The more I write for work, the less I write for fun. Therefore, with three major projects within the last three weeks, there is no blog! But now I'm back, and the same as ever.
There has been a lot going on down here in good, old South Carolina over the last month. I have had more days where I go to bed physically and mentally exhausted from everything I had to do than I have in quite some time. Some mornings, it means I am the grouchiest person in the clinic; but most of the time I'm at least a little thankful.
One of the first interesting things I did this month was go to Civil Rights and Customer Service training. This is a fun little soiree that all federally-funded employees must attended every year, just to remind us that we can't deny services based on a client's protected classification; plus a little bit about making everyone happy. The same person gives the same lecture based on the same forty slides each year. It's quite thrilling. Now, you may think I'm being sarcastic when I say it's thrilling, but I promise I'm not. Okay, maybe a little, but not as much as I usually am.
This year, the training got cut from eight hours to four. I was over-the-moon ecstatic about that. Instead of fighting off sleep for seven hours, I only had to fight off three. It also meant that our instructor would be talking at a rapid pace, meaning we'd get through all the slides faster. After four years in college, I hate PowerPoint slides. I hate them. Really.
At one point in the training, it started to feel like some kind of stereotypical Southern church service. A few of the women are closer to menopause than others, so they were fanning themselves with the handouts. The speaker was dynamic and would often stir up the crowd with a few "You know what I mean!" statements. Every so often, she'd say something that everyone agreed with. The "amen row" was all over those statements. Every time they agreed with her, there were four or five women saying "AMEN!" in the row behind me. I spent more time laughing at them than paying attention to the lecture.
But the best part of the day was the video at the end. It was your typical fluff video: The stressed-out couple with a baby walks up to the airline counter and is VERY ANGRY that their bags are lost. Oh no! The bags are in France!! How will the angry wife ever get her bridesmaid's dress in time for the wedding?! Lucky for the couple, super-cheerful customer service lady saves the day.
Throughout the video, there were different scenarios presented, to show us how we could approach different situations and respond to them appropriately. One of the mock situations was someone swearing at us. Instead of hearing the bad words, we were supposed to take away their negative connotation by replacing them with a "nice" word, like pumpkin.
Seriously. The video literally had the male character talking about "what kind of pumpkin employees are you?" I lost it at this point. I was way past taking any of this seriously anyways, and the idea of letting my clients talk about their "pumpkin boyfriend" and their "piece of pumpkin" stroller was too much. Along with the Amen Crew, I laughed until I cried. It was even better when we got back to the clinic that day. It didn't matter what was happening, what was being said, or what we felt like. Everything was pumpkin. "Can you hand me that, pumpkin?" "Where is my pumpkin pen?" Sometimes we are mature professionals, and sometimes we are little kids who need controlled.
I will say though, the pumpkin method has its perks. I cannot stand it when people swear just for the sake of swearing, so when I hear them running their mouths about whatever and inserting a swear word every other line, all I hear is pumpkin. At that point, I laugh at them even more than I normally would.
Well, the fun writing is over, so it's back to the work writing. No complaints though, work writing pays well!
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