Do my ears deceive me?
I’m getting older and my ears and eyes aren’t what they used to be. This is a fact. I might not be as bad as my geriatric Shiba Inu, Aki, who woke me up twice last night to open a door that was already WIDE open*… but I still have to recognize that I have some issues.
Ears
Working in a “collaborative workspace,” I hear a lot of random snippets of conversation. People on calls, people talking to each other, and almost all of it is out of context… Unless we’re talking about the temperature in the bathroom. It doesn’t matter what time of the day or night it is, if someone walks back to their desk and starts talking about the heating/cooling, you can always assume it’s about the sauna (aka, ladies restroom).
But I digress. I hear lots of random things. On Thursday, a coworker and I thought about starting a quiz over the messaging app, Slack, where we post random quotes to an open channel and award points (or tacos!) to the person who could best match our colleagues to their quotes.
A good premise, but there aren’t that many of us in San Jose and it’d probably be super obvious who said what. But still, there’s some great material here and I don’t want it to go to waste, so allow me to share some of the things that I heard within 24 hours while sitting/standing at my desk.* *
I’m into protecting anonymity and generally not outing my colleagues on the internets, so I obviously won’t be posting names and/or anything particularly spicy.
”And then I fell into the squid display and I’ve been scarred ever since.”
”I lived in Texas and I’ve seen Toy Story, so I’m qualified.”
”I’m currently drinking the carnival of love.”
“Oh good. I have narcolepsy.”
”I was going to eat that too, but then I decided it might be an HR violation.”
Eyes
I was just purchasing travel insurance for our upcoming trip to Japan (!!!), and was comparing the list of covered activities to our itinerary when my eyes came across this gem.
Seriously.
I know that Phil was pretty upset that we were going to miss the Pen15 festival, Kanamara Matsuri, so I thought that he’d be over the moon when I let him know that all of his Japanese air guitar competitions/injuries would be covered. He was not amused. {shrug}
*The first time Aki woke me up (at 11pm) he had his face shoved between the hinge on the back side of the open bedroom door and a clothes hamper.
The second time (at 12:17), he was facing the wall, with his little orange body wedged between our bed and a nightstand. This is nowhere near the bedroom door.
In addition to being half-blind and deaf, he must also have doggy Alzheimer’s.
**To be clear, I didn’t sit/stand at my desk for 24 hours. Work is bonkers right now, and I might feel like I’m working 24/7, but I’m not actually Prometheus.*** Plus, my desk is so small that if I were chained to it, I could probably drag it around behind me. So, not effective. Also, pretty sure that blood thirsty birds aren’t in the budget (anymore).
***Whoa! Meta-footnoting! The greek Prometheus… you know, the one pictured in the stinger who was chained to a rock. Not to be confused with the weird alien Sigourney Weaver + trilobite monster movie that filled my brain with Google images that I can’t unsee.
