Five Stupid Things My Boss Did Today
*I wrote this in late April but decided to wait until my boss was no longer my boss. Now I feel we can all share in the revelry. Yes, this all happened. And, yes, it all happened in a single work day...
I don't think my boss knows about this blog (or even the concept of blogs, frankly) but, in the interests of self-preservation I will be stashing this away until such time as I no longer work here - which is not so far away. In the meantime, I thought it imperative to canonize these events. You might think your boss ain't so sharp but I dare you to top this - it all happened in less than 8 hours on a quiet day in April...Herewith, in no particular order:
1) Paged me at my phone to ask me when the first day of summer is this year. I didn't have the heart (or the time) to explain solstices, equinoxes, the structure of the solar system etc. so I just said, "June 21," and rolled my eyes. (And I gambled that it wouldn't fall on 6/22 this year, and it doesn't.) The important thing is that a grown man doesn't know when summer starts.
2) If you don't live in Canada, or don't drink wine regularly, you could be pardoned for not knowing this. If you live in Canada, drink wine and oversee a magazine with a regular wine column it's something you might have come across at some point: He did not know what VQA is or what it stands for. If you don't know, VQA stands for Vintner's Quality Assurance and it's basically a federal body that governs wine standards in Canada. Many other countries - France, Italy etc - also have such bodies. He now knows about it because they took out an advertisement (so we should, like, write about em!). So, he thought we should do an article on VQA wines, you see?
3) These still aren't funny enough for you? Try this one: A girl arrives for a job interview. He spots her as she comes in and realizes that a girl from a previous interview is about to leave so he stashes her in a room. And doesn't tell anyone. And forgets about her. For an hour. In the meantime, the manager in charge of interviewing her calls and leaves a message at her house asking where she is, hopefully she didn't get the time mixed up etc. Even the people at the front desk never saw her come in. She was mostly okay. [ed note: She got the job!]
4) He pronounced the musical insturment, spelled maracas, as "mar-a-chas." Really, this is not a hard word to say. Is it?
5) Like the VQA thing this requires some prior knowledge. Basically, he was reading the new Douglas Coupland book which includes appearances by a character named (ta da!) Douglas Coupland. So he's running around the office talking about how it's just like Kurt Vonnegut. Now, I can only presume he has read "Breakfast of Champions" (more likely, seen the Bruce Willis movie of it) in which the main character encounters Vonnegut as a God figure. Admittedly, both books feature the author within the narrative. But aside from that, it's not really the same thing. The reasons, the manner in which they appear, the function they serve...entirely different. I mean, they're printed on paper, in english, serif fonts etc...but I mean substantively. But he probably read one Vonnegut thing in high school (or saw the movie) and from there thinks he can stroll around talking about how X or Y is like Vonnegut when it's not. I mean, Vonnegut didn't invent "meta," man.
It reminds me of the scene in Back to School when Rodney Dangerfield hires Vonnegut to write an essay on himself...and Vonnegut gets a bad mark. Well, a lot reminds me of that scene.
[Ed note: Did you know they are remaking Back to School with Cedric the Entertainer? Gawd! Why?]
I don't think my boss knows about this blog (or even the concept of blogs, frankly) but, in the interests of self-preservation I will be stashing this away until such time as I no longer work here - which is not so far away. In the meantime, I thought it imperative to canonize these events. You might think your boss ain't so sharp but I dare you to top this - it all happened in less than 8 hours on a quiet day in April...Herewith, in no particular order:
1) Paged me at my phone to ask me when the first day of summer is this year. I didn't have the heart (or the time) to explain solstices, equinoxes, the structure of the solar system etc. so I just said, "June 21," and rolled my eyes. (And I gambled that it wouldn't fall on 6/22 this year, and it doesn't.) The important thing is that a grown man doesn't know when summer starts.
2) If you don't live in Canada, or don't drink wine regularly, you could be pardoned for not knowing this. If you live in Canada, drink wine and oversee a magazine with a regular wine column it's something you might have come across at some point: He did not know what VQA is or what it stands for. If you don't know, VQA stands for Vintner's Quality Assurance and it's basically a federal body that governs wine standards in Canada. Many other countries - France, Italy etc - also have such bodies. He now knows about it because they took out an advertisement (so we should, like, write about em!). So, he thought we should do an article on VQA wines, you see?
3) These still aren't funny enough for you? Try this one: A girl arrives for a job interview. He spots her as she comes in and realizes that a girl from a previous interview is about to leave so he stashes her in a room. And doesn't tell anyone. And forgets about her. For an hour. In the meantime, the manager in charge of interviewing her calls and leaves a message at her house asking where she is, hopefully she didn't get the time mixed up etc. Even the people at the front desk never saw her come in. She was mostly okay. [ed note: She got the job!]
4) He pronounced the musical insturment, spelled maracas, as "mar-a-chas." Really, this is not a hard word to say. Is it?
5) Like the VQA thing this requires some prior knowledge. Basically, he was reading the new Douglas Coupland book which includes appearances by a character named (ta da!) Douglas Coupland. So he's running around the office talking about how it's just like Kurt Vonnegut. Now, I can only presume he has read "Breakfast of Champions" (more likely, seen the Bruce Willis movie of it) in which the main character encounters Vonnegut as a God figure. Admittedly, both books feature the author within the narrative. But aside from that, it's not really the same thing. The reasons, the manner in which they appear, the function they serve...entirely different. I mean, they're printed on paper, in english, serif fonts etc...but I mean substantively. But he probably read one Vonnegut thing in high school (or saw the movie) and from there thinks he can stroll around talking about how X or Y is like Vonnegut when it's not. I mean, Vonnegut didn't invent "meta," man.
It reminds me of the scene in Back to School when Rodney Dangerfield hires Vonnegut to write an essay on himself...and Vonnegut gets a bad mark. Well, a lot reminds me of that scene.
[Ed note: Did you know they are remaking Back to School with Cedric the Entertainer? Gawd! Why?]
posted by Heavy Early at 2:41 PM
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