2.16.2006


No time for love, Dr. Jones.

Haven't had time to read anything but work stuff this week, and so there's nothing much to write about reading this past week. I can't really get into work stuff, for proprietary reasons, but I can say that if all goes well with some interviews tomorrow, I'll be joining the Home Depot project in Atlanta and that will go for who knows how long. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I am sure its a thing. For right now. It may turn out to be no(-)thing.

In the meantime, they have us in a really ridiculous office at the current client. Some kind of over-flow office for VPs who are usually traveling or something. Stocked with drinks and complete with a private bathroom. No complaints.

Thing with the bathroom is that apparently certain people are accustomed to the idea of sneaking into that office when its empty, to use the private loo. So, a few times a day, I'll be sitting there, perhaps alone, perhaps with my manager (we sometimes share the desk when its crowded, which is fine, because the desk is huge and we're at opposite sides)...and someone moseying down the hallway very nearly walks right into the office. Then they stop shortly in surprise, then try to keep walking past the office to the entrance to the actual bathrooms for the general employee populace, just past our office, trying vainly to pretend they weren't on the sneak for a private bathroom escape.

Some of the regulars have started getting wise to the fact that we're regularly there, and so they have a new technique - they pass the office on a slow stroll, but their head is turned slightly so as to guarantee them a full glance into the office to see if anyone is there. Which, I can only assume, affords them the full opportunity to turn on a heel and sneak into the sacred toilet room in the case that the office is unoccupied. These reconnaissance walk-bys occur more frequently towards the end of the day, when hopes are that we've left for the day (we stay later than most people there, on average).

Tonight, though, I got a special visitor.

So I'm sitting here with the door closed, because I had just gotten off an internal call with my career counselor, and all of a sudden this lady just barges right in. I should have pretended I was on the phone so that she would leave, but instead I stare look at her like "What the crap are you doing in here?" - I know this is no one's office in particular, and you would think that someone sees a closed office door on with the light shining out under the crack at the bottom, and would at least have the sense to knock.

Well, when you don't have the sense to knock on a closed door, you do funny things. Like, for instance, the next thing she did. She proceeds to just walk into the freakin bathroom in the office like I wasn't even sitting there 5 feet from the door. At this point I really can't help myself - I'm staring at her so hard, she actually stops to introduce herself, like me listening to her pee in the quiet of the evening will be tempered by the fact that we've shook hands seconds prior.

Turns out she's a pretty high-up VP at the company (I knew from her name) - someone who ironically would never have paid me the time of day when I actually worked at the client (I was employed there before coming to Accenture). Instead, we had a brief conversation about what I was doing there. I gave her my "elevator speech," which is an internal term we use for briefly recapping our value-adding purpose for being there at the client. I nailed it, and she even complemented me on it, and then she closed the door to the bathroom, and, I can only assume, proceeded to do whatever deeds she went there to do in the first place.

I don't know, I faked a call on my cell phone and ran out of there faster than Bode Miller could get DQ'd in the Olympics.

That's all. Now its home and back to work.

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