What’s the difference between broccoli and snot?

I carry a Dictaphone in my car so that when brilliant ideas occur to me I can capture them immediately so they do not escape. This ultimately means two things – when I listen to them – they are not so brilliant although they do capture something of a thought process that often leads me down inspiring and creative thought paths, and it also means that when I listen to them I often laugh out loud at what I was thinking at any given time.

Case in point:
One of the client sites I am currently working at takes me about one and a half hours of driving in peak hour traffic. As you can imagine, this gives me plenty of time to watch people in their cars, and come up with more of my brilliant ideas, plan strategies for work challenges, and generally amuse myself at other people’s expense.

About 2 weeks ago, there was a man in front of me in a large, expensive German car that was cleaning his ears out. For at least 20 minutes. I timed him. I could see no evidence of any tissues or a hanky either.

I tried to look away, really I did, but I had to watch the traffic in front of me, and besides, it was like a mesmerising hypnotic thing from which I could not tear my gaze.

He then went on to picking things in his face – presumably pimples. Again – no tissues – just his trousers. And, I should mention, it was with both hands.

Then, to my absolute disgust, he looked up his nose in the rear-view mirror and started picking. I also timed this. Another 20 minutes.

What the hell type of crop can you have going on up there that takes 20 minutes to dig out? And then to top it all off, he started smoothing his hair down. News flash – snot hair is not the thing! Never has been, never will be!

Imagine you have a meeting with this man. He gets out of his car, and strolls up to your office. Shakes your hand, transferring ear wax, pimple goo, and snot. OMG!

Then he committed the ultimate crime. He ate his snot.

Now the joke used to be “what’s the difference between broccoli and snot?”
“Children won’t eat broccoli”

I guess adults won’t eat broccoli either.

After about an hour of this unhygienic adjustment, he looked over the car next to him, and seemed to twig that there was a car next to him, and stopped what he was doing for about 5 minutes, but then carried on.

If the traffic had come to a standstill, I would have issued him with a ticket from the snot police. He definitely wins the Pukeworthy Punk of the day award.

Eeeeeuuuuuuuw is all I have to say about that.

Which part of NO is unclear?

Long story short, my super ears, or superiors (as they prefer to be described) asked be to take on a whole lot more work. I politely declined, stating objective reasons including realistic time frames, actual time lines, hours of work required to complete tasks, etc, and explaining my current work load as well. Two comapy parntners (very high people on the totem pole) agreed that I could not do justice to the tasks, and we agreed that this was not a viable option.

I met with my counsellor (essentially my yoda or performance mentor as is the structure in our comapny) to help me with a structure for the work I currently have (which was too much before they asked me to take on the more they asked me to), and he again said I had to take on the work that I had got agreement that I did not have to do.

Now, I am not confused - three partners (for whom I am doing work, and to whom I directly report) agree that I do not have to do this work, but a manager within my service line says that I have to do it.

I called him again today to say I wasn't able to do it due to blah blah fishpaste objective factual time reasons, and he just said I have to.

I am truly at a loss of what to do.

How do you argue with a person who doesn't listen to you and won't hear you say no?

Fank you to meet you!

I do understand that we are a multi-lingual society, and that signs will have to be translated into various languages. I don't have a problem with that. Nor do I have a problem with people who are not mother-tongue speakers making mistakes. I take my hat off to them for speaking a language other than their own (except for news readers - they should be mother tongue speakers). But surely we have enough resources to have people check signs before we post them all over the show?

Here is the latest in a long line of clearly direc translations:

Clock to enter. (Directly translated from the Afrikaans - knock to enter!)

Watch this space for more.