Tag: funny stuff

Womanizer!

by Inherently Funny Guy!, posted in Corporate Funny Stories!

Every time I hear the word womanizer, which I don’t hear that often, Britney Spears’s ‘Womanizer’ starts playing in my head. Images of her lying naked on the shower bench… every freaking time! Anyway, we all have a reputation and I personally am very conservative in the workplace when it comes to relationships. I’m not like crazy couples having sex in the bathroom at the company’s Christmas party – yeah! That’s actually happened. Or making out with a random guy while I’m waiting for my Uber after another company party – This too has happened. 

I treat women with respect and try not to ask anyone out, and just keep it professional and business originated. I know you are laughing at me and thinking, dude! Lots of hot chicks in any workplace, why not date them? And my answer is you are right! But I’m not on the market anymore. 

I think I’m drifting from what I was going to tell you. The point is, I never considered myself a womanizer until that day. One of the tier one clients was going to visit our new office. This is a company that everybody knows and I myself was a huge fan of them and have been watching them since I was a teenager. Very popular across the board, so we wanted to make the most of it and create a great experience for them. I was working on catering breakfast and snacks, reservation for lunch and dinner, working with other departments for meet and greet, etc.

One of my colleagues who knew them better told me two things, that while these guys are coming from the East Coast and a very blue state, I better not make any political comments, and that they drink a lot – fine by me, I planned to indulge in my favorite food and dessert then. They arrived the night before and showed up at the office early in the morning. We went through the agenda and everything was going according to the plan – I was happy and they seemed to be happy and very pleased with us. For lunch, we went to a nearby restaurant, nothing fancy, and came back and went through the afternoon schedule. 

For dinner, I had booked this fancy, and expensive restaurant. I wanted to impress them, you know! And I did impress them, chic decor, fancy menu, elegant dishes, and handsome waiters, not to mention the drink’s menu. They were about 10 of us, and they all started with drinks, except me. I got Dr. Pepper, my favorite drink! They almost finished their first drink, when I went to the restroom. When I came back our waiter was serving the second round. Now. keep in mind that this place has two bars, one was closer to us, and the other one across from where our table was located. The waiter came back, with this huge glass of cocktail, super fancy. It has two colors, I mean the drink inside had two different colors – gosh! I wish I had a picture of it. 

Everybody stopped talking and all eyes on me. I told my buddy next to me:

  • Did you order another one?
  • I didn’t order anything. I still have my first one.

When the waiter saw that we were confused, he looked at me and said, this is yours! I lagged and said no! It is not. This must be a mistake. At this point, one of the contacts who sat close to me intervene and asked me:

  • What did you order? Did you go to the restroom or to the bar?
  • Restroom and I have no idea. I don’t drink.

I thought they were messing with me, so I was laughing. The waiter left and everybody was asking me about my drink and what kind of cocktail I ordered. I was very confused but curious to know who ordered that for me. I mean it was an expensive drink, so I didn’t think they would spend that much money just to prank me. I couldn’t even call it a prank. So, I called out the waiter and said, who ordered this while the whole table was listening and they were as curious as I was if not more. He said someone from the other bar ordered this for you! And our table erupted in wow! And laughter. 

From where I was sitting, I couldn’t clearly see the other bar and my friends kept asking me to drink and then walk over there to find out who was the secret admirer.  I didn’t drink it but walked over to the other bar and approached one of the bartenders, who was smiling, giving me the vibe that he knew something. I asked him about the drink and who ordered it and he said they just left. I didn’t even ask if it was a guy or a gal or a group of them. I mean I didn’t want to know if it was a guy. 

Walking back to our table I was thinking that on the bright side, I did impress them big time! Now, they have a great memory and they will tell their colleagues once returned to their office and who knows, maybe they will come back and visit us again, renew their contract, might add new products because now they know they have this womanizer, cool dude taking care of their account. I would call it a success! 

That night, as soon as I arrived home I checked Craigslist Missed Connection, hoping I could find my secret admirer but didn’t see anything. I convinced myself, whoever ordered that for me, is probably drunk and won’t post anything new, so I monitored Craigslist for the next few days. I got nothing, but my client asking about that and following up with me on every damn call that we had since then. To date, I really have no clue who ordered it, but my usual suspect is my buddy. Now that I’m thinking about it, it had to be them, and the fact that I was paying with the company credit card makes me thinking, they weren’t worried about wasting money on an expensive cocktail. At the end of the day, I was happy that I got what I wanted: to create a memorable and unforgettable experience! 

Toil and Till

by Inherently Funny Guy!, posted in Corporate Funny Stories!

We have all heard this before “give credit where credit’s due” and if you are unfamiliar with the phrase here’s the definition according to Collins Dictionary: “you are admitting that you ought to praise someone for something that they have done or for a good quality that they possess”. This story isn’t funny, yet it is more like a dark comedy. I know I ought to tell you funny shit, but hey! You’ll relate to this one and it will boil your blood. This is one of those stories that you hate yourself because you didn’t do anything wrong – on the contrary, you did all the right things, but in the end, it all felt like pissing in the wind because they didn’t credit you when it was due!

To set the scenes, imagine you inherit a huge client, with high demand and very few clear objectives and guidelines. It is terrible, right? Now, as the new guy with a peer of fresh eyes, you’ll notice errors and you’ll come up with new ideas to straighten the ship. You want to make an impact and earn your client’s trust as well. So, I did the same thing. Spent lots of time and energy reviewing the account, talked to people who worked on it before, just to get an idea of why we do what we do. In the meantime, I was getting all kinds of ad-hoc requests from the client. 

Don’t want to preach to the choir, but if you ever worked in a client-facing role you probably experienced this: some clients are quiet until they get “the new guy” on the account and then they start bombarding him/her with requests. Sometimes they know the answer, but they want to try it one more time with the new guy. Sometimes they do it because they got new ears. Either way, it is a challenge and a good time to set the expectations. 

Anyhow, I made some radical suggestions and recommendations to the client. Looking at my plan it sounded like we are reducing the service, but I was confident that this will indeed increase our productivity and boost our numbers as well. In the short time working with them I realized they are very number-driven. I promised them that this is a better plan, and they agreed to it. After two quarters, numbers were three times more than whatever they had for the past few years. They loved it. My team loved it because they were working smarter and we could actually show them some progress.  

I’m not the type of person to work for accolades or awards. I love what I do, and when I accomplish my goals or my client’s goals in this case, I feel pride, satisfaction, and joy. I have nothing against awards, and I won a few of them, but I’m not driven by it. I received all kinds of compliments from the analyst team, my manager, and peers, and when the client said they are planning to visit us, I was over the moon. 

That day, I dressed up, showered, shaved, and lots of cologne! I planned the whole day for them, and for the main event, I booked the biggest conference room and I invited my manager, and other colleagues to come in and listen. The other reason was that because the client’s ego was so huge, and they loved the audience I had to stage this and invite as many as I could, give them food and snacks, so the client felt great about themselves! 

Towards the end of the meetings, my main contact whom I describe as nothing but a bully, overzealous at times, started boasting about their partnership with us. Fine with me, anyone in that room knew that this is my account and my manager and the analyst team knew how much time I spent on it and our accomplishments were obvious. When he started, I thought he’d give us props for the great work we have done in a short period of time. 

I was dead wrong! He started off comparing the past two quarters with last year’s results and his fucking conclusion started with: I came up with this idea to do…. And as the results we are seeing huge increases in productivity and efficiency; you SOB! Not a word about me or the team behind his account, not a damn word! I was irritated, I didn’t even want to stay in that room, I looked at the analyst sitting across the table and shook my hand and they did the same. I looked at my manager, he smiled, one of those bitter smiles that is harsher than a thousand f-bombs. 

The funny thing is he never claimed that it was his plan in an email or during one and one calls or monthly calls with the teams. I guess, he wanted to show his boss that he is big-time. Like I said he ego was so huge that it consumed all his humanity and morals.