Thursday, August 26, 2010

I'm Lucky to Have my Head...

This will be a quick one, and I'm not going to talk about knitting at all. I'm at the Pru(dential Center) all day today for meetings, so I need to pick out a suit and track down some appropriate shoes - neither flip flops nor Uggs are appropriate - and get a move on.

I'm going to tell a story today...

Once upon a time, there was a performance analyst who made her living analyzing healthcare quality data. She sat in a cubicle all day, looking at her computer and processing enough data to make the average person keel over cross-eyed. Over time, she accumulated enough books and conference binders to require an additional bookshelf in her cubicle; so she requested and was granted one. The handyman who visits her worksite every month or so installed it, and she proudly put her binders, books and kleenex on her new shelf. She was very happy with the improvements to her cubicle, and for the six or eight weeks that the extra shelf hung in her cube, she was the envy of all her colleagues.
On a day that seemed like so many others before it, she arrived at work, turned on her computer, went to the kitchen where she made a cup of coffee, exchanged morning pleasantries with colleagues, and then sat down to work. While responding to an email from her Senior Director's Executive Assistant - with absolutely no warning - her beloved shelf came crashing down. Never one to mince words when the word "fuck" is the most appropriate choice, she screamed "jesus fucking christ" while books, papers, binders, coffee, kleenex, and a shelf that has to weigh about 20 lbs barely missed landing on her. Actually, she WAS hit by flying coffee.
Witnesses said that it sounded like the roof was falling in. Co-workers ran from one aisle over in each direction to assist with the clean up. The analyst was so shaken up that she had to sit down. Someone removed the shelf and took it back to the building's facility coordinator, someone grabbed paper towel and started cleaning up the coffee, while someone else dried off the textbooks and binders. Once everything (except her elevated heart rate) was back to normal, she had a decision to make: Did she want the shelf reinstalled? She made her way over to the cubicle of the facility coordinator, and there was the shelf. Now, sitting alone on its side, it didn't seem like it knew the analyst at all, and showed absolutely no remorse for trying to kill her 45 minutes earlier. It was a hard choice to make, but the analyst knew what she had to do. She had to make a clean break, so she told the facility coordinator that she was going to go it alone without the extra shelf.
Even though the analyst now has a bunch of crap on her desk that she'll need to find a home for, it seems that she'll live happily ever after - since she's still in possession of her head. The end.

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