Workplace Indignities

Perhaps you're like me and sometimes find yourself day dreaming of being flawlessly competent at work. I like to picture myself as that woman who strides into a room and can inspire, by virtue of her posture alone, respect and a little awe. Unflappable, dignified, self-assured -- the woman who needs only a tense moment of deliberation to conjure the right answer to any crisis.

Alas, I am not her. I am in a galaxy far, far away from her. I am the woman who hits the door jamb with her shoulder on the way into a room. I am that woman who breaks out in a sweat at the approach of conflict. When it comes to the workplace, I am a bumbling ball of moron tax. I am Don Knotts.

Here are a few instances:

1. I have a black dress that has a side zipper that begins just below my armpit and ends at my hip. Today, I wore that dress to work, but forgot to close the zipper. When I finally noticed and zipped it up, my manager commented, "Oh, I thought you had decided to wear a very daring dress today." Shudder.

2. When I was an intern at a law firm, I called one of the head partners at the firm to ask a simple question. The partner didn't answer, and I was directed to voicemail. I started to talk, but stuttered, so I pressed a button to scuttle and re-record my message. Instead, the button I pressed sent my garbled message as-is to the partner. The partner laughed at me a few weeks later.

3. At the end of a job interview, I walked over to the coatrack to put on my coat and retrieve my purse. Unbeknownst to me, the interviewer followed behind me to walk me out. When I swung my purse over my shoulder, I hit her with my purse...in the face.

4. I overflowed a toilet at work that I did not realize was malfunctioning. I don't need to say more. It was disgusting and horrifying.

5. One summer, I interned at a posh magazine company. Part of my duties was to relieve the receptionist during lunch; however, the phone was a complex machine with numerous lines and extensions and I had difficulty transferring calls to the right place. One day, my father called me at the office just as another call came in. I attempted to put my father on hold, but accidentally transferred him to the editor-in-chief. The editor-in-chief was a man of such reserved and imposing eminence that you wondered if there really could be a Priory of Sion. According to my father, the conversation went like this:

Scary Editor Guy: "Hello, this is Scary Editor Guy."
My dad: "Yah, where's Wendy? Can I talk to Wendy?"
Scary Editor Guy: "Excuse me, Sir. I'm afraid, I don't know to whom you are referring."
My dad: "My daughter? She's the one that works in your office for no pay."
Scary Editor Guy: "Sir, I don't understand."
My dad: "Hello, Wendy? Wendy?"

My dad assured me that he repeated my name several times to the editor. "Yah, sure, he knows your name now. You can thank your dad for that."