Today I Made a Boo Boo at Work

The title of today’s post is but one more in an ever-increasing line of examples demonstrating that I am not mature enough be to working in a grown-up environment. (Some others include me having my own fist-bump with the UPS man and screaming loudly in the lobby when the doorman gets me into the elevato-LIFT!  Sorry, lift – last minute.) 

Today I did something I feel I have to share to deflate the bubble of awkward swelling in my head. Because at the moment, I feel a bit like you do when you’re on your own and you fall down in the street. There’s nobody with you to help you up and share in your misfortune, so you have to just furtively sneak back on your feet. People walking past can’t laugh at you, because let’s face it, it’s London; they wouldn’t stop if you were David Cameron (in nocturnal reptile form) standing in the middle of Westminster Bridge, shooting fire out of your eyes, screaming ‘desist in your futile pursuits humanfolk, the end is nigh!’, while flickering your black lizard-tongue Anthony Hopkins style over your next prey. So you can either be the weirdo who just stacked it in the road and hopes nobody saw, or the weirdo who is laughing wildly to themselves in public. You hope to at least catch the eye of someone who’s slightly amused, otherwise you just have to keep on walking, hiding your red face until you’re pretty sure everyone around you is a new stranger that didn’t see you trip 10 minutes ago.  Anyway, I digress.

So this morning, I’m leaving a voicemail for some important executive at some big investment firm. This guy doesn’t have an assistant, so it’s not my usual girl-to-girl ‘can our CEO come play with your managing director for an hour or so next month? No, of course he can come here, we would be happy to have him. They get on so well together after all, don’t they?’ Instead, I’m leaving a message directly for this actual man, and I’m probably getting ever so slightly tongue-tied. Anyway, I’m nearly at the end of my message. Leaving my contact details, almost home and dry. Just got to sign off and hang up. And what do I say?

‘bye bye’

Yes, ‘bye-bye’. Not the formal, sophisticated ‘goodbye’, or the quick, simple ‘bye’, both of which would have been fine. And not even the slightly twatty ‘bu-bye’ which, when not suffixed by ‘now’ or ‘darling’ or both of those, is passable. No. I hadn’t decided on a sign off, and while my brain was passing me the one syllable ‘bye’, my mouth had clearly prepared itself for the whole two syllables, and was unstoppable after the first. The result of which was that I put equal emphasis on both ‘bye’s, ending this train-wreck of a voicemail with an expression last used in the plural, voiced by Toyah Willcox and prefixed with the phrase ‘time for tubby-’

‘Uh-oh!’

So there’s my verbal stack in the street. And with it another name is added to this list of powerful New York businessmen who have probably stopped returning my company’s calls on my account. Unfortunately I couldn’t share it with my adult worker type ‘colleagues’ because they wouldn’t laugh. I’m therefore sharing it here.  Let it serve as further substantiation of my immaturity, awkwardness and whimsy which will one day earn me the official government classification ‘unfit for office’.

Although, while we’re on the subject of phrasing...

I have to deal every day with Americans using ridiculous lexical inventions like ‘FYI’, ‘going forward’, ‘diarize’ and ‘vaca’ without a hint of sarcasm in their tone. It’s hard for me to accept this and continue as if nothing absurd or laughable has just happened. Just saying. I feel like I’m in an episode of some naturalistic satirical* comedy like ‘Veep’ or ‘The Office’.  

*Is that an oxymoron? Comments please nerd-types.