Thursday, July 13, 2006

In Which Sleestak Uses An Old Joke To Sabotage His Career And Alienate His Employer

A True-ish Deli Tale

So I get called to the office and the Manager is in there along with the Union Representative...

Manager: "You are here because we received a complaint."

Me: "Hmm?"

Manager: "Yes. A co-worker is complaining about harassment."

Me: "You're kidding. From me."

Manager: "I am not."

Me: "So what supposedly happened?"

Manager: "When training a new-hire on how to prepare rotisserie chickens, you told her to just 'ram the chicken on the skewer through the hole'."

Me: "So? That's what you do. Those are the small chickens and the skewers are over-sized. There is nothing the least bit salacious in that."

Manager: "Well, she complained that what you said made her uncomfortable. You used a double-entendre."

Me: "Ridiculous. That's not at all a double-entendre. If you want a double-entendre, I'll give you one."

Silence.

Manager stares blankly.

Time stretches.


Manager: "Well?"

Me: "What?"

Manager: "You were going to cite an example of a double-entendre."

Me: "You are not smart enough to address this issue."
Being a goddamn working man who does not suffer goddamn fools I left and got back to goddamn work. Apparently the Union Rep with a degree was a bit smarter than the Manager with a degree and he must have explained everything by dumbing down the concepts, explaining just where the joke was and making things clear after I left, because the next day the cry-baby new-hire was sitting in the break room watching an instructional company video called 'Harassment In The Workplace'.

Fin

6 comments:

  1. Good story, but be careful you don't get "dooce'd"!

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  2. So, just to be clear- you weren't winking and making air quotations when you said to "ram the chicken on the skewer through the hole?"

    You've better impulse control than me, sir.

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  3. By the way- my Haleyitis, which I thought was in full remission, has returned thanks to you. I happened across "The Parent Trap" on cable the other day and was compelled to watch the whole thing. I'll be treating it with regular doses of vitamin C and "A-Team" reruns.

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  4. What a wonderful story. the happy ending brought a (manly) tear to my eye.

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  5. I do hope you said that in your best approximation of Comic Book Guy's voice.

    Regarding Ms. Mills, for me, it was Pollyanna. I was pretty sure I was going to marry her after I saw that as a child.

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  6. Personally I think they ruined all my incentive to go to work after they started weeding out the perpetrators of sexual harassment. I remember when I began my job at the bank, I was about 23, this was a lifetime ago, anyway, I was asked to do the pencil test......I passed, I was hired, luckily I also had a brain. Then they made us all watch "Sexual Harassment in The Work Place." But they explained that it was not a training film.....things went downhill from there, no jokes, no quick feels in the money vault......nothing. Work became work.......many men had to just quit, they weren't able to adapt to the new system. It was chaos in the workplace. When the smoke cleared all that was left were a few dried up old hags, a couple stick men, and a bible thumper or two. I never felt at home again. I finally drifted down to Los Angeles, and low and behold, went to work for a little Bank in the big city of Beverly Hills and found sexual harassment to be alive and well. It was like coming home after a long dry spell of being in the desert.

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