Friday Fun: telling on myself

No client story this Friday, rather a little glimpse into our office.

When I tell people what it is I do with my life/for a living, the most common response is something along the lines of awe that I have the stomach for all that bad stuff. Heck, even other people who are in this business are a tad suspicious that I just might lose my head one day from doing this work for so long.

One of the survival secrets is to have a common enemy. Currently, the common enemy for the folks in my office is another human service agency. I won't name them, because all in all, they do good work. It's the personalities of their employees and the group competitiveness with us that makes them targets for the less than charitable comments we make in the privacy of our office. Oh, and they are fairly insensitive to the schedules of other agencies. They have this notion that their work is more important than any work done by any other organization in our community.

Unfortunately for me, in order to fully serve our clients, I have to work closely with this group. Most recently, the scheduled a community task force meeting for immediately after Christmas . . . and on a day most of the service providing agencies had planned to take as part of the holiday break. (We have a nice list of volunteers who are running the crisis line, but the office staff is on break.)

So, our snarkiness takes the form of thinking up fantasy ideas for playing with these people. This morning, we came up with acting like we are very formal in the office and refer to each by Ms (last name) and maybe even slip and use a first name and then immediately act as if we might get in trouble. There are also scenarios for giving information about each other without elaborating. When I expressed to their director that the task force meeting was inconvenient to people who wished to spend the holidays with family that weren't local, she suggested I send a lower ranking employee.

I'm going to the meeting, and if they ask why I just didn't send the employee. . . . I'm to explain that she is spending the first christmas with her father in nearly 20 years. Our hope is that they will ask why, and I can act as if we don't share personal information in our office. (Anyone who knows me or our staff knows that we are really very casual and get along quite well and actually nearly read each other's thoughts.)

I know, not really funny to anyone who isn't involved. But, being snarky in the privacy of our office relieves stress and is harmless . . . . as long as we keep it in the office.