The outbursts of Sara Blum
I write this to chronicle my laughable challenge of maintaining a professional demeanor at work. Maybe I'm not suited for corporate life. Not that I am incapable of acting in a professional manner. However, once I have been working with the same people for some time ( I have been at my job for 6 months as of today) I struggle to not treat them in what I would consider a friendly manner. Is this a problem? Possibly. I will leave this to your judgment after reading about the following occurrences.
Preface: a large portion of my job includes working with the author's of technical documents. I help them following guidelines, etc. When I'm working on their document we see a lot of each other.
1. The Coat Incident
One of my "regulars" came in on a particularly frigid day wearing a big puffy coat a la George's gortex coat on Seinfeld. Having recently seen that episode of Seinfeld I completely cracked up and my initial response was to get up and start punching (not hard or anything) my co-worker while asking "Can you even feel this?" I was having a jolly time until I saw the look of- confusion? or was he just really startled?- cross his face. Suddenly it occurred to me that perhaps punching a co-worker, whether it was all in good fun or not, might not be the most appropriate workplace behavior. Ooops. Of course, I apologized to which he said it was okay, he was just surprised. Of course, I felt very embarrassed and made sure I was very professional with him for at least the next 3 or 4 times he came to our office. And I have not punched him again, even when he wears the puffy coat.
2. The Donut Incident
This was actually very humiliating to me. But I was so hungry.
Anyways. I had woken up late on this particular day so I was feeling rushed when I arrived at work. I had agreed to take a 9:30 meeting for one of my co-workers and found that my inbox was completely stuffed. It took every second from my arrival to 9:15 to get things somewhat under control, leaving me no time for breakfast. My stomach grumbled its way through the hour and a half long meeting. I was so hungry when I got back to my desk, but I still had tons of things that could not wait to get done that I just had to dive back into work. There I was, feverishly tapping out emails and various other things when I heard the plop of a cardboard box and saw Rob out of the corner of my eye- Rob! Rob had said yesterday that he would bring us donuts!! This was the extent of my thought process before I said, loudly (very loudly- almost yelled- what was I thinking?) "HOLY CRAP! IS THAT FOOD??" Needless to say, I startled every person in earshot. You would have thought their reaction to my outburst would have silenced me but instead I started babbling to Rob things along the lines of, "Oh Rob, I'm so hungry! You have no idea! BFF, that's what we are now, I am not joking." (Yes, I said "BFF" to a scientist. Sigh.) Eventually my sense of propriety managed to catch up with my rapidly blathering mouth and get it to shut up.
Preface: a large portion of my job includes working with the author's of technical documents. I help them following guidelines, etc. When I'm working on their document we see a lot of each other.
1. The Coat Incident
One of my "regulars" came in on a particularly frigid day wearing a big puffy coat a la George's gortex coat on Seinfeld. Having recently seen that episode of Seinfeld I completely cracked up and my initial response was to get up and start punching (not hard or anything) my co-worker while asking "Can you even feel this?" I was having a jolly time until I saw the look of- confusion? or was he just really startled?- cross his face. Suddenly it occurred to me that perhaps punching a co-worker, whether it was all in good fun or not, might not be the most appropriate workplace behavior. Ooops. Of course, I apologized to which he said it was okay, he was just surprised. Of course, I felt very embarrassed and made sure I was very professional with him for at least the next 3 or 4 times he came to our office. And I have not punched him again, even when he wears the puffy coat.
2. The Donut Incident
This was actually very humiliating to me. But I was so hungry.
Anyways. I had woken up late on this particular day so I was feeling rushed when I arrived at work. I had agreed to take a 9:30 meeting for one of my co-workers and found that my inbox was completely stuffed. It took every second from my arrival to 9:15 to get things somewhat under control, leaving me no time for breakfast. My stomach grumbled its way through the hour and a half long meeting. I was so hungry when I got back to my desk, but I still had tons of things that could not wait to get done that I just had to dive back into work. There I was, feverishly tapping out emails and various other things when I heard the plop of a cardboard box and saw Rob out of the corner of my eye- Rob! Rob had said yesterday that he would bring us donuts!! This was the extent of my thought process before I said, loudly (very loudly- almost yelled- what was I thinking?) "HOLY CRAP! IS THAT FOOD??" Needless to say, I startled every person in earshot. You would have thought their reaction to my outburst would have silenced me but instead I started babbling to Rob things along the lines of, "Oh Rob, I'm so hungry! You have no idea! BFF, that's what we are now, I am not joking." (Yes, I said "BFF" to a scientist. Sigh.) Eventually my sense of propriety managed to catch up with my rapidly blathering mouth and get it to shut up.