Happy Birthday in Korean

Kim was Korean, straight from Korea. His english was limited, I'd find him some times downstairs with the Korean Moonie who ran the lobby shop. CHips, sodas, klondike bars, and my favorite Mike & Ike's. Just talking in Korean, both looking miserable and lonely, the shopkeeper always looking bored.........
Sharlleen was my direct super, Duke graduate, so we had North Carolina in common. She was younger than me but was not naive to the Bossman's ways. She tried to warn me as best she could:

"He doesn't understand technical terms, so when possible use technical sounding terms so as to confuse and silence him. You'll be set if you do."

The Bossman liked to be as spontaneaous as he thought he could, never plannning to leave at a certain time, meetings never planned, everything just as last minute as possible.

This one morning, a birthday morning, probably my second or third week there , he hatched a plan to help celebrate Sharlleen's birthday. This morning he called Kim and I to his office.

I think it would a good idea if we sing happy birthday to Sharlleen. In Korean!

After a few minutes of convincing KIm, using various tones of

"The song you sing on someone's birthday????!! on the day someone was born"

Questioning ourselves whether or not he understood what we were trying to say.........Kim taught us the song you sing to those on the anniversary of their birth. Then on the bosses lead we burst into Sharlleen's office, one over eager spontaneous guy, one confused Korean and one embarrassed new hire, singing a half assed version of Happy bIRTHDAY IN Korean..
Asweome..

some names have been changed to protect the unwilling participants!

The Lumberjack

We rarely if ever had meetings, when meetings happened they always divulged into tangents and anecdotes about subjects no one quite knew how to follow or understand. Rarely were meetings for everyone, but story time to help feed the teller's ego.

On this morning a meeting was called to address professional attire and tardiness. A few nameless colleagues (it was a small office so it wasnt hard to figure who) have
a) been regularly late to work and/or
b) not dressing professionally (read suit tie, or two steps up from business casual, or as we like to call it "bidness formal")

Minutes felt like hours as The Boss and my direct supervisor (live via teleconference) went on and on about the importance of dressing in professional attire and arriving on time. Knowing that this talking to was not directed at me I settled into a hazy dream world of "I DON'T CARE".

"No Jeans"

"No Sneakers"

"No Haltertops"

"When we say 9:00 AM, we don't mean 9:05 or 9:10"

Blah blah blah blah.............

Eventually the meeting was done and we all went onto do our respective tasks for the day......

The next day....

It was known around the office that The Boss liked to stay late and he liked the taste of alcohol, we weren't really sure if the staying late and the liking of the taste of alcohol were related but there was always alcohol in the office, be it in wine bottle form or mouth wash form (which is another story for another day). It was also easy to determine if the boss had stayed late the previous night because he always had bed head and usually was dressed in the same clothes or variation of the previous day's attire from the previous work day. So the next day after the "MEETING on professional attire" it was obvious that THE BOSS had stayed the night. Only on this occasion, accompanying his bedhead, he was dressed in a red and black flannel and a pair of jeans, that we later discovered he stored in filing cabinets,

Never again were we warned about attire.....

Where the hell have you been??......

...the blogsphere masses scream at me as I walk the streets of Mount Vernon Square (or as I like to call it, LOwer Shaw or as the "let's rewrite the past" crew calls it Convention Center Land).

well if you must know... I was let go from my place of employment a few weeks back, during this time of post and pre employment I spent my time drinking coffee and watching copius amounts of football games (that's soccer to you mouth breathers). SO yeah, I was let go from a job I extremely disliked (wasn't as though as I was upset when I found out on that thursday). SO anyway, before i was let go I was able to line up a couple of interviews,miracously I was hooked up with a company appropriate for my career choice. and a week after i was let go i accepted a position.

So now that I am gone from THE ASSOCIATION, I will attempt to unload some unbelivable but true stories....
Look forward to posts in the future with such titles as:
The Lumberjack
Happy Birthday In Korean
The New Hire is Fucking the Boss
The Death of Sushi or How Momma Killed The Parrott
The Hidden Reese's Peanut Butter Cup
Underwear!!!! The Filing Cabinet Horror
High Fives, THE INVENTION!!!
Methadone: The Accountant's Assistant!