry Rice, a Wide Receptionist even better than Deion Sanders and Emmitt Smith?

Principal: Anachronistically, yes. Just like them. If you’re lucky and behave well, you can even play for the Cowboys!

T.O.: We’ll see.

 We can all admire someone for making the best of a bad situation, but the real heroes here are that principal who took the time to make sure a kid came back to school, and a mom who wouldn’t put up with her dumb teenager’s crap.   Oh, and wide Receptionist Jerry Rice.

What is going on.

 ?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?

This morning I came into the office and found that the printer was jammed with copies of a Yahoo News article about Darfur……and sitting next to it was a glass of what appeared to be blood serum*.

Who is this mysterious philanthropic vampire?

 ?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?

 

 * or possibly some Crystal Lite that sat out over night. can’t be sure.

Administrators of the Animal Kingdom

Our blockbuster interview last week with Kathy Fantastic was so popular with our readers that it got me thinking… 

…don’t ever let me be like that.

Because it got me to thinking about how sad it is that there really isn’t anything quite like those books you had when you were a kid, like the Redwall books that lindsay and i read, or Ender’s Game, or the Harry Potter books that kids are reading today…  and i know that a lot of that make-believe experience you can’t get back.  It’s part of the innocence and imagination of childhood…  and what silly, ignorant kids don’t know yet is the repetitive stress and monotony of an adult’s life—because they have these fantasy books to shield them…  but i think it’s about time somebody wrote them a book to warn them.

Then i saw this post on one of my favorite blogs.  not only was the post hilarious, as usual, but it gave me exactly what i didn’t know i was looking for…

Allow us to introduce:

 The Secretary Bird

a bird named after an administrative position?!   too good to be true, right?  apparently not!  and apparently administrating the shit out of that snake in the picture, isn’t it?  Ka-chow, what now snake?

Oh, but the secretary bird is not the only member of the animal kingdom’s corporate staff:

The Secretary Fish

A little softer-spoken than Secretary Bird, but very efficient.

The Ground Lackey

The ground lackey just sounds like he works for a CEO, doesn’t he? Also available in larval form.

The Yak

The most majestic of the managers, the Yak describes in a word what most of our job entails.

The Collared Lemming

Obviously a brown-noser who does whatever the boss says without question. We hate this cute little guy, and everyone else who overdresses at work, for that matter. 

The Spectacled Caiman

I bet with spectacles on this one totally looks like Janine.  Probably works in accounting.

The Worker Bee

Bee bureaucratic!

A delightful and cuddly animal cast for some administrative adventure stories!!!  

Stay tuned to Better Reception for bureaucratic tales of epic proportions!!!