My Cuticle

Sitting in the salon today-- listening to the tunes and chatter-- I heard a song and it reminded me of something that happened not so long ago. It made me laugh and probably made the poor stylist a little bit nervous about just who she had sitting in her chair with the head full of tin foil.

Since I'm no longer worried about getting fired by a certain employer, I feel much more free to tell this story on myself. I probably should keep quiet about it still, but, as you'll see from the story I'm about to tell, I'm sometimes prone to make impetuous decisions that I later regret.

So, here's what happened:

Most days at the office consisted of pretty much the same thing. Lots of sitting, lots of staring at a computer screen, lots of mouse clicking. If a person didn't take a few minutes every now and then to just be silly, all of the monotony could potentially cause permanent damage. We knew this because we happened to share space with a poor girl who most certainly had crossed over into that frightening territory and now did nothing but spin around in her chair while applying makeup and divulging waaayyyy too much personal information about herself to practical strangers.

So, on one particularly heinous day at the end of a particularly heinous week, Hallie (a co-worker, and all around awesome lady, who has also left this particular employer) decided that we needed a fun break from the drudgery. So, inspired by the online parody "My Cubicle", she concocted a contest where each of us (there were about six, at the time) would write our own version-- Weird Al style-- to the tune of the song "You're Beautiful".

We feverishy jumped into action with a renewed vigor we hadn't seen in many months. Pens were flying, sweat beads forming. Laughter could be heard intermittantly, as each person re-read a particularly clever line they had composed. Her plan had worked. We were alive again!

After fifteen minutes all submissions had to be turned in for consideration. I typed mine up for efficiency's sake. It would take at least 20 minutes for anyone to even read my handwriting, so typing was definitely the way to go, right? Well.. this is the beginning of the "things I would later regret" portion of the story.

My entry would be titled "My Cuticle" and would include many inside jokes about "fungus toe" and other unfortunate digit maladies. After completing a particularly humorous (I thought) stanza about pulling out all of my hair and putting it back on with glue (something I imagined our chair spinning co-worker might have tried before), I quickly sent my masterpiece to Hallie's computer, cc'ing the other competitors. Or so I thought......

But no. I had actually sent my ode to office boredom and insanity to a different email list. One containing many many people who had absolutely no idea about our afternoon diversion, one including the managing attorneys of the case we were trying hard to not think about.

Heads started popping up from behind computer screens. I kind of remember someone saying, "Michelle, did you know that you sent that to Mr. so and so?"

I stood up. I turned green.

"What's wrong?" Hallie asked.

"I just got myself fired." I replied, not believing what I had just done.

"Recall!" "Recall!" someone yelled across the room.

"What????" "I don't know how?" "What do I do???"

There was screaming. There was scrambling. Finally, someone with much more Outlook prowess dashed to my computer and recalled the message.

Had they read it? Had they seen the incomprehensible toe fungus ramblings with my name as the sender? How was I going to explain this to my husband? How was I going to explain this to my next employer when they asked that inevitable "why did you leave your last job" question. What had I done!!!!!

God was kind to save me from my own stupidity and the emails sent to the big cheeses were recalled before (supposedly) being read. I was not fired.

And I'm pretty sure I won the contest! ;)

See, these are the types of co-workers and friends that made that place tolerable and that I'm really going to miss. They helped me out when I needed help. They made me laugh when I needed a laugh.

Thanks guys! You Rock!