One of the things I thought I'd miss when I changed jobs was having people around who spoke with colorful expressions. I'd gotten used to Alex, who sent out periodic "phillipics" and complained about documents that were "written by a random word generator." He was most notorious for the email in which he described his reaction to a meeting as feeling like his brain had been sucked out of his skull through his nostrils by a priest of the ancient Egyptian god of embalming, Anubis. That triggered an entire cult in our office, with a plush toy of Anubis, references to coffee as a libation to Anubis, and so on.
So you cannot imagine how pleased I was the other day when my boss's assistant responded to "how are you?" by saying she was "finer than frog's hair." Karen's got a heavy southern accent (Alabama, if I recall correctly) but I think that was her own expression and not real slang.
Then, yesterday, we were all updating charts for our weekly staff meeting. I'd already figured out that he guy whose office is next to mine has a particularly creative range of profanity, much of it involving bodily functions of the moose. But he turns out to be colorful in an erudite way,, too. I totally cracked up when I saw the bullet on his chart discussing a review he'd attended at which he had "taken more spears than Xerxes at Thermopylae."
There's really no reason for me to miss my old job.
Copyright 2006 Miriam H. Nadel