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Tell us about a time you absolutely had to quit your job
In the early ’80s, I was a junior staffer at a small Midwestern trade association. The boss was a man who craved attention and control. During Christmas parties, he’d make female staffers sit on his lap while he played Santa Claus. We had an office ritual around birthdays: A designated co-worker would order a sheet cake to be served in the conference room at 10:30 a.m. sharp, followed by twenty excruciating minutes of the boss’s stories and stale jokes. Attendance was mandatory. A colleague and I dreaded these events, so when my birthday arrived, we changed the routine. Instead of a sickeningly sweet cake, she brought in fresh cinnamon rolls. Rather than letting the boss lead us in a chorus of “Happy Birthday,” I distributed kazoos and nose flutes to be played while we wore hats made from sheets of newsprint. The boss, deprived of the spotlight, sighed and sulked at the head of the table until the 20 minutes had passed, and then sent us back to our desks. Later that day, he circulated a memo dictating that birthday parties must follow the traditional format. I quit without lining up another job. |
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Tell us about a time you were carrying one thing too many
To pay my college debt, I spent a year at a law firm in the mid-90s. The office dress code was corporate; socks or hosiery required. But in summer, my panty hose revulsion was so deep that I regularly went bare-legged.
Riding the Metro one morning, I clutched an umbrella, a lunch bag and a briefcase stuffed with dress shoes, for which I would shortly trade my sneakers. A thunderstorm hit as I was coming off the escalator, and I barely got my umbrella unfurled.
Through some misfortune — age or a snapped strip of elastic — my underwear started to slip down my hips as I walked, with no pantyhose to stop them. I was late. The hand with the briefcase pinned the errant garment to one hip, which helped. But the jostling from walking and my slippery dress quickly made the fabric seesaw farther down. By the time I hit the doors of the firm, the undergarments were just above my knees, while I bent over, Quasimodo-style, briefcase hand still pressed to the outside of my dress to keep them from sliding down altogether. The managing partner got on the elevator with me. “That bag looks pretty heavy,” he said, putting a hand out. I breezily refused his aid and, with a wide-legged stagger, lurched for cover behind the receptionist’s desk.
Unfortunately, the receptionist, who would have been amused, was not there. Instead, a temp looked dismayed to see my underclothes drop to my ankles before I could jettison my belongings and catch them. |
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Tell us about a time when the cheesiest line in the world actually worked
My husband and I agree on the circumstances of our first meeting. The meaning behind our first conversation, however, still seems open to interpretation. Independent of each other, we both swam every weekday morning at a community pool. I usually stayed longer than he did and would be doing laps on the kick board, looking around, while he got out, hit the lockers, then got on his bike [which was parked inside] and rode to his office. I watched this routine for months. After about half a year, we finally began to talk to each other, exchanging first names and telling where we worked. Then one day, I happened to be at his end of the pool as he prepared to leave. I asked — innocently, according to me — what else he did for exercise, saying I didn’t think he could get a body like that from just swimming and biking. In my mind, I was merely one athlete admiring another’s musculature. According to my husband, however, it was clear “I wanted his body.” That same day, he called my work place and asked for “Paula,” inviting me to go to an Orioles game the next weekend. That was 20 years and two kids ago, I still maintain my question was innocent. My husband, however, has two strong backers: our children, who also believe it was a blatant come-on. |
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Tell us about a time when someone opened the wrong computer folder
In 2005, as head of communications for (now-defunct) Independence Air, I organized a presentation centered on a new computer system. The seminar was to include screen shots provided by one of the leaders of the switch-over.
There were 25 people in the room that day —including, sitting quietly in the back, my 11-year old son, who was visiting me at work, Everyone was ready, but where was the screen shots guy? Aside from a laptop stashed under his desk, there was no sign of him.
Desperate to start. I appealed for help — did anyone else know where to find the graphics? A friendly co-worker ran over and grabbed the laptop. Not quite sure where the files were stored, Mr. Helpful fished around before giving a triumphant, "Got it!"
With one double-click, there "it" was on the pull-down projector scree, casting an 8-foot-wide pink glow across the conference room — not the graphics from the new maintenance system, but a photograph of an extremely uninhibited young woman, jaybird necked, with one leg pointed due east and the other due west.
Instinctively, 24 adults all had exactly the same reaction — a sharp gasp, followed by a 180-degree head-snap to the back of the room to see if there was any permanent damage being done to my innocent son.
Luckily for Mr. Graphics (and our company's attorneys), my son remains unharmed to this day. |
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Tell us about a time you should have said yes
I felt properly outraged. It was the late 1990s and my American-made can-labeling machine, the centerpiece of an exhibit a Russian food-processing trade show, was trapped in a customs warehouse on the outskirts of Moscow. Hefty and looking like a lift-top freezer, the machine was hardly threatening; it existed only to smooth and rapidly wrap paper labels around cans of food. And the exhibit was opening the following day.
This was just the latest of the machine's misadventures. First, it somehow arrived in the capital city of the adjacent country of Kazakhstan. It took gargantuan efforts by intermediaries there to free my machine from bondage. Next, it was placed on exceptionally slow-moving train. Now, after traveling 2,000 miles in two months and arriving in Moscow, it had been ignominiously seized by organs of the Russian government and put into the customs warehouse. When I finally reached the right customs official, it was made clear that, as a rich American, I could enjoy efficient service if I placed a specified amount of U.S. dollars into a certain hand. Outrage by this crass extortion in broad daylight, I righteously said no. Since I never saw my machine again, I now know I should have said, "Da!"
Several years later, when request for spare parts began arriving from an obscure part of Russia, I knew my machine had been placed into productive use. I think it's happy. |
