Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Wednesday Mutterings...

-OR-
What Happens When I have FAR TOO MUCH Caffeine in the Morning

So as the final initiation/right of passage for my company, we get invited to a "coffee chat" with the CEO. All together we were 11 adults in the room. Part of the protocol was to introduce ourselves and explain how we got here (to our positions, not our life stories or anything).

Right, so unfortunately we hit the magic number for my utter unease. 11 strangers who are all adults and all have to listen (and judge) how intelligent/witty/stupid you sound is just the limit for me. Yes, this is me the former teacher. I can stand in a room of any number of students (my largest class EVER was the time I subbed for a high school Spanish teacher, 68 students, 1.5 hr. lab classes, one week; such fun!--REALLY!), but peers? Adults? Coworkers? And I have to say something about me? I'd rather be tied to a tree and shot in the foot.

What makes this more bizarre is the fact that once the next magical number of adults is reaches...say about 65? I'm fine. 63? God I will cry. And actually I did, and best yet? It was caught on tape. I'm thinking the day they made us introduce ourselves in my Master's program at Stanford. Yet, when called upon to introduce myself to a school's-worth of middle school personnel (teachers, admin, facilities, etc., et. al./more than 70) in Hawai'i? Easy-peazy.

This morning I was so nervous I could hear it in my voice...that awful nervous wavering? It shot color into my cheeks faster than a Cuba Libre, which then brought on the sweating and my thoughts? The words and phrases I had gone over as we were sipping coffee and gathering baked goods and mingling with the others (god I hate mingling, it always makes me down and refill whatever drink--coffee in this case--that I have in my hand), fell away and oh, lord, what did I just say? And why can't I make my mouth stop moving? If I don't shut up soon the freak out will be soon hit me full force and I will lose it!

Fun times.

So I don't know what I said, but they chuckled and nodded and smiled. So either I wowed them with something funny, or they felt really really sorry for me and were so ecstatically happy it wasn't them babbling incessantly in front of the CEO.

Happy Wednesday!

2 comments:

Bezzie said...

"Hi, my name is Tactless and I work in the Blahbedy Blah Department."

The rest of the room in chorus: "Hi Tactless!"

The first thing I thought when you said you had to explain how you got to your positions--is I wonder if anyone slept their way to the top?? That would have been interesting.

Peers are worse than pimply kids hands down. Plus after 9 mos, you usually don't have to deal with those kids. You've got potential years of working with your peers.

Anonymous said...

I hate mingling. Small talk is hard and often pointless. Glad you made it through okay!