Things You See at Work

[Aus_Schwaben]

If you were in the military any length of time, you saw wives the GIs married while they were stationed overseas. In Germany, one GI (SSG) married a hooker. They were kicked out of government housing when she continued her business at home. She continued working that job even after getting kicked out of their base housing. When I ran into him a couple of years later he had been promoted.

 

[benenglish]

If you were in the military any length of time, you saw wives...hooker...

Oh, yeah. Military wives. Second-hand story time, again -

My dad and mom were at the Officer's Club on Brookley Field in Mobile, AL, sometime in the early 1960s. The place was sort of L-shaped. There was a colonel of some sort seated with his friends over on one side. My mom and dad were on the other. Neither table was visible from the other.

Colonel is suddenly at my dad's table and asks for the favor of a dance. In my mom's words "We all knew what that meant." In short order, they were on the dance floor with him grinding his erection into her and talking dirty in her ear. Mom had been raised tough and none of this bothered her; she just planned her revenge.

After the dance, she went back to her table and told my dad "I'm going to go freshen up. You go outside, right now. Get the car and have it running, parked in front, so we can leave the instant I step outside." Dad knows to trust mom when she says stuff like this.

Mom goes to the ladies room, refreshes her makeup, pulls her sleeves off her shoulders and makes herself look as sultry as possible. For her, this didn't take much effort; she was a gorgeous woman.

She walks out of the ladies room and goes straight to the colonel's table where he's seated with his wife and two more couples. She acts surprised to see him, throws her arms around him, and loudly proclaims "Sweetie! I didn't know you were in town! You should have called me! You know I can always find time for you!" Then she plants a big, red lipstick print on his cheek and walks around the corner and straight out the front door.

According to her and my dad, the screaming of the colonel's wife could be heard as soon as she opened the front door. She hopped in the car and off they sped.

 

[John Galt]

Our ship is homeported in Seattle so I spend a lot of time there. We had a female Chief Mate and I would hit the local watering hole with her on occasion. One day I was outside smoking when a, how should one put this, bovine diagonal cutter walked by with the most beautiful pure white Alaskan Husky. The Chief mate came running out the door hollering, "That's my dog!" The person walking the dog turned and looked at her and said, "Screw you bitch." The Chief mate looked at me and said, "And... That's my ex-wife."

On a later occasion I was drinking wine with the same Chief Mate at a winery she was a member of. It was right on the beach (I forget which town not far from Seattle) and a rare beautiful summer day. We spent the entire day just drinking wine and watching the hardbodies stroll by. At the end of the day my half of the bill was over $200, but it was a good time. Turns out, she has very similar taste in women as I do.

 

[ZX9RCAM]

bovine diagonal cutter

I had to Google this, lol....

 

[Axxe55]

I had to Google this, lol....

I figured I was better off not knowing!

 

[ZX9RCAM]

I figured I was better off not knowing!

Never heard it put this way, but it absolutely works....

 

[Axxe55]

Never heard it put this way, but it absolutely works....

From his post, I did get the gist of it's meaning!

 

[Vaquero]

Took me a minute.
Worth every second.

 

[no2gates]

I had to Google this, lol....

So did I !!!!

 

[Texasjack]

Military stuff: My aunt's husband was a colonel in the army - a West Point guy. One day he was telling the story about what slowed his career and maybe kept him from being a general. When he was a brand new lieutenant, he managed to become the base commander's favorite and was fast-tracking to promotion. There was an officer's dance, and the commander took it upon himself to dance with the prettiest wives. While dancing with my aunt, he got more than a little handsy. She stopped out in the middle of the dance floor and told him if he touched her again she was going to kick him in the balls. He turned red and walked off. My uncle said, "After that, I got all the crappiest jobs until I managed to transfer to another base. I could have made general, but my wife had to threaten him to protect her dignity." My aunt responded, "I didn't threaten him. I was absolutely going to kick him. He deserved it and I don't feel the least bit of remorse."

I was talking to my Uncle Frank one day and joking with him about going to a cousin's wedding. (She married a general's son.) I asked if they seated everyone by their rank (or former rank). Frank served in WWII and probably in his 80's at the time. He said, "Hell, I out-rank all those people." I asked, "Didn't you muster out as a sergeant?" He said, "Yeah, but I got more promotions that any of them." Me, "How's that?" Frank answered, "Well, I only made sergeant, but I got promoted to that rank 11 or 12 times. The army would send out some new shave-tail lieutenant and he'd start barking orders and I'd tell him he was full of s***, and there went my rank. Then, we'd get into trouble and I'd have to take over, and I'd get promoted again. You know, the army has there way of doing things and they don't like anybody to tell them when their wrong."

My sister asked my father (Korean War), "Dad, what were you in the Air Force?" Dad replied, "Unhappy."

 

[innominate]

 

[innominate]

I believe I was the first person in my bureau to be formally placed on warning for sexual harassment back in ~1983 after the criteria for an offense changed from the "reasonable person" criteria to the "perception of the victim" criteria. The particulars are illustrative.

On a Friday afternoon, I got on an elevator that was already occupied by two women, one a secretary and the other a Division Chief. We exchanged hellos. The executive asked how I was and I made the mistake of answering. "Well, let's see. It's a beautiful Friday afternoon, I'm about to get off work, and in the meantime I'm confined in a small room with two beautiful women. I don't see how life could be better!"

Executive peers over her glasses and pointedly informs me that's exactly the sort of language that constitutes sexual harassment, something I should have learned in the class I'd attended that very week. The door to the elevator opens and she steps off. When the doors close, the secretary turns to me and askss "What the hell is her problem?"

It turns out that she had gone straight to HR and filed a complaint. The next Monday I was formally counseled. I promised my boss I wouldn't do it again and she was happy with that. So was the "victim", an executive 4 levels above me who, from any practical perspective, it was impossible for me to harass. That took are of the immediate problem.

My long term strategy?

I became a POSH Instructor. That's "Prevention of Sexual Harassment" instructor.

It's amazing how much leeway you're allowed when you're the one teaching everyone else how to obey the rules. The thing I enjoyed most was sharing, with every class, the story of my interaction with that executive. I never used her name but eventually people pieced it together and knew who I was talking about. And in every class, I got the same reaction: "What the hell was the matter with her? You didn't do anything bad!" I got to turn that into a teachable moment, stressing to everyone that under the new criteria, sexual harassment isn't something you do; it's something the other person thinks about you.

Yeah, for the most part the classes I taught were a boring waste of time. However, I know for a fact that I helped several people dodge a bullet or two because they now understood that the definition of "sexual harassment" had formally changed. Nobody at my level liked it but at least forewarned is forearmed.

If someone from HR spent a day listening to the typical conversations that happen daily in your average O.R. or cath lab they would probably have a stroke

 

[Grumps21]

Wow, lots of good stories. Mine seems lame in comparison, but the wildest story I have is regarding an outside salesman who I work with that continually takes calls while in the restroom. It’s not unusual to see him talking on the phone while at the urinal. I’ve coughed, flushed the toilet, ran the hand dryer and it didn’t seem to phase him one bit.

 

[Axxe55]

Wow, lots of good stories. Mine seems lame in comparison, but the wildest story I have is regarding an outside salesman who I work with that continually takes calls while in the restroom. It’s not unusual to see him talking on the phone while at the urinal. I’ve coughed, flushed the toilet, ran the hand dryer and it didn’t seem to phase him one bit.

It is a kind of tame story, but a good one anyways. I got laugh from it!

 

[no2gates]

Wow, lots of good stories. Mine seems lame in comparison, but the wildest story I have is regarding an outside salesman who I work with that continually takes calls while in the restroom. It’s not unusual to see him talking on the phone while at the urinal. I’ve coughed, flushed the toilet, ran the hand dryer and it didn’t seem to phase him one bit.

I've got you beat. I was in the restroom at the office, and heard the unmistakable sound of the Apple Mail program sending a message coming from one of the crapper stalls. I HAD to wait to find out who would send email while taking a dump. It was the CEO.

 

[Axxe55]

I've got you beat. I was in the restroom at the office, and heard the unmistakable sound of the Apple Mail program sending a message coming from one of the crapper stalls. I HAD to wait to find out who would send email while taking a dump. It was the CEO.

Sounds like a crappy message to me!

 

[deemus]

No need to waste time. I’ve done it. I usually mute my phone if I take a call. Then only unmute to speak, then back on mute.

And also, I keep my phone on vibrate so no noise happens.

 

[Axxe55]

Most men multi-task in the crapper!

 

[deemus]

Yup

 

[benenglish]

I was in the restroom at the office, and heard the unmistakable sound of the Apple Mail program sending a message

Circa 1982, I heard the unmistakable sound of the guy in the next stall chopping up his lines of cocaine and sniffing them off the package shelf. That was weird because it was so unsanitary. I mean, who would sniff anything off the package shelf in the stall of a public restroom in a federal building?