Let's Give Me Something To Blog About

The large pear-shaped woman who sits next to me sometimes does stereotypical secretarial things that give us a bad reputation. Like this morning, when she was using nail-polish remover and then filing her nails. At her desk. During working hours. Then there's yesterday afternoon when she was on a personal call for over an hour. She has an adult daughter with one of those stripper names like Brittany or Tiffany or something who lives in D.C. She's very loud on the phone, so I couldn't help but hear most of her conversation. Ever wonder what large pear-shaped middle aged women talk about with their adult daughters? Wonder no more, my friends, because I wrote it down!

In order:
clam chowder (I wonder if she was referring to Manhattan or New England)
fungus
chocolate
miscarriage
cigars
a graduation and reception (twice, but I'm not clear if two people graduated or one person's graduation was discussed twice)
Paris street scenes
Facebook
Costco
and, last but certainly not least, the funniest thing I've heard since working here: "Raquel is on the tape, and boy did she have a lot of hair!"

Why I Should Move To D.C. Immediately

Next to me sits an older, large, pear-shaped woman Joan. She has at least one grown child, and is single "by choice" she told me today. Joan was talking to the H.R. woman casually, and they were brainstorming baby names for the H.R. woman. Who is not pregnant. And, in my opinion, they were picking horribly overused names and gushing over them as if they were discovering them for the first time.

Anyway, at one point they looked over at me and said something about how silly that is, what with nobody even trying to get pregnant. I laughed and told them despite not having a boyfriend I've already planned my wedding.

Later Joan turned to me, and told me that if I ever wanted to get married, the first step would be moving out of San Francisco. Why? Because of "the gays." Apparently, they're everywhere here. Joan's daughter met the guy she married when she lived in D.C. The fact that the daughter met him on Match.com didn't sink in with Joan.

I am to move to D.C. immediately. Because D.C. is the center of everything. The national headquarters of numerous companies are there. A lot of "exciting things" that Joan didn't specify, happen in D.C. There are so many colleges there, and very wholesome young men.

Peoples? I have zero interest in moving to D.C. I'm not that interested in politics. And although I am attracted to the preppy sort you can find in D.C., there are some preppies here in S.F. And, I'm not married to the preppy type either. I could totally marry a guy who had a tattoo. Not on his face or anything, but a half-sleeve or something would be fine.

Joan would not shut the fuck up about how important it was for me to move. It seemed, from listening to Joan, that my most important goal in life should be to find a husband. Immediately. By packing up and moving to D.C.

What I thought was interesting was that just yesterday, Joan was telling me all about her sister, who also lives in the area, is also a legal secretary, and happens to be looking for a job. Surely she couldn't really have thought she'd talk me into moving that quickly so as to get her sister into my job.

The other weird thing about Joan was that she tried to tell me, presenting it as just trying to be helpful of course, that my outfit today was inappropriate. I was wearing cordoroy gray pants, a green sweater, and black loafers. Joan kept telling me that cordoroy pants were not allowed at this firm. She even went to the extreme of looking up the dress code, where all she found was that demin of any kind is unacceptable, which I knew.

Joan then tried to tell me that the pants I was wearing could be considered cordoroy jeans, and thus, unacceptable. Okay, let's break it down for the slow people. Isn't the definition of jeans that they're made out of denim? Denim is a material. Isn't cordoroy a material? A different material than denim? Thus, isn't cordoroy NOT denim and thus not banned based on the dress code prohibiting jeans?

Yeah. So Joan is weird. And I'm not moving to D.C.