I have lived a life of quiet ignorance related to lots of stuff. I just do not pay much attention some times. I am constantly amazed when my brothers and sisters tell me stories of mom and dad arguing or about mom talking to neighbors down the street. Mom and dad were friends with the parents of kids I knew while growing up but did not know they knew them. This cluelessness does not apply to all aspects of my life. I try to stay up with current events although I consciously do not follow the Kardasians.
Ok, the clarification of my clueless nature is over and you will not find anyone to disagree with my lack thereof. I do like to make very subtle jokes. I get sort of offended when people do not understand my jokes. They are important to me. I work in a place where free thought is greatly under-appreciated. Free thought and creative action is squashed into oblivion by desk instructions, witch hunt panels and an army of bored, feeble minded quality inspectors that could not recognize a good idea if it fell through the roof. Quality is not job one, it is paperwork, tons of paperwork. They would quite emphatically write a thirty page memo with charts, pictures and erroneous logic recommending that we instigate a policy to prevent good ideas from just falling from not only the ceiling but most obviously from the sky since after-all, the idea probably did not grow on the roof and work its way through the roof to eventually fall from the ceiling. A splinter panel would be assembled to make sure there are no good ideas growing on the roof. Great effort will be made to not stifle the original investigation and push the cost of the investigation up to something more ridiculous.
There is a group of people that will visit our facility and they have named the project CREAM, an acronym. Since the rule is that before you name a project, an acronym of some creativity must drive the project name. So since I know this project is not related to the Dairy Council, the acronym probably gives inference to something else. Now, I am fifty seven years old and most of the senior managers on projects that come to our facility are about my age also. For someone that is this age there is only one possibility of what CREAM refers to unless you are from Utah, Saudi Arabia or Krakatoa somewhere near Java.
So, I asked the people at the Operations Desk(they coordinate with visiting programs), who are in Rock and Roll bands on the week ends and about the same age as me why they did not tell me that Eric Clapton was going to be in the facility? NOTHING! I could hear tears fall on the carpet it was so quiet. Now I know it was subtle but come on guys, its "Cream", one of the most creative and important bands in our time. Our time, not our children's time but I bet my kids would have caught the joke and maybe even laughed.
Thinking this was a pretty good joke, I knew of a group of people that I considered free thinkers and that were about my same age. They only rarely had their heads up there ass. I set the joke up with the a story about a visiting program, blah, blah, blah, called Cream. I said, "When Eric Clapton gets here I am going to get his autograph". They laughed and promptly ran a Youtube video of "Strange Brew". I could feel the love in the room. I told them of the disaster at the Operations Desk and they shook their heads weepingly. "What is wrong with them?" they said. I know! Retirement cannot come too soon for them or me.
Ok, the clarification of my clueless nature is over and you will not find anyone to disagree with my lack thereof. I do like to make very subtle jokes. I get sort of offended when people do not understand my jokes. They are important to me. I work in a place where free thought is greatly under-appreciated. Free thought and creative action is squashed into oblivion by desk instructions, witch hunt panels and an army of bored, feeble minded quality inspectors that could not recognize a good idea if it fell through the roof. Quality is not job one, it is paperwork, tons of paperwork. They would quite emphatically write a thirty page memo with charts, pictures and erroneous logic recommending that we instigate a policy to prevent good ideas from just falling from not only the ceiling but most obviously from the sky since after-all, the idea probably did not grow on the roof and work its way through the roof to eventually fall from the ceiling. A splinter panel would be assembled to make sure there are no good ideas growing on the roof. Great effort will be made to not stifle the original investigation and push the cost of the investigation up to something more ridiculous.
There is a group of people that will visit our facility and they have named the project CREAM, an acronym. Since the rule is that before you name a project, an acronym of some creativity must drive the project name. So since I know this project is not related to the Dairy Council, the acronym probably gives inference to something else. Now, I am fifty seven years old and most of the senior managers on projects that come to our facility are about my age also. For someone that is this age there is only one possibility of what CREAM refers to unless you are from Utah, Saudi Arabia or Krakatoa somewhere near Java.
So, I asked the people at the Operations Desk(they coordinate with visiting programs), who are in Rock and Roll bands on the week ends and about the same age as me why they did not tell me that Eric Clapton was going to be in the facility? NOTHING! I could hear tears fall on the carpet it was so quiet. Now I know it was subtle but come on guys, its "Cream", one of the most creative and important bands in our time. Our time, not our children's time but I bet my kids would have caught the joke and maybe even laughed.
Thinking this was a pretty good joke, I knew of a group of people that I considered free thinkers and that were about my same age. They only rarely had their heads up there ass. I set the joke up with the a story about a visiting program, blah, blah, blah, called Cream. I said, "When Eric Clapton gets here I am going to get his autograph". They laughed and promptly ran a Youtube video of "Strange Brew". I could feel the love in the room. I told them of the disaster at the Operations Desk and they shook their heads weepingly. "What is wrong with them?" they said. I know! Retirement cannot come too soon for them or me.
