Where DO These Thoughts Come From?

It seems I’ve been reflecting a lot about the many jobs I’ve had over the years. What’s interesting is how my perspective has changed from then to now. I’ve always worked in an administrative capacity and have truly thrived in this arena. It’s given me insurmountable memories to write about. So I dug a little deeper into the recesses of my memory and something else occurred to me. Time and experience really does distort perception. Humor becomes a little darker and the situations lean a little further toward the unthinkable; again, all in the name of humor…

Way back when I was a fresh-eyed, supercharged, ‘can do’ young pup, I thought about my first office job. It’s important to note that we didn’t have computers. Nope, I was an IBM Selectric kinda assistant. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t even an assistant. I was a secretary. That typewriter didn’t even have a correctable tape feature—that model came later. But boy did we have white out. The company was a real estate closing firm and it was my very first office job. There was a lot of paperwork and forms and one mistake segued into a white out painting extravaganza to correct it. I made a mess out of one document in particular and had so much plaster on that page it cracked when I lifted it out of the typewriter. My thoughts then?  ‘Oh silly you, pay attention…’

A handful of years later, I went to work for a corporate gig that definitely was on the cutting edge of whoever gets to the top first wins and the hell with everybody else. What a lesson in life that was. Somewhere between Pollyanna me and a summer of bartending before going back into the corporate world, things really changed and so did I. My behavior and responses to some of those ‘forward thinking’ individuals wasn’t quite so pure anymore. Okay, a summer of serving umbrella drinks in Saint Somewhere may have had something to do with my sharp wit. Regardless, I had found my voice and wasn’t afraid to use it. We weren’t called secretaries anymore either. I had graduated to administrative assistant—gender thing, I suppose.

And now here I am today…And this is my point. If someone told me twenty plus years ago that some day I would think about bringing a potato gun into the office to use on my co-workers when they crossed the line, I’d be horrified. Today, when the thought crosses my mind, there’s no horror at all. I’m just thinking ‘Casual Friday’ would be a good day to do that—be a great way to close out the work week…