Tag Archives: reception

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Familiar Fibbing Friday

These might sound familiar, but Pensitivity101 wants to know how would you explain them?

  1. What is Free Will?

    That’s where I receive the entire inheritance, because the court can’t locate my dodgy brother. Could be Witness Protection…. Could be avoiding angry husbands….  Could be identity theft.

2. What is persona non grata?

If you receive an invitation to a wedding and reception, unless it is addressed to Mr. & Mrs. Schlemiel, or Mr. Schlemiel +1, do not bring along your current blow-jobber  bed-warmer!  He/she/it/they are not included in the seating plan.

3. What is bog standard?

That is the British equivalent to the American, ‘close enough for Government work.’  Also, to the Engineers motto – Force To Fit – File To Hide – Paint To Cover.

4. What is builder’s tea?

That’s the 10 AM break at the construction site for a hot cuppa.

5. What is a couch potato?

Sadly, any one of far too many members of the current Electronic Generation.  They are evolving to have light blue skin because they get their tans from the screens of half a dozen glowing devices.  Soon, they will be known as mouse potatoes – or guinea pig-potatoes, for those whose little peripheral is wireless.

6. What is a finger in every pie?

The little math nerd from Accounts Receivable, who we don’t even invite to the weekly office meeting, but who shows up anyway, like a Dominos delivery driver, with a dozen charts that look like pizzas.
Bar graphs, Rolanda!!  Bar graphs!!  They’re much easier to read and understand.

7. What is meant by nip in the bud?

‘Nip in the bud??!’  I thought it was ‘Nip in the Butt!’  No wonder I got fired for sexual harassment – and I had just learned that harass was one word.

8. What is to pitch in?

That’s a cricket term which means that a large portion of the viewers have stopped watching the game, and moved on to something far more exciting…. Like watching the grass grow.

9. What is rule of thumb?

That is how the wife micromanages, and runs my life.  She used to just have me under her little finger…. But then I gained weight.  😮

10. What is to steal someone’s thunder?

That is the culmination of a game played by ten-year-old boys of all ages, involving passing gas.  The winner is not the loudest, or the longest – but the one who can clear the room, or at least have the rest coughing and waving.  Extra points if the drapes change colour.

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Crystal Clear Comedy

  • Theme parks can snap a crystal clear picture of you on a roller coaster going 70 mph, but bank cameras can’t get a clear shot of a robber standing still.
    Dear paranoid people who check behind their shower curtains for murderers… if you do find one, what’s your plan?
  • The more I get to know people, the more I realize why Noah only let animals on the boat.
  • Facial recognition software can pick a person out of a crowd but the vending machine at work can’t recognize a dollar bill with a bent corner.
  • When all this pandemic stuff is over, I still plan to wear a mask. It hides the perpetual look of annoyance I have for most people.
  • I never make the same mistake twice. I do it like, five or six times, you know, to make sure.
  • Someone just honked to get me out of my parking space faster, so now I just have to sit here until both of us are dead.
  • My train of thought derailed. There were no survivors.
  • If you see someone buying candy, popcorn and a soda at the movies, they are a drug dealer. There’s no other explanation for that type of income.
  • I know it’s time to clean out my purse when my car assumes it’s an extra passenger who isn’t wearing a seat belt.
  • Dr. Oz says rubbing coffee grounds on your naked body will get rid of cellulite. Apparently you can’t do this in Starbucks. And now the cops are here…
  • Do not vaccinate health care workers first. If it fails, we’re all in trouble. Vaccinate the politicians first. If we lose a few of them, it won’t matter.
  • In the 1960s I fell off my bike and hurt my knee. I’m telling you this now because we didn’t have social media then.
  • Dear Sneeze: If you’re going to happen, happen. Don’t just put a stupid look on my face and then leave.
  • I still have a full deck, I just shuffle slower
  • We all know Albert Einstein was a genius, but his brother Frank was a monster.

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Mary Clancy went to Father O’Grady after his Sunday morning service in tears. He said, “So what’s bothering you, dear?” Mary said, “Oh, Father, I have terrible news. My husband Edgar passed away.” Father O’Grady consoled her, “Oh, Mary. That’s terrible! Did he have a last request?” “Aye, that he did, Father.” “What did he say, Mary?” “He said, ‘Please, Mary! Put down that gun!’”

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A barber ran from his shop to where a policeman was standing. “Officer, I need your help. A guy just skipped out of my barber shop without paying!” The officer asked, “What’s he look like? Any distinguishing features?” The barber replied, “Well, he’s missing his left ear!”

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An American took a guided tour of an old castle. Before the tour started, she told the guide, “I’m afraid of ghosts. There aren’t ghosts here, are there?” The guide answered, “Oh, don’t worry. I’ve never seen a ghost in all the time I’ve been here.” “And how long is that?” “About three hundred years.”

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A widower fell in love with a widow and all their children agreed they should get married. They sent out this invitation: “Phil, Richard, Karen, Allison, John, Matt and Steve request the honor of your presence at the marriage of their mother and father, Marion Johnson Smith and Robert Hanson. Because they are combining their two households, they already have two of everything, so: Please, no presents! Reception and garage sale immediately following the ceremony.”

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Mistaken Identity

I recently read a post by a young woman who is a receptionist for a small firm.  She handles the few walk-ins, directs incoming emails and deals with the constant phone calls.  She wrote of the strange and wonderful telephone calls she has to deal with.

Steam ears

Like being a greeter at Wal-Mart, this is a job I could not handle.  I like to talk to people, but I don’t suffer idiots well.  By about coffee-break time the first morning, I’d want to injure someone.  Since I couldn’t get at any of the fools on the phone, it would probably be the loud blonde in accounting, with the nasal, Fran Drescher voice, who snaps her gum as she chews.

Asshole

The lady with the post estimates that she knows 83% (what an interesting number 😕 ) of her regular callers by their voice, even before they identify themselves.  That’s a useful ability to have, but it should not be relied on unquestioningly.

It’s only good telephone etiquette, and business sense to identify yourself on the phone.  When I worked as a Purchasing Agent, I always did so when I called someone – until that fateful day.  I had called a supplier one day, and told him who I was.  He replied, “Oh, you don’t have to tell me who you are.  You have a very recognizable voice.”

Once upon a time, my company required a small amount of…widgets, ASAP.   We needed them by 11 AM the next day, to allow assembly time, to make a 4 PM shipment.  I called a supplier, and in the excitement, merely started off with, “Hi Bill, could you do me a big favor?”

He replied, “Oh hi.  Yeah, sure!  What can I do for you?”  I told him what I needed, and how soon.  He put me on hold, and picked up again in a couple of minutes.  “You’re in luck.  The machine running that item is in production right now, and we have a bit of extra raw material.  I’ll tell the operator to run it out.  We’ll load your stuff tonight, and you’ll be the second stop for the truck tomorrow.  You should have them by 8 or 9 o’clock.”

I gave him a Purchase Order number, and promised to mail the confirmation.  The next day, when I arrived about 8, they weren’t there – no biggy.  They weren’t there at 9, when I took a washroom break – Hmmm.  They weren’t in by 10, when I called the receiver – startin’ to worry.  They hadn’t arrived by 11, when the receiver called me in a panic.

I finally got through to the supplier about 11:30.  “What happened to my widgets?  You promised they’d be here much earlier!”

“Oh, they’re there.  I knew how important they were to you, so I asked the driver to call me when they were unloaded.  He has a bill of lading, signed by your receiver at 8:37 AM.”

“But they’re not here!  The receiver just phoned me.”

“They must be there.  Maybe he unloaded them and just forgot.  Just call him back, Bob, and ask him….”

“BOB!!??  I’m not Bob!  This is Archon!”

“Oh shit.  You and Bob sound so much alike.”

He didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell.  The other company’s receiver unquestioningly unloaded parts they’d never previously ordered, on a waybill with a purchase order number not in their series.  The truck driver got paid overtime, because he had to go back and reload, and deliver to our plant.  And we still got a non-compliance late/short shipment demerit.

If it doesn’t say Styrofoam SM®, it isn’t, but you can be sure you’re getting the real Archon, because every one of my babbles is clearly identified as “Archon’s Den. ™”

 

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I Do

Wedding rings

I guess I could put this post under ‘Old Stuff ’.  The wife is 65, and I’ve had her for over 47 years but, discretion being the better part of waking up tomorrow without a pillow over my face, I’ll just recount the fateful day.

I was raised as a Christmas/Easter kind of Baptist.  Churches and religion meant little to me.  The wife was raised in a strict Catholic family, but like two older sisters before her, had started ‘questioning’, and soon also left “The Church.”

We had met at an Adult Education retraining course in February, and hit it off right away.  We were thinking of waiting till we both graduated and had jobs.  We spoke of waiting till Sept. 21 the following year – not only my birthday, but also her parents’ anniversary.

I got out, and got a job, and she would soon follow.  We saw no point in waiting.  I told my Mom that we planned to just go to City Hall, but she insisted that we both should have a day to remember.  We talked the Anglican minister in my home town into marrying us.  The guest list was only about 25 people.  All the ‘Good Catholics’ in her family boycotted, although the two ex-Catholic sisters and their husbands showed up.

We chose Dec. 2, 1967, as a mutually agreeable date.  My sister was living directly across the street from Mom and Dad, in the ex-Presbyterian Manse, which had a huge living room/drawing room combo.  She and Mom cooked like crazy, and that’s where the reception was held.

The wedding ceremony was held after the regular 11 AM service, once the minister shooed the parishioners home.  We had bought a wedding license at City Hall, but the church issued another one, so we are twice married.  Perhaps that’s why it’s lasted so long.

The brunch reception started around 1 PM.  We gave the camera to my brother to take a few pictures for posterity.  He quickly got loaded at the open bar.  He remembered to take the shots; it’s just that people have the tops of their heads cut off, or one arm.

Long before the internet, and without phoning ahead, I had hoped to get us to Niagara Falls for a bit of a honeymoon.  About four o’clock, Mom strongly suggested that we get underway.  A freezing rain storm had blown in off Lake Huron.

I checked the car over before we left.  There was some soap on the windows that was easily removed, but no tin cans dragging from strings at the back.  We took the highway south, out of town, and turned off onto the secondary road that headed easterly towards The Falls.  Within a mile we were sliding off the crown of the road on a half-inch of ice.

Do we continue slowly, hugging the gravel shoulder, or take a different route??!  I elected to turn around.  Just as we got back to the main highway, a sander/salter truck rolled past.  Follow Him!!!  He went 30 miles southwest, down the lakeshore, and then turned southeast.

At some point, we began to notice a smell, a definite aroma.  I stopped and raised the hood.  One or more of ‘my friends’ had jammed three small whitefish between the engine block and the exhaust manifold.  Heated up with 30 miles of driving, the hot exhaust was cooking the fish, and burning off the fish-oil.  I managed to remove them with very few burns, but the smell lingered with the car for a week or more.

All plans definitely out the window, the best we could hope for were roads not too icy to prevent us from at least getting back to Kitchener.  Such was not to be.  As the freezing rain abated, it changed to wet, slippery, clingy snow.  The Ontario Works truck ahead stopped seasoning the road, and put his plow blade down and pushed the accumulating white stuff back.

We followed him to the small town of Listowel, which was barely bigger than my stage-coach stop burg.  We hoped that he would continue on through, towards Kitchener, but, just at the outskirts of town, he pulled into his home base, apparently done for the day, or at least his shift.  Now where??!

The town of Listowel was known only for The Blue Barn Inn, a motel with a couple of dozen rooms, an in-house restaurant with food famous for miles, and an entertainment room where B-acts and wannabes played.  Could we get a room?  Since no-one else drove in over the ice, there were rooms to spare.

After settling in the room, we now wondered about supper.  What little we had eaten, was 7 hours ago.  I went downstairs to the dining room and asked if I could get something to take back to the room.  On Sunday nights there was no a la carte – service was only from a giant buffet.

The cooks had worked all day to prepare for the usual huge crowd, and the ice storm had prevented almost all of them from showing up.  When the host found out that we were newly-weds, stranded there, he asked for a couple of dollars, and told me to take as much food and drink as I could carry on a cafeteria tray.  We remembered the place with nostalgic fondness for years, but, about 30 years later, it burned to the ground.

Very little of the day was as we had hoped or planned, and none of it elegant or impressive like a Hawaiian location wedding/honeymoon. It was an adventure, where all eventually turned out well, and set a sort of pattern for the marriage.  If we could survive this, we could survive each other.  We’ve passed 47 years, and are heading for the Golden 50.

Even as a second marriage for my Mom, and a war-delayed first for my Dad, they celebrated their 60th anniversary just before they died.  While we increasingly complain about aches and pains, and various medical problems, I think we’re strong and healthy enough to reach that mark also!     😀

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