Cindy
Droog
Read Cindy's bio and previous columns
November 26, 2007
My Hall of Shame:
Exploding Microwaves, Spilled Paint and Toenail Cutting Reminders
There’s nothing like
the off-site company meeting for a lot of reasons. One of the top has to
be the facilitator who uses this form of torture as his favorite
icebreaker: Tell us about your most embarrassing moment.
Before working in
corporate America, I thought the point of embarrassing moments was that
they were rare, and weren’t necessarily meant to be relived. Now I see
the truth. The point of them is to find one – just one – for times like
this. When you need to share something that strikes the perfect balance
between harmlessly funny and completely lame.
I haven’t found my
perfectly sharable story yet, and I always hope that something one of my
fellow off-site meeting prisoners says will spark a memory I’ve yet to
consider as my standard response.
However, they face the
same conundrum. Many times, the stories involve kids. Came to work with
banana all over my dress? What working mom hasn’t? Didn’t notice the
spit-up in my hair until I was presenting to the client? Been there.
Done that.
I think the
facilitators should require that each story involve a moment so awkward
that it made one thank God for all the bosses who didn’t fire us – or at
least put us up for a public humiliation session – when they happened.
I share mine here so
that I can refer back to them before my next off-site torture session.
After all, between work and kids, I’ll be the first to admit that my
memory’s not quite what it used to be.
First, there was the
toenail incident of 1995. The classic keeper of to-do-lists that I am,
it never occurred to me that adding number 57 to my list – “cut
toenails” – was out of the ordinary. It seemed an innocent enough, and
very real, thing that I needed to accomplish.
Until my new boss of
maybe three or four days found the list. I’d left it in her office, and
was bewildered when she came to me in a fit of hysterical laughter.
“Cindy, you can’t remember to cut your own toenails? I think we need to
take a few other things off your plate!” I fought the urge to crawl
under my desk and hide.
But hey, it gone done!
That evening. At 5:12 p.m. to be exact.
There was also the
time I blew up the office microwave, and narrowly escaped burning down
the entire 100-year-old, historic office building right along with it.
Everybody knows you don’t put aluminum coffee cups in the microwave.
Everyone except – on that day – me.
About $99 and a trip
to Bed, Bath and Beyond later, the office had a new microwave. But I
still had the nickname “Firestarter,” which I explained away to clients
as hailing from my striking (sort of) resemblance to an eight-year-old
Drew Barrymore.
My lack of grace when
it comes to office improvement is no better. About four years ago, a
former boss of mine decided that we could all paint our own offices the
color of our desire. For me, it was green. But when I knocked over the
entire gallon of “garden mist” onto the office carpet, the landlord
didn’t buy my excuse that I was going for the complete botanical look,
including groundcover.
That boss paid for our
carpet cleaning, forgave and forgot, and we’re still friends today. The
building landlord, however? I probably can’t put his nickname for me in
writing. It might offend.
I figure three good
stories to choose from should be enough for anyone with a career
spanning 15 years. I can rotate between them for awhile, and eventually,
when everyone I work with has heard all of them, I can always fall back
to the time I drove a client’s vehicle, being debuted at a press
conference, straight into a door.
I’ll have to save that
story for a full-on, multi-day corporate retreat. After all, it was more
humiliating than spit-up, bananas, green paint and flaming electrical
outlets combined!
© 2007 North Star Writers
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