Maybe if I sneak up on it

In case you keep track of these things, I am having trouble getting back to the saga of Adelle. Maybe the really interesting part of the story is over, maybe dredging up those days stirs up too much personal muck, maybe I don’t have what it takes.

I was working for a large wealthy family. By that I do not mean that they were large people, although some were. There were 125 of them when I eventually left their employ. We employees all had framed family trees hanging in our offices listing every member. To qualify for our services you got in by birth or marriage, you got out by death or divorce.

This is where Mary Kaye, Adelle and Diane worked. Now that I think about it, Jim and I – the two managers – were the only (non-client) males in the office.

I hired Tammy as a staff accountant. It was the day, and she was a strident women’s rights proponent although her work ethic and perpetual whining kept anyone from taking her seriously. These were the days before smoking was outlawed in public buildings and everyone took a morning and afternoon break to play cards, chat, drink coffee and smoke. If secondhand smoke is a harmful as they say, I may beat SC into a lung cancer grave.

Tammy insisted on sitting in the break room and whining about the smoke. I could not take Tammy seriously and decided to have a little fun. One day, over lunch, I casually mentioned to another employee that I was enrolled in and would be attending a conference entitled “Managing Women in the ‘80s.” Tammy overheard this comment and went ballistic, insisting that there was no appreciable difference between men and women for management purposes. Over the next few weeks I got more mileage out of this by casually mentioning (within Tammy’s earshot) the titles of various workshops at the conference, such as “Mentoring the Premenstrual” and Hiring Women – What Their Hairstyle and Makeup Tell You about Their Work Ethic.” Tammy bought the whole thing and everyone else was in on the joke.

Before Diane there was Hope. Hope was a 50-something former teacher who had left the workforce to raise her family and was then left by her husband. Hope was a little high strung, but she taught me an important lesson. We had those old Lanier Dictaphones with the original floppy disks. I will never forget her second day on the job when she marched into my office, slammed the disk down on my desk and said, “Mr. OG, if you do not enunciate more clearly I will not transcribe your dictation. Every secretary since Hope has commented on how easy it is to transcribe my dictation.

Of course there are no more secretaries, and I type this blog myself.

Berto - Gone but not forgotten

Tom, Betsy, Patrick and I are toying with the concept of a second coffee break, sometime early to mid-afternoon. And, although we feel extreme loyalty to Mary and our other friends at the Starbucks a block and a half away, we have been walking across the street to the new Starbucks for our afternoon pick me up. It’s not that we are being unfaithful, certainly not to the shareholders. But if you want something other than what you always order every morning, you need to go to a different Starbucks so as to avoid the embarrassing moment where they push the already prepared morning drink across the counter to you with that we-know-you-and exactly-what-you-want smile on their face. From then on they will always hesitate every time you come in. It is not worth upsetting the equilibrium, especially when 5 other Starbucks are all less than 2 blocks away.

Berto is gone, and this time I fear he is gone for good. The building management recently completed some renovations in the lobby which evidently spilled over to the security services. Berto and his light-blue shirted friends are gone. In their place are a tougher looking bunch of guys with midnight blue uniforms. For the most part, these new guys look like the kind who know how to use the guns on their hips and are not afraid to use them. Still, as you may recall, I had cultivated a passing friendship with Berto as part of my “know the guy with the gun before the shooting starts” program. Now I am faced with chatting up one of these thugs, none of whom have been overly friendly. In some respects it is like switching the channel from Andy Griffith to The Shield, and maybe I should find comfort in that instead of grousing.