office party of 1

I want one!

Like anyone who reads women’s magazines this time of year – and as much as it lowers my cool quotient to say so, I have to admit I’ve been known to take a peek – I am convinced that the rest of the world is currently gearing up to attend glamorous black tie company parties this weekend.  Why else all the fashion articles devoted to whether one should wear panty hose with strappy sandals to corporate events?  (My personal rule of thumb?  It’s December – if you want to be considered competent enough to get that next big career building project, demonstrate first that you have mastered the somewhat less complex skill of avoiding frost bite.)

After a careful review of my calendar, it appears I have nowhere to a) wear an inappropriately low cut cocktail dress, b) drink too much at an open bar, then c) make out with a colleague on an office Xerox machine (did I mention the oh-my-God-what-did-I-do! advice columns also seem full of this stuff?).  I think my invitation must have gotten lost in the mail for the past 25 years or so.

My first exposure to office parties was, quite literally, baloney.  The chairman of the orchestra board – heiress to a candy bar fortune, no less – invited everyone to her home for the event.  I missed it.  Already on a plane and heading back to Mom’s house for the holidays, I imagined crystal chandeliers, gorgeous Christmas trees, silver trays of scrumptious catered food.  Instead when I returned to DC I learned from my fellow symphony serfs that the menu that evening had been baloney sandwiches.

And a “Bah, humbug” to you, too!

The food was significantly better a couple of years ago when I was doing a project for OU’s College of Nursing and got invited to their holiday luncheon.

Now OU may be a state university, but when it comes to Christmas, let’s just say they’re unapologetically Oklahoman.  In other words, we’re Midwestern, we’re Christian, and the janitorial staff has no political correctness qualms about spending weeks getting out garlands and wreaths, poinsettias and a large Christmas tree (decorated in OU red, of course). 

On that day every public space was adorned and the atrium was lovely.  Long tables running down its center were covered with a turkey-and-all-the-trimmings meal.  And 99% of the women in attendance had broken out their black pants and sparkly holiday sweaters (fortunately, my mom and my aunt insisted that, for the first time in years, I buy one that fall so I fit the dress code just fine).  There was music from an acapella employee group, a nice speech from the dean and then – well, public humiliation is not a suitable gift for the season.  When they tried to break us up into small groups to perform carols for the entire packed Student Lounge, my sensible tablemates made a run for their offices, jingling and sparkling all the way.

There may not be any major company Christmas party skeletons in my past – and no opportunity for getting on Santa’s naughty list in my immediate future – but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a little holiday party for one.  I think today while I’m working I’ll switch my radio to the OKC station that plays only Christmas music in December.  I’ll fix myself a big mug of instant hot chocolate instead of iced tea.  I may even pull out my sparkly Christmas sweater to wear with my jeans.  ‘Tis the season after all.

there's no such thing as a free lunch

I was working last week on an agenda for a client’s customer advisory board meeting and amidst all my notes about new product strategies, market feedback requirements and the benefits of JAD sessions versus more freeform focus groups, I dictated the specifics of every single meal.  Why?  When it comes to the software business, it’s all about the free food.

It’s no secret that the average tech start-up runs on 24/7 pizza and caffeine.   A well-fed geek is a happy geek;  I learned that years ago from the Mr. Fields of cookie fame.  I also learned that big bowls of chocolate chips in the reception area and on the conference room tables are a very, very good thing.

Since then, I’ve worked in places where the highlight of the day was the free lunch delivery – and not just for my dog, Geeks (yes, I used to take my dog to work – another tech company perk).  Geeks had a system worked out.  Around 11:15 am, her little internal doggie alarm would go off and she’d move from her favorite napping position under my desk to a spot in the reception area where she could keep an eye on the door.  “Food is coming!” every alert muscle in her body would say.

When the delivery man finally arrived, where, oh, where to go first?

Now a more ordinary dog might trail along after the first person to pick up his or her food.  Stake out the closest office.  Follow her favorite smell.  Not Geeks.  The Geek Dog’s begging calculations were based on a very specific formula:  likelihood of sharing divided by speed of consumption.  Using this equation, my shaggy girl could travel from desk to desk for an hour or more until every last handout opportunity was exhausted.

With 30 employees to beg from at work, Geeks was quite the rotund little dog.  She also developed quite the programmer’s taste in food.  An experiment was once performed (not by me) to see how much pizza she could eat in one sitting.  The results?  Two and a half large pies.  Whenever I’d suggest to my colleagues that perhaps Geeks should go on a diet, they’d respond, “But she always seems so hungry!  Don’t you ever feed her?  She looks at me with those eyes…”  Yes, big beautiful brown eyes, intelligent face, twitching ears – the Geek Dog is a highly evolved free food begging machine.

Unfortunately, at home there’s no one to fork food over and no catering van ready to pull into my drive.  There’s not even the possibility of a stray pizza delivery boy.  Lunch is whatever I remember to buy at the grocery store – most days tuna, yogurt and an apple.  Boring for me, boring for stand-offish cats, boring for little brown dogs.

So sometimes in the mornings, when I'm planning what I'm going to eat for lunch today, I think back to the glory years.  Those were the days, weren’t they, when Geeks lived for lunch – and so did I!

it's a slippery slope to old lady shoes

I wore high heels this year to Thanksgiving dinner – brown ones with shiny patent leather pointy toes and sexy cut-outs on the sides.  Well, I wore them for a full ten minutes before tucking them under a bench by my friend Linda’s front door.

No excuses here.  All I had to do was show up and eat.  Which I did.  With enthusiasm.  Barefoot.  (OK, not quite barefoot.  In a nod to acting like a grown-up guest, I also put on pantyhose for the day.  Turns out they are great for scooting and sliding on hardwood floors.)

In my defense, it was the second time I’d worn these heels since I bought them.  On the other hand, I’ve had them since the beginning of September.  The only other shoes I bought this fall?  Clunky fur-lined clogs with cork soles and cable knit yarn uppers.  As much as I’d like to pretend I only use them to run to yoga class, the truth is that I pretty much wear them every day.  Every day that I actually make it out of my houseshoes, that is.

Have I really become one of those women?   Have I really become one of those women who only wear practical shoes?

Now, I’ll admit that the feminist in me can’t help but raise her eyebrows at the whole “those silly little ladies, they sure do love their pretty shoes, don’t they?” meme.  Bottom line:  high heels really only serve one purpose – to make our legs look good for men.  It’s self-objectification on stripper stilts.  Unfortunately, my inner girly girl grew up playing with Barbie dolls and Barbie wouldn’t think of wearing boring Birkenstocks.  Then again, Barbie can’t flatten her feet.

(An odd-but-true aside: I once worked with a woman who had Barbie-fied herself, wearing high heels every day for so long that her Achilles tendons shortened and it was very painful for her to walk flatfooted.)

So when faced with a situation where this girl really needs to boost her mojo (this September it was a second meeting with a chauvinist CEO jerk/potential client), I’m probably going to go shopping for some sexy Barbie shoes.  And when I post as my Facebook status “It's official: I'm old. After an afternoon checking out footwear at the mall I can definitively say I do not want to buy on-trend leopard hooker heels for a business meeting,” strong, powerful women from every era of my life – from high school friends to corporate executives to my current yoga instructor – chime in with sympathy.

There’s sisterhood in middle-aged shoe shopping.

There’s sisterhood in our love/hate relationship with high heels.

There’s sisterhood in growing out of “the sexy” and the fact that we are powerful enough in our own right not to need it anymore.

At least most of the time.

I’m not saying that when I wear the perfect shoes, I don’t enjoy the kick to my confidence.  I might even reminisce fondly about the younger me who thought nothing of riding the Chicago transit system to work every day in three inch heels. 

Still I’m thankful that in the life I have now there’s plenty of room for practical shoes.  No dress code.  Nothing to prove.  And I’m thankful that, when vanity trumps practicality for a day, I’m comfortable enough in my own skin to kick those uncomfortable shoes off.

I want my IT staff back

I can live without power and people to boss around.

I can live without regular paychecks.

But I’m just not sure whether or not I can survive without on-premise tech support.

It could be worse.  The other day I was talking to a woman completely stumped by why her computer wasn’t recognizing her new printer.  I have, at least heard of printer drivers.  And when a friend of mine was having problems redirecting his domain-name specific email to Gmail, I read Google’s instructions and figured it out.  Arcane web site issues – at this point just bring them on.  If it can be solved by going on-line, pointing, clicking and searching FAQs, it might take me a while but sooner or later I’ll get it.  (I might have to look up a technical term or two on Wikipedia just to be sure that I know what I’m doing, but I’ll get the job done.)

In fact, it appears that I’m turning into other folks’ computer expert.  This makes me nervous.  It’s one thing to find the extra space my mom accidentally put in her customer address mail merge template that makes the labels print wrong.  It’s another thing entirely to give someone serious advice about a tool they use to run their business.

After all, I haven’t even had to buy a computer on my own since 1992.

So what if I’ve spent a couple of decades around technology people?  To the hardcore geek types I was a “fluffy marketing person.”  Then again, to my employees I was the scary boss who expected everyone on the marketing team to really understand the products we were pushing. 

I guess the best way to describe my technical expertise is this:  if you need a point-of-sale, have I got some suggestions for you.  But when it comes to deciding on a replacement for my own on-its-last-legs laptop, well, that’s another matter entirely.

(I don’t think I’ll be exploring career options at Best Buy if this consulting gig doesn’t work out.)

let's talk about toilet paper

Standing in the Wal-Mart checkout line yesterday with another $12 mega package, it hit me:  My toilet paper consumption has increased exponentially.

It’s just another side effect of working from home.

I guess this shouldn’t be all that surprising.  After all, offices have bathrooms.  Bathrooms with toilet paper.  So for those of us spending our days in an office, a certain amount of our toilet paper just shows up, neatly installed on the toilet paper holder by an invisible nighttime janitor.

If you do the math (and when you are standing in line at Wal-Mart on a Saturday, there’s certainly plenty of time for any calculations you’d care to undertake), eight hours at the office is a third of a 24 hour day, so logically toilet paper consumption would increase proportionately.  Even if you factor in the fact that eight hours of an average day are spent sleeping, usage should only double.

That doesn’t come close to the increase I’m seeing here.

Many small businesses join a warehouse club like Costco or Sam’s to save on office supplies.  As for me?  Well, I haven’t needed to buy legal pads or fancy pens since I started working from home.  Lately, however, I’ve been thinking that a membership might be worth the cost.  I'm pretty sure those discount clubs carry toilet paper, don’t they?

snow days have lost their magic

When I woke up yesterday morning it was snowing – not enough for one of those “close all the offices and shut down the city” kinds of days (we’ve already had our allotted Two Big Storms in Oklahoma this season), but it did get me thinking.

When you work from home, there’s no such thing as a snow day.

I’ve lived enough places to realize that snow days are by no means a universal phenomenon.  In Chicago, where politicians’ ability to retain office is based on clear roads and regular garbage pick-ups, a snow day is a day when the snow plows wake you up at 4:00 am as they scrape the street outside your apartment building.  No excuses not to go in to work!  In Washington, DC, on the other hand, the entire population is thrown in a state of shock by the first signs of bad weather.  This might be understandable if DC were located in the deep south.  However, when I lived there in the late ‘80’s we had more than one winter storm dump a couple of feet of snow on us.  Ignoring all evidence to the contrary, the transportation authority felt a de-icing system wasn’t required for the Metro, so in bad weather the subway lines – and pretty much everything else – shut down.

It does indeed seem that there is an inverse relationship between the severity of a locale’s customary winter weather and the likelihood of a good old fashioned snow day.  In Park City, Utah, public roads are regularly plowed (got to make sure skiers can get to the resorts!) and most residents contract with formal snow removal services for the entire season.  I solved the snow problem a different way:  After renting an old miner’s cottage on the street behind my office, I could simply walk to work.  And when the snow piled up against the back of my house as high as my roof line, I happily discovered that it was a great insulator and appreciated my reduced heating bill.  On the other hand, when the street plow slush piled up behind my car, I not-so-happily discovered that it was almost impossible to shovel if it was allowed to sit and freeze up.  Although I may not have needed a car for my work commute, I still started every morning digging out my driveway.

My most recent official snow day occurred in upstate New York.  After surviving both the Utah and Colorado mountains, I’m embarrassed to admit that this snow day was personal rather than company-wide. 

I had been living in South Florida for several years when my company was acquired by a business located about 45 minutes outside of Syracuse.  During my time on the beach I gave away my winter coats, boots and good sense when it comes to bad weather.  So when I needed to report to the acquiring company’s corporate headquarters for my first week as their new Vice President – this was in January, no less – I threw my pointy-toed high heeled boots and leather jacket in a suitcase and hoped for the best.  After all, it’s not like practical snow gear is available in Florida on every street corner.  Perhaps more foolishly, I opted to rent an economy car.

My first day in the new office everyone shook their head at my impractical attire.  The second day, it began to snow – and a 20 minute return trip to my hotel expanded to a terrifying hour sliding on back country roads.  The third day, my boss called at 7:00 am.

“Don’t come in to work today,” she said.

Of course I asked why.

“The roads are terrible, the car you are driving is completely unsuitable for these conditions and the way you’re dressed, well, if you run into problems you could die of exposure.”

O-kay.  Happy to work from the hotel.  Let's hear it for a snow day just for me.

I should add here that on the fourth day I got a ride from a colleague accustomed to driving in snow – and on the fifth day, when I had decided I really couldn’t keep on being a chicken and was driving myself again, I passed that colleague on my way to work.  He was standing at the side of the road while a tow truck pulled his car out of a ditch.

Today, just like my mama taught me, I keep a blanket, shovel and kitty litter in my trunk all winter long.  And I did buy a new winter coat when I moved back up north.  But these precautions really aren’t necessary now when it comes to getting to work in the snow.  Unless my roof caves in, nothing’s going to prevent me from making the one-story trip from my bedroom to my office.  All in all, I’ve got to admit that’s a good thing.

However, some mornings when I wake up to big flakes of snow coming down and the sound of school closings on the radio, the kid in me has a different opinion about my close commute: 

“Darn.”

my cat is bored with me

It’s official.  I am home too much.  Even my cat is tired of having me around.  Granted, this is not the meet-me-at-the-door, come-running-every-time-I-open-a-can-of-Diet-Pepsi cat of my youth – Miss Kitty has never achieved that level of co-dependency – but in the old days she did at least make some effort to inhabit the same room I was in when I got home from work.  In fact, she spent enough time curled up next to my laptop that I ended up with a motherboard clogged up with cat hair.

Thanks to you, Miss Kitty, my computer now overheats at an alarming rate, yet you diss me unless it’s cold and you want a warm body (or better yet, a warm laptop) to snuggle up against.  A dog would never act like this.