Meow, Right?

Lots of awesome stuff happens at the office. I'm especially thankful for the verbal magic.

In cubes, coworkers are often heard and not seen. The disembodied voices floating over my cube walls do all kinds of amazing things.

One guy sings in the morning. At first I thought he just liked to listen to Seal to get pumped up for his sales calls, but it turns out he also enjoys an occasional early morning Keane Karaoke session from time to time.

Frankly this impresses me. That's a level of self-consciousness I still haven't surpassed, and this guy makes it obvious to me by being comfortable enough with himself to have a little Mariah moment in the mornings.

But self-confidence can go too far. And it has: meowing at the office ought to be a no-no. Well, purring at the office.

Not a coworker.

I heard another body-less voice on a phone conversation the other day, and suddenly it made a meowing/purring/crazy noise.

Not a funny meow, but a more dubious one. Naughty.

I almost didn't even acknowledge it, but then Candice popped up on my screen with a big, "NO. GROSS."

Candice is the only other female within a meow's throw of my desk, and judging by her covert instant message, she was not happy about hearing what ought to spring exclusively from cute kittens. Or maybe also Super Troopers.

I've heard that men, left to their own devices, often revert to more caveman-like behavior. B works out on a platform in the Gulf of Mexico, and he says there are plenty of farts, fart jokes, and "male conversations" (probably about farts, or hookers and farts).

This he attributes to the lack of female presence and says it's reminiscent of his days in the Navy.

Though this is kind of like the "If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there..."

But still I believe it. Obviously I can't say I've been around men when no women are present, but I've seen evidence of the all-male-situation effects.

Evidence: B lived in a house of all guys in college, where many women certainly visited (often), but did not actually live. There was cinder block furniture. Dishes were stored in the sink, and dirty photos in the kitchen drawers. Now I prefer to keep my dishes in the drawers and my porn in a more private place, but this is an all-male environment, remember?

Anyway, back to the office. My suspicions are that most of the guys at our office sometimes forget about us ladies. We aren't numerous, but we are still there. So please, don't purr into the phone. Especially around phrases like, "Ooh...that sounds hot," and "That's what she said."

Bleh.

Of course, while we're talking office lingo, let's go ahead and deal with the other offenders. Right?

You know this guy. His conversation filler is the "right?" question. Overused and really crazy-sounding, I do believe that "right?" is the over-30 crowd's "like".

Which means that in 2.5 years, I'll quit saying "like" every 2 seconds and switch over to this one. Aw. And this is what I'll sounds like:

"I'm the network architect, right? So what I need from you is to really look at this list of alarms, right? This is a team meeting, right?"

Right. I get it. I really do. Why do you keep asking me that? Do I really look like I'm not following? Does it make you feel like my little brain is keeping up when you keep asking me that?

I try to lean in a little and really open my eyes wide when people do this. I want them to see that I'm listening, that I'm processing. I want them to feel confident in my listening skills.

I try to remind myself not to respond to each of their "right?" questions.

Maybe I should meow.

The Pilot is a bit funnier than Mr. Right? Why? Because he flies at work! And he wants you to see things from his point of view...way, way up in the sky.

Perhaps even 30,000 feet. Sound familiar?

"So we're looking at this deployment from a 30,000 foot view," he says. I'm sorry? What was that? When did "from a bird's-eye view" get a specific height?

The cool thing is, the more important you are, the higher you fly. I've been in meetings where guys let me in on their 50,000 foot view. Once someone came back from looking at a project from 100,000 feet!

Amazing. Utterly.

Right?