From a fifteen-cent raise to a supervisor who thought being tall was a specialized skill, I’ve endured just about every kind of job evaluation imaginable. Here are the lessons I’ve learned about bad bosses, ridiculous expectations, and the fine art of covering your ass.
Corporate America has more in common with The Hunger Games than anyone wants to admit. Between the stampedes for free cake, coworkers willing to sacrifice each other, and management monitoring your every move, surviving the workday deserves its own victory tour.
I’ve never been cool. I read encyclopedias for fun, memorized Star Wars dialogue, and considered Shakespeare a kindred spirit. It took one spectacularly unpleasant encounter in high school to teach me that fitting in was overrated. The colorful vocabulary came naturally.
An evening babysitting our granddaughters involved a very demanding snack critic, a mysterious obsession with darkness, and a television show apparently called PJ Max. By bedtime, The Husband Dude and I were questioning everything we thought we knew about toddlers.
Taking your teenage son to a Judas Priest concert gives you a whole new perspective on heavy metal. Between an overzealous security search, a drunken dancing queen, and Rob Halford’s fabulous wardrobe, it was a family outing we won’t soon forget.
The Husband Dude insists he hates our cat, has an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure music documentaries, and communicates primarily in grunts, side-eye, and thumbs-up emojis. Somehow, we’ve managed to stay married. Here are the conversations to prove it.
Christmas tamales are a treasured family tradition. So naturally, when Peach and I started making them together, I managed to turn a perfectly lovely afternoon of cooking into a full-scale investigation involving twelve tamales and one missing body part.
All I wanted was to play the Virgin Mary in the fourth-grade Christmas program. Instead, I became a narrator, and the year before that, my father sent me onstage dressed as a reindeer with half a tree strapped to my head. Childhood theater was brutal.
I inherited my father’s smart mouth and colorful vocabulary. Then I became a mother and tried to set a better example. That worked beautifully until my three-year-old son learned his first complete sentence. Unfortunately, it involved two words Grandma absolutely did not approve of.
I’ve always hated making left turns, both on the road and in life. Then sixteen years of playing it safe came to a crashing halt, and I found myself facing the scariest intersection yet: starting over.
I went to see Joan Jett expecting a night of rock-and-roll rebellion. Instead, I got an usher helping me down the stairs, a suspiciously well-behaved crowd, and the horrifying realization that all those old people were my age.
Five conversations. Two very different people. One marriage involving Patrick Swayze, a twenty-cent gas discount, questionable communication skills, and a husband who believes in my writing career. Mostly.