Listen!

If you've been with Yours Truly for any amount of time, you might notice that not all of these posts are about interactions that I, personally, have had. There are plenty of times I overhear a story or one of my coworkers shares a story with me that I feel is worthy of posting on this blog. I was chatting with a coworker recently about an interaction they'd had with one of our many contractors, and I figured it was good enough to share.

My coworker answers a call one morning from a new hire wondering when he is supposed to start his assignment in the school cafeteria. She politely informs him that he's supposed to be in orientation for that very assignment in fifteen minutes.

Guess where he was?

Not at the orientation. Shockingly.

After working through the part where my coworker established he didn't read the email that was sent to him with the details, the contractor found the email, looked the address up on GPS, and confirmed he was only ten minutes away.

Great. Orientation starts in fifteen minutes. He's ten minutes away. This could have ended well.

Nope.

After all, would there be a blog post if the guy simply went to orientation, started his position, and we moved on with our lives?

Definitely not.

My coworker later got an email from the orientation coordinator stating that the gentleman arrived 90 minutes late. My coworker calls the guy up to see why, if, according to him, he was only ten minutes away, he showed up 90 minutes late. He did provide a hot air excuse, but I’m going to venture I know what really happened based on the situation described in the remainder of this post...

Anyway, as part of the perusal of his file, she saw that the guy still had to present his I-9 documentation in person at our office as well (the specifics of I-9 documentation are explained in other posts; go find them if you care). She goes on to explain the conversation she had with him over the phone:

Coworker: Our office is at 123 Office St. Northeast, Suite 4400.

NL: 1123 Office St?

Coworker: No. 123 Office St. NE

NL: 133 Office St?

Coworker: No! 123 Office St. NE

Not Listening (NL): 123 Office St. North?

Coworker: No, northeast.

NL: East?

Coworker: No. North. East. Northeast.

NL: Oh, northeast.

Coworker: Yes. Suite 4400.

NL: 400?

Coworker: No. 4400.

NL: 440?

Coworker: No! 4-4-0-0.

NL: 4-0-0?

I'll cut it off there as you get the gist. Even the least creative of you have sufficient imagination to understand how it went with the zip code and a few other things they had to discuss before the guy had all the proper information to get to our office with the correct documentation. My coworker was, as one can well imagine, frustrated to say the least: "Good God, listen already!"

Which made me laugh.

When my dog isn't listening, I smack the back of one hand into the palm of the other and say in a very stern voice: "Hey! Listen!"

I find it rather amusing (and quite sad, really) when a command I give to my small furry, four-legged friend is also used on what should be considered a human adult.

Kind of pathetic, really, when you need to tell a grown man 'listen!'