And the Academy Award Goes to . . .

It has been an interesting week down under. Last week, we had a truly ghastly meeting of the board of directors, after which I almost gave notice. Then I remembered all the mouths I have to feed and swallowed the bile of rage. The weekend brought a car accident (not my fault, I hasten to add). Then on Tuesday, I got an extremely lenghty e-mail from the Devil.

My usual e-mail behavior where the Devil is involved is to refill the coffee cup, make sure my meds are up to date, and then read each paragraph slowly to unravel its core element. Once all the core elements are gleaned, I recombine them and try to discern some meaningful patterns. Sometimes it works. More often, I'm left with only the most cursory sense of meaning. However, as the Devil likes to visit me to verbally deliver the same messages, it usually works out in the end.

So, with my cup of steaming coffee ready to go, I read Tuesday's e-mail. I have no idea what most of it said. One sentence, though, has branded itself on my memory:

I have been informed that, owing to my efforts on behalf of our industry and concomitant good works overall, I have been given the annual BLAHBY award for excellence by the [Blah] Association.

What? The first time I read this line, I had a visceral reaction. Everything in my body from the sternum down clenched. I read the sentence several more times. No, it didn't change into something like: I have been permanently drummed out of the [Blah] Association for permanently mangling the English language, not to mention my concomitant and obvious idiocy. He was getting the highest award that the association that represents our industry gives. This is his second major award from the association, and he is the only person in the last thirty years to win both awards.

My head has been swimming ever since. This Devil is a truly horrible person. NO ONE who has ever worked for him likes or respects him. How is it possible to be so well-respected by outsiders? Why can no one see through his bullshit? (Sorry, I don't normally swear, but I am absolutely gobsmacked by this award thing.)

So, all week, I have been listening to him on his telephone, taking congratulatory calls from all the sycophants who voted for him to win this award (it was unanimous, by the way). And the best part? Because he won, he has decided to spring for the costs necessary for his key managers (yes, I am one of them) to attend the awards ceremony in New York. I cannot wait. I'm just hoping I can make it through the evening without throwing up.

And if I do, the next envelope that is opened will be the one announcing my award, for best actress in a thankless job. I'm not sure how much longer I can take it!

And today's secret word is . . .

That's right, Conky. We do have a secret word in Hell. Only it's not really "today's" word and it's not really just one word. There are several flavor of the month word, the ones that the Devil attempts to work into every sentence. Here are the words of choice at the moment:

Overall: Overall, when you consider all of the options, you can see that overall is a fine word for using basically as verbal punctuation, overall. It makes a fine comma, a creditable semi-colon, and (overall) really excellent terminal punctuation. At a recent hour-long meeting, I logged 73 overalls. And not one of them was denim.

The reality is (alternate: the actual reality is): If you want to show sincerity, make sure you preface your remarks with an indicator of their veracity. Nothing gives your statement more credibility than to say "Truthfully, officer," before whatever the true message is: "Truthfully, officer, I thought the other driver was a penguin." The reality is that a truthful person does not feel the need to signal his or her truthfulness. The actual reality is that any statement following the phrase "the reality is" is a lie.

Catchment: This is not a basin where water is stored. Every dictionary definition to the contrary, the reality is that this word means the demographic, morphological, or numerical makeup of a group of people. Even the venerable Oxford English Dictionary managed to mess this one up. Used in a sentence? "At the next conference on helix widgets, we don't really know whether the catchment will be mostly executives or product reps."

These are just a few of the words du jour. And every time I hear one, I want to scream real loud. Overall.

You wanted me to talk to you when?

The Voice of Reason and I had lunch recently, during which she tormented me with tales of the real world. Of course, the conversation eventually found its way back to the Devil. VOR reminded me of one story I had somehow managed to forget. That electroconvulsive therapy must be working after all. Anyway, from VOR, a trip down memory lane:

The Voice had been working with the Devil on developing our divisional budget for the next year and came across a problem with the figures she had gotten from one of the assistant vice presidents. She spoke to the Asst. VP, asking him to clarify the seemingly faulty figures. He gave her additional information, but the final figures still didn't gel.

So the Voice went to the Devil, and asked him whether he wanted her to investigate further or wanted to resolve the problem himself. Those of you who have read this blog can guess what the Devil's response was. He told the Voice that he needed more information from her before he could decide how to handle the discrepancy.

The Voice diligently did her additional research, and put together a packet of information for the Devil to review. She stuck a post-it note on the packet, reading "I'd like to discuss this with you when you have time." She put it on his desk right before she left for lunch.

The Devil was uncharacteristically silent that afternoon. The Voice heard nothing from him, and he didn't look at her or talk to her any time he passed her office all day. Then, right before she was supposed to leave to pick up her son for a soccer game, he sent her an e-mail asking her to stop by his office and speak with him.

When she entered his office, he asked her to close the door (never a good sign). Then he proceeded to flay the skin off her. Gesturing at the packet of information on his desk, as if afraid to touch it, the Devil asked: "Why didn't you speak to me about this before now?" The Voice of Reason reminded the Devil that she had spoken to him about the underlying budgetary matter. The Devil responded: "No, this information," tapping the packet. "Why didn't you speak to me about this before now?" The Voice was quite confused. She explained to the Devil that: (1) she had alerted him about the budget issue; (2) he had asked her to further research the matter so he could make more informed decisions about it; (3) the packet on his desk ("this") was the research she had done; and (4) it had a post-it on it asking for a time to discuss it. How, she asked, could she possibly have spoken to him about it before she had?

The Devil spent the next thirty minutes explaining to the Voice why she was being insubordinate and how she could do her job better. At the end, he asked her the famous question we have all come to dread from these little sessions: "Now, what have you learned from this?"

The Voice, with a ten-year-old twenty minutes late for soccer, and a mortgage on a new house, swallowed her screaming until she made it to her car. Now when he asks her to research something, she sends him an e-mail asking him to set forth the parameters so she has it in writing. Ahh, the Devil's handiwork: turning a quality employee into an emotional wreck in under an hour.

The Portal to Hell

In a recent post, I mentioned the Devil's uncomfortable chair, and the ongoing yearlong mission for its replacement. Over the last six months, there has been another developing saga. It involves a door.

Hell can be a drafty abode and the Devil is a sensitive soul. Accordingly, when the portal to hell somehow failed, the Devil took the task of selecting a new door quite seriously. So seriously that the quest for a new door took over three months and involved more than twenty partial or complete days off work.

One Monday in mid-June, the receptionist (Cerberus, the three-headed hellhound) answered when the Devil called. Because it was the Devil, Cerberus used her (nearly) reasonable head, the one she saves just for him. Apparently, over the weekend, the portal to hell had been breached and rendered useless. The Devil was staying home to find a new door.

Weeks passed. In each one, there was at least one and frequently more than one, day off for door-related activities. Summer mellowed into autumn, autumn greyed into winter, and the pursuit of the door continued unabated. There was the selection, the purchase, the shipping, the delivery, the return, the shipping (part II), the redelivery, the fitting, the refitting, and finally, as icy Canadian winds brought the first snow--it was installed.

The time off was one thing. Worse--much worse--the Devil recounted each stage of the saga to anyone he could trap with the loving detail that Wagner brought to the Ring Cycle. Not since Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg has so much attention been paid to a door. If he was in the middle of one particular aspect of the Doorelungenleid when one joined a meeting, he would start all over again so no one missed anything. Hence, each of us heard the core story, with varying ancillary details, almost everyday he worked during the time of the door.

At one such meeting, after the door had been thoroughly vetted, until we were as glazed and unresponsive as climbers with acute mountain sickness, the conversation was mercifully turned to the annual holiday party. The Devil said that he and Barbie would be happy to host the event, and would even supply a deli tray, although they could not be as generous as in years past owing to the strain on the household budget occasioned by the door. In response, the Voice offered to host at her house. The offer was gratefully accepted by all. Only later did the Voice discover that she had incurred Satan's wrath by denying him the opportunity he had so looked forward to: showing us all the Door.

Abandon all hope, Ye who enter here.

Semaphoring

So, I'm sitting at my desk, working on one of the four assignments that Devil gave me when I arrived at work today. I was out yesterday, and he was making up for lost time. Anyway, one of the things he asked me to do was call and yell at someone. Oh, he didn't put it that way, but that's what it amounted to. And part of what I had to convey was that the person should feel even worse about being yelled at by me, because he wasn't important enough to be yelled at by the Devil. (See Levels.)

Anyway, I was on the telephone, yelling away, when I noticed a flurry of movement right at the outer edge of my field of vision. I looked up, and there was the Devil, engaged in a little behavior we call "semaphoring."

What happens is the Devil will shoot by my office door with nary a pause, flapping his arms wildly like a giant bird of prey. He looks like a poor soul deep in the throes of St. Vidas's dance. Sometimes he has a piece of paper, file folder, or newspaper article in his hand, to which he will gesture and point in a fashion he clearly believes is meaningful. Sometimes he does the pinky-thumb phone waggle near his ear, indicating that he wants you to call him when you complete what he takes as your personal call. If he's really agitated, he will stand in the doorway and have a sotto voce conversation with you, moving his mouth in an exaggerated way, gesturing like a charades grand champion to accentuate his indecipherable words.

This morning, I did what I always do, which is indicate that I understood his communication by nodding then look away immediately. Then, when the call is over, I wait for him to come by again. Here's how that goes:

Devil: minion, are you busy?
Me: Why no, Devil, I was just completing the second of the many tasks you dumped on me when I arrived this morning. Here, let me move the award I won from the Chamber of Commerce so you have a place to put your coffee cup.
Devil: (indignantly) Why didn't you call me when you got off the phone?
Me: (sweetly) Oh, is that what you wanted? I thought there was a bee in the office (the Devil is allergic to bees).
Devil: No, I wanted to discuss something with you. Come on back to my office when you have a chance. [In hell, "when you have a chance" means "now."]
Me: (teeth clenched) Sure, I'll be right there.

Semaphoring is similar to another of the Devil's ways. If two or more of us are talking, and the Devil suspects that we're talking about him (he ALWAYS suspects we're talking about him), he will do a little something we call "sharking." Sharking involves cruising slowly back and forth past the conversation area. He'll find innumerable reasons to float back and forth. Sometimes we torment him by falling silent as soon as he comes within earshot and then laughing as he floats back down the hallway.

Semaphoring and sharking: two of the methods the Devil has developed to substitute for actual communication.