Category: work Page 6 of 10

Acting

On August 31, 2007

My cubicle at work is up against a wall that splits up my office area and the conference room next to me. The other day I came into work and within a half hour of my arrival started hearing a royal bitch out session going on next door. It was horribly awkward. The quotes were all along the lines of, “You cannot do this to me! I brought you here!” Weird, right?

So this all started around 8:30 or 9 in the morning. At 11 it was still happening. When I left for lunch it was still going on. When I returned at 1 it was still going on, only a new male voice had joined the yelling. Finally I just couldn’t take it any more.

I walked down to the Human Resources, full of purpose and indignation. The woman at the front desk was unfamiliar to me, but I pretty much unloaded on her. “I’m not sure what’s going on that room,” I said, “but you need to let them know that we can all hear. In the future people need to be aware of that out of respect for whomever is being yelled at. We all feel sorry for whoever that is.”

Before I even finished y little tirade the lady was up and off and to find someone to fix the situation. A few moments later she found me in my cube with a funny little grin on her face.

Those people we listened to and were scared of all morning? Actors auditioning for an HR training video.

Taking you down one notch at a time

By Kate

On September 28, 2006

In work

I live in a medical world. I work at a medical center, I do freelance work for two different medical companies, I have several physicians who attend to my own medical needs and I have friends who have elected to become doctors.

It’s been those friends who have set the standards for what I think of doctors. I remember being a year or two out of college at my friend Mike’s house and another friend, Jason (one of the many to come in and out of my life) was talking about his medical school interviews. He had been doing various internships (in morgues) and exploring summer work abroad to learn a little about alternative medicine. The thing that killed me about Jason, and ultimately ended up killing our friendship a few years later, was how he turned into a complete egomaniac as soon as he started talking about being a doctor. I called him out on it, because what else are friends for, and he told me he needed to be a egomaniac. He said, and I am paraphrasing here because it was too long ago for me to remember his exact words, “I need to be egotistical. As a doctor I will be having control over people lives – whether they live or die. You can’t take on that kind of responsibility without having ego. How else could you keep convincing yourself you could do the job?”

For a while I accepted that. For like 2 seconds.

I respect my doctors the same way I respect my mechanic, the woman who rings me up at the grocery, the man who drives my shuttle bus at work. I respect anyone who does their job and does it well. I don’t think anyone is better than me and I don’t respect anyone more than I respect myself. No one deserves that.

So, as a personal rule, I call doctors by their first names. It’s the absolute quickest way to deal with them as an equal. On occasion I run into a doctor, as I did just the other day, who played the prick card and makes me feel small. I haven’t gotten to a place where I never am reduced to feeling itty bitty, but I am working on it.

Tonight I am meeting a doctor for the first time, not for work but for my own medical needs, and we’ll see how it goes.

Her name is Elizabeth.

Immature

By Kate

On August 24, 2006

In work

I am not a mature individual. I keep getting assigned topics at work where I have to edit web content on … questionable subject matter. By questionable, I mean topics ranging from anal issues and sphincters to vaginal lubrication and what can and cannot go into your vagina. Two words I would prefer to never say at work include SPHINCTER and VAGINA.

The one good thing I can say about working on the GYNACOLOGICAL content versus the COLORECTAL content is that this time there are no pictures, which is a good thing because when I read the line “Spread the lips of the vagina (labia) apart before applying” I shuddered at the possible illustrations…

Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it

By Kate

On May 26, 2006

In family / friends, technology, work

My modeling career is really taking off, by which I mean starting. I mean I have always een told I should be a model, so it’s no surprise, right? (Okay, the only people who ever told me I should be a model were my grandpas and the old train man train conductors I worked with in high school.)

Yesterday I launched business for Kate’s House of Hands, my hand modeling company. It went okay. In the photo shoot I mock-typing on a computer and my hands weren’t conveying the emotions the photographers were going after. Also, I apparently have a tendency to have hooked or claw-like fingers. Who knew? When the photographer told me to make my right hand more delicate, I did my best. It turns out I have little control over my left hand fingers, but what’s a girl to do?

Now look at this? Does this look hooked or claw-like to you?

But since yesterday didn’t bode well for my hand modeling career, I have decided to explore ankle modeling, opening up Kate’s House of Ankles.

Despite all the ridiculousness surrounding my hands, I have been asked to model in a shoot for my friend’s music web site.

Dancing with the Geek OR You make me feel like dancing … wanna dance the night away

By Kate

On February 15, 2006

In family / friends, work

I do some freelancing for a local web site where I cover events. I was asked by my editor to write a story about dancing locations around town. She made it clear that she did not mean the bump and grind places I used to frequent, but more places where you can for real dance – like tango. Truth be told, my years of bumping and grinding are only because that is all I know how to do.

So I find this guy at Shall We Dance Cincinnati who teaches at Step n Out Dance Studio in Covington, Kentucky. He is nice and agrees to the trifecta if story perks: lets me interview him, gives me and my boy two free dance lessons one right after another – one group and one private – which I desperately need as research for this story AND agrees to raffle off a dance lesson along with the story. What, I ask, is better than that?

My BF, henceforth referred to as Wonder Boy because I think it’s funny, agreed to the dance lesson research under some conditions:

The resulting article would not be called “Dancing with the geek” (Blog posts were never mentioned in these conditions.)
Participation in the group lesson was optional so he didn’t have to make an ass of himself in front of people

I agreed and Wonder Boy and I signed up to take our classes lat night. What we approached with visible fear and trepidation turned out to be F-U-N.

The twelve or so people who were taking the class would line up with the (shiny-shoed) instructor in front of them. He taught them some rumba steps and before long I convinced Wonder Boy that a little public humiliation in front of strangers would be worth pulling out the rumba at the next wedding we got invited to. Long story short, we kinda sucked for most of the group class. Actually, I would say we were mediocre and then we were taught some swing steps and then we sucked. During the private lesson though we went back to the rumba and I can now be twirled, rumba in a circle and do the basic box. And not only that, I do this all without leading, which is a first!