A Proposal

Office lingo has crept into The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

Theresa, easily the craziest of the bunch, actually said something to the effect of, “But I did reach out to my brother.  I texted him !”

She reached out  to him.  She didn’t contact or call ( pronounced “cawl” in NJ ) him.  She reached out to him. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I thought once I was in the confines of my home the lingo would remain behind to languish in the vapors of the office.

The expression seemed awfully “New Agey” for a person who wears thousand dollar shoes, dead animal skins, and flips tables while yelling “Prostitution WHORE! (Pronounced HO-WAH in NJ.)

It amuses me when new lingo is introduced in the work place and suddenly everyone around me is using it.  If you want to sound as good as a Manager or the “Os,” (CEO, CFO, COO, UFO) you use the snappy vocabulary.  You sneak it in to your conversations so they think you’re a team player and you actually know what you’re doing.

Here are some words and phrases that are currently hot in the workplace;

Reach Out- To talk to, to call, to discuss, to inform, to get together with someone and ask for a meeting, to get together with someone and tell them they’ve screwed up...

Push Back- To stand your ground about something, to not back down on an issue, to respond.

To model or modeling- To create a process or a contract, a blueprint or a template. (It has nothing to do with six inch stilettos on a slippery catwalk.)

To trend- To keep track of a bunch of silly-assed mistakes someone is making.

Challenges- Problems.  (Never say something is a problem, or you HATE an account because it’s difficult. You say it’s a CHALLENGE.)

Granular- The smallest level of something. (This one was a new one on me. Granular, really? )

Drill down-To get to the root of the problem …excuse me, to get to the root of a CHALLENGE.

To be proactive-To go ahead and do your damned job without someone reminding you a million times.

Then there’s a phrase that’s been around for longer than I can stand and I wish it would GO AWAY;

“With that being said.”-  You tack this on to an explanation to punctuate, recap, or totally invalidate what you’ve just said, or  to drop a bomb on someone.   “With that being said, I’m afraid we’re going to have to let you go.” You can also still use, “At the end of the day.”  “At the end of the day  the company will need to institute some redactions, and your department will be among them.”

I propose a new workplace lingo to make life in cubicles more entertaining, more colorful for people. I’m going to start using these new phrases in my daily conversations. So, with that being said, let me bounce a couple ideas off of you. (That expression is sooooo eighties!)                                                                     

For instance, when I’m called in to my manager’s office, I might say, “A penny for your thoughts!” this means, “What do you want?”    

I already like to use the expression, “Like herding cats,” and I frequently use it when someone asks how it’s going with the unworked accounts.

I think “Come what may” is a pleasant little expression.  For example, 

“When are you going to finish that project I gave you last week?”  

“Come what may !”   See how sweet and pleasant that sounds?

What about when you have a better idea for how to do something and your manager tells you that it would create too many challenges.  She thinks we may have to reach out  to someone else and get their input?   I might want to push back and say, “Whoa there! Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water ! We should chew the fat a little more.”

I think we should say, “Let’s make a bee line for the meeting in Classroom A.”  Instead of, “There’s going to be a meeting in classroom A right now.”    Yes?

When the office is way too crowded or there’s a lot of work to do we could say, “It’s all so Choc a Block!”  Let’s also bring back “the blind leading the blind.” I like that one, (and it’s so apropos in SO many situations.) “If they make Ralph the new Team Lead in billing it will be like the blind leading the blind.”  More fun …right?

Why can’t we just say “He bit the dust,” instead of down-sized or laid-off?  Or how about, “He bit the bullet?”

I think that when we’ve tried to get money from an insurance company for more than a year, we should call it a “Cut and Run” account.   The manager says, “You need to follow-up on that old account with Blue Cross.”  It would be an acceptable reply to say, “I think this is definitely a cut and run situation if you want MY two cents.”

I don’t want to play fast and loose with corporate America, but I believe that words, when strategically placed, can be very handy tools to get a point across.   Meetings would be far less boring than they currently are with all the stupid “reach outs” and “that being saids” that are currently used over and over.

 Bottom line, why beat a dead horse?

I’ll Stop Tomorrow

I cried when the nurse told me how much I weighed.  She looked confused and surprised …as if I hadn’t just asked her to NOT tell me my weight.  I asked her twice for emphasis.

It’s always awkward to cry in front of strangers.

I used to walk and do sit ups during commercial breaks at night, but it became a bit much after they put us on overtime. I’m just too tired these days. I wear myself out sitting at a desk every day, doodling on a notepad, and listening to answer machine robots ask me if I’m a member or a professional.  Could I please provide my facility’s nine digit tax ID?   Is this for a medical or psych admission?  (As if psychiatric stays are not medical, like, say, heart conditions or COPD.) 

I doodle and answer in bored, precise tones to avoid repeating everything. If the robot doesn’t understand, it apologizes and asks again. In my mind, when the robot asks me if I’m a member or a professional, I say, “I am old and fat.”   The robot asks how fat? Press one for mildly. Press two for moderately. Press three for obese.    I press two.   Then the robot asks what my three digit weight is in order to properly route my call to a representative who does not give a fuck.

I get an email.

Morning Everyone!

I brought in some cookies that I made. Sorry but these are not low carb & low fat. But they are absolutely delicious!! J They are great for dunking in coffee. You can find them next to the CHAN02 Printer.   Shelly.

I delete it.  I’ve already had a small bag of chips with my coffee. 

“Representative,” I say in a flat tone.   I draw a picture of a dog pissing on a fire hydrant as I explain to a representative that we did obtain an authorization for the member’s hospital stay.  She asks what the date of the admission was. I tell her.  I draw the dog shaggy.  It appears the authorization does not include the first day.  Now we have to send an appeal .  

I get another email.

Chicken Biscuits and Yogurt Parfaits are now available in the Café.  Your friends in HR.

I make several more calls to find out what we didn’t do, in turn causing the insurance companies to deny the admissions.   By the time I go to lunch I’ve got a dent in my hair from the head-set.  I’ve drawn suns, spirals, snails, and puppy-dog tails all over the note pad.

I try not to be hungry, but I am.  I order chili in the cafeteria because it’s cheap.  In my mind I tell myself to skip the crackers and the cheese.

“Could I have cheese on that?  And two extra packs of crackers?”    I hate myself.  I decide I will have nothing but liquids starting the minute I get home.  I catch a glimpse of myself in the Plexiglas that surrounds the fruit and cottage cheese cooler.    I will not eat anything when I get home.

In three weeks I’ll look fabulous.

After lunch I only have six more hours to go.  I turn on the fan, pour some more coffee, and clamp the head-set back on the existing rut in my hair. 

I get an email.

My sister made apple cake.  It’s even better if you zap it in the micro to warm it up.  It’s on the desk across from Edna.  Enjoy!     Yvonne.

I’m NOT having that.   But an hour later I’m hungry, and since I’m not eating anything when I get home, I decide to have a few smoked almonds.  After all, they’re much healthier than cookies and cake.  I’ll have just a few.    Two hours later I’ve eaten the whole can.   Now I want to cry … and pick my teeth.

An hour before clock-out I get another email.

               I scream… You scream..

We all scream for ICE CREAM. The ice cream social is ready.  Come to the Atrium!    Your Friends in Education.

I will NOT go to the Atrium.   I’m tired. I’m getting my spreadsheets confused.  Was this the Humana responses from 4-23 or from 4-27?  Was this the spreadsheet I documented already, or is it the one I still need to copy to the O drive? I pick at a piece of dried skin on my neck 

When I get home and pull into my driveway I realize I have no recollection of the trip.  Scary.  I feed the cat and mine for gold. [Clean the clumps out of the litter box.]  I look forward to a glass of wine and a good book.  My stomach is growling.  I’m hungry.  I really shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach but I’m too tired to make a salad.   I get the blue chips down and grab the hot salsa out of the fridge.  I eat as I read. God it’s good to relax.   I pour some more wine.  I eat more chips. A friend calls.  I eat and drink while we talk. 

Now I feel sick.  I’ve eaten the whole bag.   I decide to try the throw-up thing … just once.  

  It seems that I pee when I throw up.  Jesus, I’m too old to even be bulimic, not that I’d WANT to be, mind you.  It was just an experiment!  It surely wasn’t good for me to have a whole bag of chips,  that were NOT gluten-free, in my stomach.  I believed that purging, at that moment, was the responsible thing to do.

Apparently it was not.

Sit-ups did not appeal to me after this lesson in humility.  Not that I need a lesson in how to be humiliated, I pretty much have that down pat. 

I decide I will only drink green tea the next day.  The next morning I log on for another ten hour day.  I check my email.

Trisha brought donuts in for everyone today!   Happy Friday!    They are on Ro’s old desk!  Enjoy!

I eat one donut.

 A plain one.

 I decide to skip lunch.   I get an e-mail.

Interested in learning more about a healthy lifestyle? Community Hospital of NPR dietitian team is offering a lunch & learn.

                             Striving for a Healthy Weight

They are providing box lunches of ham and cheese sandwiches, a chocolate-chip cookie, and chips.

I did not realize I was screaming out loud.

Asking Kathy’s god

I’m asking Kathy’s god if this is a convenient time,

what with all the murdered children and aged parents that

catch the bus every minute,  somewhere. 

What are the chances for extra seats today?

 I think I should commute, as I count the vultures

like finials on the row of lampposts.

One.  Two.  Three.  Four.

Like counting the sheep of sleep,

the raptors of death wait for carrion

wait for us to plow over

innocence on our way to …hell?

They catch a cool breeze rising against their wattle.

Is it passing spirits

from the hospital below?

While they wait, I drive and think about commuting. 

I am taking the same road, at the same time,

to the same place.

It does not pay for happiness.

You can’t buy that.

I would put it on layaway if I could.

I’m not late this morning

because Columbine Man, with phone to ear,

has not walked past the dealership.

I see him every day before I turn.

Before I turn.    In.

I tell Kronos I’ve arrived

and he marks the time in pennies.

Pennies for my thoughts.  Pennies for my light.

Pennies for my car.  My clothes.  My food.

Do we wait for the bus or the other way around?

Does  it arrive in a cloud of exhaust and surprise us?