I have a colleague who is a vegetarian and loves animals. I think she may be a vegan and not use leather either. Very thorough. The most impressive moment came today when she gloomily confided to me that she thought she had rats under her decking (a distressingly common problem, apparently). “What will you do?” I asked. “I’ll get a humane trap and release them in the park.”
Work
Is Everything Genetic?
Daniel: I’m the best in the class at Irish dancing.
Me: Good for you.
Daniel (after some reflection): The best except for S.
Me: Well, you know, S’s mother is a dancer, so you would expect him to be good at dancing.
Daniel: Am I good at what you do Mummy?
Me: Well, um, you probably have latent middle manager skills.
More Customer Service
When I first got my own car, about 15 years ago, I went to my father’s insurance broker for cover. The broker is based in Cork and I live in Dublin and, from time to time, I have considered changing to a Dublin broker but I never got around to it. Today, I called the broker to check something on my renewal quote. Our conversation went like this:
Me: Hello, I’d like to check etc.
Him: That’s Anne, is it? I’ll get your file.
I haven’t spoken to him in a year or more and he still recognised me on the phone straight away. He didn’t need my insurance number, my surname, my date of birth, my phone number or a six digit activation code to find my file. I don’t think that his brokerage will be losing my custom any time soon.
And in completely unrelated news, the Princess lost her front tooth last night (a dramatic event I completely missed since I was out winning the office pub quiz with my crack team). Now she looks like this.
Bicycle Racks are a Feminist Issue. Maybe.
I go to a number of conferences in the course of my work and there are always more men than women on the podium and, regardless of the gender make-up of the audience, there are always more men who ask questions than women. Why should that be? And why is it that that would be true pretty much in any line of work, even in professions like teaching which are female dominated? And is it only women who ever notice this? Why do I spend all my time counting? I see over on twitter that Suzy Byrne has made a campaign of counting the number of female panellists on Vincent Browne’s current affairs programme (not very many, if I might summarise).
The other night I was unlocking my bike from the rack and two (male colleagues) were there with their bikes also – I have a child seat on the back and they commented that they had been wondering who owned it. “I do,” I said, “bringing gender balance to the bike rack.” “Eh?” they asked. “Haven’t you noticed that there are never any other women’s bikes on the rack?” I said. They looked at me in surprise and amusement, no they would never in a life time have noticed. Could it be that I am overcounting?
Do you spend your time counting?
Reinforcing Stereotypes
I came into work this morning with a nasty head cold. I whined about my misery to my boss, a sober, pleasant woman of a certain age. “Would you like a hot whiskey?” she asked. “You have whiskey in the office?” I asked. “Of course,” she replied, “for medicinal reasons.”
Would any other office worker who has been offered whiskey by a superior at 9 in the morning please put up his or her hand? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Tomorrow, I will be buying lottery tickets
This week:
The revenue finally admitted that, yes, we were right about our tax affairs and refunded two large cheques;
While going through cards I had kept (wedding, christenings, birthday) for many years but finally decided to throw out due to space restrictions, a crisp €50 note floated out of a christening card for the Princess where it had been waiting for 7 years to surprise us (belated thanks, Aunty Pat);
At work, a measure which I had strenuously resisted when initially decided upon in the summer and which, despite my objections, I have had to work hard on intermittantly ever since, has been dumped;
An emergency job which had to be finished for noon tomorrow and threatened to ruin many evenings this week, turned out not to be an emergency, allowing breathing space and bedtime stories;
A report which I wrote, and which has languished for an ominous length of time on the desk of the capo di tutti capi, has been approved for issue without amendment;
The man from the cable company rang up saying he had to put a cable underground through the overgrown side passage. I sighed mildly at the inconvenience and he said, there’s no point haggling, my best offer is free cable tv and internet for life. Really. I’m going to ask him to put that in writing.
Would you care to touch the hem of my garment?
