Is It Art In Here Or Is It Just Me?

Pam: Archie’s done it again. He makes me nuts!

Ann: What’d your boss do now?

Pam: We have a very important client. She’s a nice, independently wealthy woman who offered to give us a personal tour of a private museum she’d established. I didn’t want to appear entirely ignorant so, since Archie had been there before, I asked him what kind of museum it was.

Ann: Let me guess… he didn’t even know.

Pam: No. He knew it was a western art museum. That made sense since it’s in a western state. So I spent a month studying up on western art.

Ann: How much can there be on western art?

Pam: A lot! I memorized everything there is to know about Remington statues and paintings, the entire Russell collection. I could immediately distinguish a Bierstadt landscape from a Moran. I knew the pre-civil war art of Catlin, Bodmer, Miller, and Kane. I learned everything I could find on even relatively unknown late nineteenth century artists such as Gaul and Browne. And I was prepared to speak intelligently on the action and suspense in the works of Scheyyogel and Berninhaus.

Ann: I’d think you get points for just pronouncing Scheyyogel and Berninhaus! So you must have really impressed your client.

Pam: Not at all.

Ann: But you knew so much about western art!

Pam: Yeah, too bad it was a museum dedicated to wildlife art. I walked in and at first glance it seemed right. But fairly quickly it dawned on me that this was not a western art museum at all. I muddled through the tour mostly asking questions. At one point I was able to squeeze in a comment that one piece reminded me of the action you see in the western works of Berninhaus.

Ann: That must have impressed her, huh?

Pam: No, she just said, “Who?”

Ann: Well there you go…she didn’t know anything about western art and you didn’t know anything about wildlife art. So you’re even.

Pam: In the meantime I have all this knowledge about western art running around in my head for no reason. What am I supposed to do with that?

Ann: I think you should get even with Archie. Take him to a western art museum and tell him absolutely everything you know. That’ll teach him!

Obvious Or Oblivious

Ann: Yesterday, I spent my usual Sunday afternoon strolling through the bookstore. I ran across a book that I know was intended to be helpful in teaching us worker bees how to get a grip on our financial lives.

Pam: Did you buy it?

Ann: No. I read the begininning of the first chapter which listed three secrets to increasing wealth. The first one was… I’m not making this up… ‘Earn more than you spend’. To be honest I can’t even remember the other two because I was laughing so hard. I figured spending money on the book went against the book’s own advice so I left it for someone who needed to buy some common sense.

Pam: Common sense isn’t so common anymore. A couple of hours ago I put new shoe laces in my sneakers before Bret and I went walking. I kid you not, there were written instructions on the back of the shoe lace package with directions on how to tie your shoes. Not how to lace them, how to tie them!

Ann: I guess the shoelace people haven’t figured out that anyone who’s mastered reading and following directions probably has blown right past the complex art of shoe tying.

Pam: I don’t know. Now that I think about it, a lot of my professors wore loafers.

Ann: Some folks just don’t get it. But I’m more annoyed by people who have a keen sense of the obvious and feel compelled to educate the rest of us. I was having a difficult time getting through to tech support at work the other day. I’d dial and then there was just a click and silence. I wasn’t hearing it ring or getting a busy signal or anything. When my boss asked why I hadn’t spoken to them, I explained the problem and she said, “Well, you have to dial the right numbers in the right order.”

Pam: Really!? I thought as long as you used all the numbers, the order didn’t really matter! What was she thinking? But bosses are like that. Archie will stand behind me and tell me my own address as I fill in the blanks of an online order form!

Ann: You’ve said he can really micromanage but that’s over the top. Maybe it’s his subtle way of reminding you ‘he knows where you live’. Insert evil laugh here.

Pam: Sometimes he says things that make me wonder why he pays me so much if he thinks I’m such an idiot. I told him I was thinking of flying Ross back to school this year instead of driving for two days in the van. Archie tells me, “Well, you’re going to have to ship his desk and bed and everything. You can’t just take that stuff with you on the airplane you know.”

Ann: What’d you say to that?

Pam: I told him I was glad he was in the office that day because when he wasn’t there I just stumbled around in the dark bumping into walls.

Ann: Well, he’s the master of the obvious. But if there was an award for the oblivious, I know who I’d give it to. I was watching the news and they showed a story of a woman’s boyfriend who killed his love rival, the woman’s other boyfriend. The TV reporter on the scene actually asked the woman, “So will the events of tonight affect your decision on which man you end up choosing?”

Dressed For Success

Pam: You won’t believe what happened at work today. If it had happened to someone else, I’d have thought it was really funny.

Ann: Wasn’t this morning when you had that important client jetting in for your big presentation?

Pam: Yeah, but I’m afraid we got off on the wrong foot. We went to the private jet terminal and were waiting when he arrived. This guy’s real proud of his organization’s new, super-fast business jet, so we were prepared to properly ohhh and ahhh over it.

Ann: I don’t think I’d have to prepare to ohhh and ahhh over one of those luxury jets. I’m pretty sure that reaction would come spontaneously.

Pam: It really was absolutely gorgeous and, even though it had just stopped raining, the plane was literally gleaming as it taxied up. The pilot opened the door, lowered the steps, and our client emerged, gleaming almost as much as the airplane.

Ann: Did you get to check out the inside?

Pam: I was really hoping he’d ask us. We greeted him and he showed us around the outside, pointing out the special features. Then he told us he was expecting an important call but that he’d be happy to show us the interior while he waited.

Ann: Pretty cool. I’d have loved to see it too. Was it amazing?

Pam: It really was. Since my shoes were wet and dirty from walking around outside of the jet, I stepped out of them as I climbed on board. When I glanced back, I was glad to see my boss, Archie, had done the same. Then our client also kicked off his shoes, climbed onboard, and gave us the tour.

After a few minutes, the client’s important call came, so he stepped off the plane, into his shoes, and walked towards the terminal. I followed him off the plane, stepped into my shoes and then noticed something strange. The two remaining men’s shoes on the ground didn’t match each other. One was brown and one was black.

Ann: Oh no! Your client put on two different shoes! How on earth were you going to tell him that without embarrassing him?

Pam: That’s what I was thinking. Archie was still on the plane checking out the cockpit, so I lingered near the aircraft door trying desperately to think of a delicate way to point out to this brilliant, wealthy man that he’d just done something so dumb.

Ann: I’d probably pretend I didn’t notice. How’d you handle it?

Pam: I was still trying to figure that out, when the guy finished his call, wandered back over, and I looked down to see that he was wearing two matching shoes.

Ann: What!? His shoes matched each other?


Pam: Then I realized the awful truth. It wasn’t a matter of mixed pairs. Archie must have arrived wearing two different shoes! So I jumped in front of the mismatched pair and tried to distract the client.

Ann: So much for making a good impression! Did he notice?

Pam: No, he didn’t. I diverted his attention by pointing up and asking the significance of the tail number. Then I pointed at the paint job and asked who selected the beautiful colors. By slowly walking to the other side of the airplane asking questions the whole way, I was able to lure him away from the mismatched shoes to the opposite side of the plane.

Ann: Good save. Maybe once they were back on Archie’s feet, no one would notice.

Pam: That’s exactly what I was thinking. So the client and I are on the opposite side of the plane when I see through the windows that Archie is climbing out.

Ann: Did he even notice?

Pam: Oh yeah! With loud laughter and a booming voice Archie announces, “Well look at that! I’m wearing two different shoes!”
Ann: So much for being discreet! How did the client react?

Pam: He just laughed politely. Then Archie realized he probably should have kept it to himself and got a little nervous and tried to make it better with a joke.

Ann: That’s always a good approach.

Pam: Usually, but in this case things went from bad to worse. Archie said, “Well, I guess these things are going to happen when you dress in a dark closet hiding from the husband!”

Ann: Did he really!?

Pam: He did alright. Oh, and by the way, did I mention the client is one of the country’s leading televangelists?

Ann: Oh no! Do you think it blew the deal?

Pam: Let’s just put it this way…I don’t think we should hold our breath waiting for a ride on that jet.

What The Heck Is Smart Casual?

Pam: I’ve really had some good laughs with the emails that were flying around at work last week. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Ann: Some of those jokes that get forwarded to everyone?

Pam: No. One of our vendors offered six of the guys in the office an all expense paid trip to the Indy 500 this past weekend. It was for transportation, hotels, meals, parties, golf, limos, and a luxury suite at the race…the whole works.

Ann: Talk about a real guy’s getaway!

Pam: Actually the week before they left I was beginning to wonder whether it was a guy’s getaway or a ‘ladies retreat’. I was the point of contact for the vendor so I forwarded all the guys the detailed agenda for the trip. There was a cocktail reception on the evening they arrived, a welcome breakfast the next day, then golf, followed by an authentic Moroccan dinner, and then on the final day, the race itself.

Ann: Wow. Sounds like fun.

Pam: Since the information came to me, I was on the email distribution list and saw everything that went back and forth between all the guys at my office. It was hysterical.

Ann: What? Let me guess…they were coordinating what to wear each day.

Pam: You’re kidding, but that’s exactly what was going on! I intentionally stayed out of the discussion simply for the entertainment the whole thing was providing. Can you imagine six grown men trying to decide what the heck they were supposed to wear when the invitation said, “Dress for Saturday night is ‘smart casual’ but we encourage you to have fun with the Moroccan theme as you select your attire”.

Ann: Heck, I’m not sure I know what that means.


Pam: They went back and forth about what exactly constitutes ‘smart casual’ and they had opinions from “casual means jeans” to “we’ll be sitting on pillows on the floor so we should wear our stretchy sweats”. One guy even said, “They mean dress like a professor.”

Ann: That’s too funny! Just like a man not to ask for directions.

Pam: They finally did email the vendor’s rep to get clarification but they were told that the attire for that evening had been changed from ‘smart casual’ to ‘business casual’. Then they went back and forth as to whether that was a step up or a step down.

Ann: Certainly they know what business casual means.

Pam: They used to. But they had confused themselves so thoroughly at this point they didn’t know their own names. One email actually said, “So if we were going smart casual and then downgraded, does that mean we're dressing ‘dumb casual’ now?”


Ann: So what’d they do? Rent hand-embroidered sheik’s robes for each of them?

Pam: I think they would have if they thought it would solve the dilemma.

Ann: Seriously, what’d they do?

Pam: The final email I saw came from the guy in our office who arranged the flights and stuff. It had the subject line of ‘Indy trip attire revisited (again—well actually—still)’. It said:

Travel Friday: Whatever! Just no flip flops or cargo pants. We’ll change at the hotel. (I know we’re getting up at three in the morning but shower anyway because I’m sitting next to you guys on the plane!)

Friday night reception: Button shirt, sport coat, slacks, dress shoes and belt. (Bob, do not wear a tie and make us all look bad. We don’t care what your wife says!)

Saturday golf: Nice golf clothes—shorts if hot and pants if cold. (Joe, DO NOT wear your brother’s shirt from our vendor’s big competitor. It’s not funny to insult our hosts.)

Saturday night Moroccan dinner: This is the final, final word! We are wearing nice, dark colored polo shirts and khaki pants with brown shoes and belts. (Jeff, you stole that Pizza Hut table cloth for nothing because we gave up the whole sheik thing while you were out sick.)

Sunday (Race Day): We all agree it’s a car race after all. But we’re being entertained in the luxury suite. So we’re thinking we should look really good but not like we’re trying. So try to look like a really rich guy on his day off.

Ann: I wonder how the heck they interpreted that one.

Pam: Hey, it was the last day of the trip. I figured they’d just wear whatever they found in the bottom of their suitcase that was relatively clean.

Ann: So what did they wear?

Pam: Every last one of them showed up wearing the promotional stuff that the host vendor gave them on their first day there.

Ann: Well at least they looked like a team!

Driving Everyone Mad

Pam: All of us at the office went out to lunch today. We took my boss, Archie’s car and I swear his driving sends me off the deep end!

Ann: Confucius say…man who drives like hell, bound to get there.

Pam: By the time we finally made it back to the office, that’s exactly where I wanted to tell him to go. He just won’t slow down no matter how anyone else in the car feels about it.

Ann: He knows he drives like a madman. I was talking to him about my low fat diet and he told me, “I drive way too fast to worry about my cholesterol killing me.”

Pam: He thinks everyone going slower than him is an idiot and the rare guy going faster than him is a maniac. He actually told us he never uses his turn signals because they only broadcast your next move in the road battle.


Ann: Maybe he figures the probability of being involved in a wreck is directly proportional to the time spent on the road. By driving really fast, he’s actually decreasing the chance of getting hurt.

Pam: Whose side are you on anyway? I should have known he was an aggressive driver when I first met him. I was updating the employee records and I asked him for his driver’s license to make a copy for his file. When I commented that he looked pretty angry in his license photo, he said that it was appropriate since that’s how he looks whenever he gets pulled over. In his picture he actually looked like he was cussing.

Ann: They say you never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.


Pam: He gets pretty mad. Once when we were on our way back from a meeting, he was driving his usual thirty miles an hour over the speed limit. Then he started complaining about the ‘woman driver’ in the next lane who was checking her makeup in the rearview mirror. But the whole time he went on and on about how she needs to pay attention to the road, he checked his phone for messages, poured coffee from cup to cup to cool it, and even moved a key from one key ring to another.

Ann: So just don’t ride with him anymore if he makes you that nervous.

Pam: Gas costs so much now I’m better off risking the medical bills. Besides, I got my revenge.

Ann: Oh no. What’d you do?

Pam: As I left the office I wrote a little warning to the other drivers in the dust on the back of his car. On one side I wrote “Caution: I drive like you do” and on the other I wrote, “Beware! I’m THAT guy”.

Ann: And you thought gas was expensive when you were employed!

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?

Pam: I just found out I’m headed with my boss, Archie, to New Orleans for a business meeting. He’s less than thrilled.

Ann: I thought he enjoyed traveling with you.

Pam: Generally he does, but remember, our last experience in New Orleans was a bit bizarre for him.

Ann: I don’t think I’ve heard this story.

Pam: No? Well, we got to town several hours before our meeting and checked into our rooms at a swanky downtown hotel. We’d picked it to impress our customers since this was our first meeting with them. We agreed to get out of our travel clothes, dress for the meeting, and meet in the lobby in plenty of time to get to the restaurant to beat our clients there.

Ann: So you were doing a whole dog and pony show, huh?

Pam: We were trying to sell them on a four million dollar project. So that’d be a yes.

So I met Archie in the lobby dressed to the nines for this fancy dinner out in the French Quarter. He was pleased I was early and the valet brought the car around very quickly. By the time we were headed toward the restaurant just a few blocks away, we realized we had about an hour to kill.

Well you know I love old graveyards and we passed the historic St. Louis Cemetery Number One right in the middle of downtown.

Ann: Ah, what better way to kill time than in a graveyard? Aren’t all the graves above ground in mausoleums there?

Pam: Right. It filled about a quarter of a city block and was surrounded by a tall stone wall with a big black wrought iron gate. The statuary looked amazing and I loved the contrast of the old marble crypts against the modern glass high rises. So I convinced Archie to stop and let me take a few photos.

Ann: You and that camera! Was it spooky dark yet?

Pam: Oh no. This was still pretty early in the evening and it was summer so we had hours of daylight left.

So we strolled into the walled cemetery and began to walk around oo-ing and ah-ing at the dates and carvings on the huge mausoleums. Several of them were being restored and there were piles of bricks in big fifty-gallon barrels. I took at least four dozen photos of the old gravesites with the huge glass buildings in the background.

Ann: Sounds pretty cool. Did you lose track of time?

Pam: Actually I was really watching the time because I knew Archie wouldn’t want to cut it close. So after about twenty minutes we headed back for the car. But when we got back to the main gate where we’d entered, it was closed and had a big padlock around it.

Ann: You were locked in!?

Pam: Yep. We walked quickly around the entire inside perimeter wall of the small cemetery looking for another gate and yelling for the caretaker the whole way thinking he might still be nearby. But there was no other break in the high wall.

Ann: Wow. You’d think they’d check that it was empty before they locked it up for the night!

Pam: Maybe he called out and we didn’t hear him. I’m not sure what happened.

So we go back to the gate and try to figure out how to get out. People walking by realized we were locked in and a crowd started to gather. There were a lot of suggestions about who we should call or if we could squeeze between the bars—impossible. A lady with a thick Brooklyn accent told us, “Don’t worry honey, we’ll bring you salami sandwiches and cigarettes! You’ll survive until morning.”

Ann: How funny! And embarrassing…

Pam: I thought it was funny and I told the lady not to forget the scotch. I kept joking around with her but Archie was just plain mad. The longer we stood there with the crowd growing, the angrier he became. And worst of all, we were worried about missing our big meeting with the clients.

Ann: At least you’d have a good story to tell if you finally made it to the restaurant.

Pam: Eventually we used all our might to roll one of the big construction barrels over to the gate. I handed my camera through the bars to the lady from Brooklyn so it wouldn’t get damaged and Archie was not amused when I encouraged her to take pictures. She had a blast documenting our escape as we climbed on top of the wall and had some of the more burley by-standers help us jump down on the other side.

Ann: And you, dressed in a skirt and heels!

Pam: Yep. What did I care? I was never going to see these people again. But Archie was embarrassed and kept saying he was going to hurt his knees when he jumped. But the guys on the outside caught him and lowered him gently, so he was fine.

Ann: So did you make it to your meeting on time?

Pam: We were cutting it close, so Archie decided to give the clients a call while I got my camera back from our new friend, the photographer. She and I were admiring her capture of our great escape when her cell phone rang and she said, “Oh my gosh! This is the guy I am supposed to meet for dinner.”

Ann: No way!

Pam: Yep. When Archie said into his phone, “You’ll never believe what happened to us!” my new friend closed her cell phone, walked over to Archie, shook his hand, and said, “Oh yes I would!”