theories

there's a very nice, quiet woman who started here a few weeks ago. at first, everybody was confused. when she arrived for her first day of work, none of the managers knew who she was, and the receptionist was very frustrated.

because of this mystery, several people offered their theories. (you'll remember that we're very good at those; just search "theory" in this blog using the box on the right!)

• Theory #1: she's related to the president of the company, who is paying her under the table.
• Theory #2: she's related to someone else in the company, and she may or may not be paid under the table.
• Theory #3 (and my favorite): she's actually the president of the company, a la Undercover Boss, since she and the president have never been seen in the same room at the same time.

turns out, she's an extern! not nearly as exciting as the Undercover Boss theory, but still a little mysterious. i admit that i had no idea what an extern was, so of course i Googled it! here's what i found:

²ex·tern

 noun

Definition of EXTERN

: a person connected with an institution but not living or boarding in it; specifically : a nonresident doctor or medical student at a hospital

but we're not a medical institution. and nobody lives here. well, i can't be too sure about that, because it seems like some people never leave, while others are never here (or so it seems).

anyway, this one was more helpful:

Externship - Externships are experiential learning opportunities, similar to internships, offered by educational institutions to give students short practical experiences in their field of study. In medicine it may refer to a visiting physician who is not part of the regular staff. 

ok, that makes sense. and that would explain why she followed one employee around for days when she started here. i mean, it's normal for a new employee to shadow an experienced employee while they work; it's a whole kind of weird that the new employee shadowed the experienced employee to the bathroom and back... 


word of the day: cacophony 

so many crazy people in the world!!

some of my favorite quotes from emails or calls that happened today:

• "five minutes ago i could see, but now i'm blind."
• "ok, but is it lupus?"
• "crack -- you know, it's a drug?"
• "ok, please explain to me how a chair caused your abdominal pain that made you go to the ER..."

and here's a fun conversation:

rep: "i can't just sit in silence while you think of a question. it's tying up the line. can you call back when you think of something?"  
caller: "ok, you don't like silence?" *starts singing* (and it sounds an awful lot like the Little Mermaid -- "ahh aahhh")
rep after the call: "the little mermaid gave me contractions!"

yesterday's song of the day: "if you want to be happy for the rest of your life" by jimmy soul

we had tons of fun yesterday trying to figure out the lyrics before some brilliant person Googled them.

i did have a song of the day for today, but now i can't think of it because of that catchy song about marrying ugly women... any help? it might have been the "chicken noodle soup" song we discovered today. apparently, there's a dance. 

in other news, The Office comes back on tonight! i can't wait. i'm inviting a ton of people over, i'm going to be knitting the Gryffindor scarf i've been working on, and i'm going to take notes for tomorrow's blog! ok, maybe not the last one.

imponderable

i really like google. i like random facts. for example, did you know that houseflies hum in the key of F? i read that in a book in a Barnes & Noble once, and it just stuck with me.

i also really like imponderables. like, why do you park in a driveway and drive in a parkway? and silly things like that.

one of my customer service co-workers pointed out one of the exclusions in one of our policies is for "competitive sports." that's all it said. so, because we're insurance nerds -- it happens, you just can't help it -- we posulated... of course that includes regular sports like football and soccer and even tennis. but does that include chess? i mean, it is a competition. what about internet hearts? what if a hypothetical person were to be hypothetically injured by a tragically hypothetical accident, perhaps including a keyboard? what if it ended in blood? and a trip to the emergency room? while they were being competitive?

yeah, it was a busy day today and i wasn't paying attention to any funny things going on, so that's all you're going to get today.

The Office is on tonight at 9! yay!

MLIA of the day: Today I was playing Call Of Duty 4 when the connection got interrupted. The person's gamer tag who interrupted the connection was "xxKanyeWestxx". MLIA

i'm glad we don't play Call of Duty here. if my office played a game together, i think i'd want it to be a physical activity, something that gets us outside instead of sitting inside staring at our computers all day. but that's imo.

p.s. there is STILL a table of treats up for grabs!!

Gossip

fridays are usually slow days in the office. it's understandable - people would rather procrastinate their work until monday, thus giving themselves a kind of extended weekend. slacking on fridays seems to be a nation-wide thing, because even our west coast line stops ringing around 4. from this i conclude that the work week mentally ends at lunch on friday. we may be here in body, but that doesn't mean we're actually doing anything.

when customer service is having a slow day (and sometimes when we're busy), we get to back up the mailroom. one of our CSR's counted 19 envelopes that had the wrong address but somehow got to us. one of them put the town and the state/zip on two different lines... i thought they taught you how to address an envelope in second grade. seriously, i googled it.

also, as a follow up to the snake story: one look outside proved our theory wrong. there are no tree branches overhanging the building, and so it couldn't have dropped from a tree branch onto the roof. it was quickly decided that an eagle must have picked up the snake to eat it, but since the snake was so slithery, it wriggled out of the eagle's talons and fell onto the roof of our building. so, at least part of the original story is definitely true. anyway, here is our retarded snake:

by the way, last night's episode of The Office (entitled "Gossip") was AWESOME. i took the idea and ran with it, spreading a rumor that the Pam in our office is pregnant, and it got picked up that our Jim Halpert called one of the CSR's stupid. by the end of the day, he was racist.

and Pam really is pregnant. but we knew that. 

so it's really like The Office.

promise.