Work Rants #3

So it is another beautiful and sunny day here in Vienna, just kidding, it is rainy and cr$$py and looks like the backdrop for a really bad hurricaine themed movie you would see late night on some women's channel with actors who look like the grandparents of the cool people they once played on tv in the 80's. I mean, i am just assuming that. It is not like i have ever been up late at night, insomniatic, gorging on puff pastry hors d'oeuvres which i found in the back of the freezer, for a party i never intended to have, but pretended to do so in front of cashier in the supermarket so she wouldn't think i was going to be eating them all by myself (more on that later in my hubs about my days as a chunky chick). Um, where was i?

Oh yeah, the weather... you get it, it is gray outside.

So, i am at work, doing my work thing, which requires me to be in contact with people from all over the world. That being said, i am going to allow for some slight braking on my rant speed, just enough to try and be a little understanding of the differnt social mores and customs of other cultures, but not too much understanding to let me hydroplane out of control into a cushy featherbed of apathy. Sooo...., keeping this in mind..

What the h(#$( is with men adjusting themselves anytime, anywhere, doing it blatantly.. dare i say, flagrantly.. before my very eyes? I mean, can we get an etiquette call on this one, please?

Ok.. i will try and get a little perspective on this. I know, i am woman and being as such i was born with, let's just say an "inny". This is in contrast to the male of our species was clearly (in most cases) born with an "outty". So i know, i cannot really understand the depths of what this means to have another appendage on my body. The closest i can come to for comparison, is perhaps the discomfort which i endure monthly when i am forced to use a super absorbent, extra large, hourglass shaped, winged, cushion like mass, which for all its adhesives and clamping abilities, still manages to move around constantly and make me feel as if i am straddling a log as i desperatly try to navigate upstream all day long. So i get it, "objects may shift during flight".

STILL... there are more subtle, more demure ways of handling this. I mean if i am feeling a perodic moment of discomfort at work, (and i don't have time to duck into the neares ladies' room ) , then i find refuge behind a water-cooler, a presentation easel, or i'll even use a strategically held binder and walk along "Never on a Sunday" like fashion until i am back in order.

Come on people! If i can make the effort, so can you.

There are some men, some who at least make an attempt of trying to be discreet, and to them, i say thank you. I thank you with every beat my heart and every electrical pulse of my optic nerve.

But to YOU (and you know who you are), who think it is perfectly acceptable to be standing in front of me, asking me advice on installing software on your laptop (which you feel necessary to mention to me ad nauseam was dragged with you all the way from office in Dushanbe), while you spend, what seems like an eternity, adjusting yourself in some akward game of bocce gone awry, to you i say STOP! For the love of all that is holy, just stop and save me from the imminment threat of my retinas spontaneously detatching.

I don't care what you have to do, just do it discreetly. Pretend to drop something on the floor, turn around and cough, throw down a hard core Plié like you are the Baryshnikov of 2011. I don't care how.. just don't stand there while talking to me, and play some intense game of tetherball and expect me to be all indifferent and ignore your writhing with the same nonchalance and sang-froid as if stood their watching a leaf falling from a tree. Good greif man, the tree is about to fall and your shouting TIMBER!

So in summation, i ask only in the interest of all women everywhere, please adjust yourself if you must, but try your best to hide it like a flask of jim beam at an AA meeting.

peace out!