Overheard at Work #6

I love how discussions at meetings always degenerate just as the meeting ends. An example from this morning:

Person 1: We've submitted all of our paperwork [when things reopened at the start of the fiscal year] but it looks like it's at the bottom of the pile, so it'll probably take a couple of months to get processed.

Person 2: What? We weren't at the front of the line to submit it? We didn't camp out like to get Grateful Dead tickets?

Person 3: You know, they're not grateful anymore, people just call them the Dead these days.

Person 2: Well, yeah, that's cuz half of them are dead already.

Branch Chief: O-kay! It's 11 o'clock. If there's nothing else, meeting dismissed!

Overheard at Work #5

"I bought some pinecones for my house yesterday, and..."

Really? You bought them? Just...wow.

Overheard at Work #4

The office was abuzz this morning after the Kanye West-Taylor Swift debacle at last night's MTV Video Music Awards (and rightly so! Who picks on a teenager like that?), and my coworker pops into my office saying, "Hey, you would know this. What does 'keeping it real' mean?"

I'm a little bemused as to why I'd be so likely to know this, and a little sad to say I honestly have no idea what it means. Ideas, readers?

Overheard at Work #3

From the kitchen, I hear two people collide. Startled, one of them says:

"Well, I guess now I don't need to worry about retirement. You just scared me to death!"

Overheard at Work #2

"I had a long island iced tea...they put so much alcohol in that! It's probably just a little bit of iced tea and the rest is alcohol! But anyway, I had a ball, I had a ball..."

I don't think it needs any context :)

Overheard at Work #1

With all the new technology that's become indispensable in the last few years, is it ironic that over mobile internet and GPS, the item I really wish I had with me all the time is a simple tape recorder? Probably. But, strange as it may be, I would love the ability to capture snippets of life and the conversations around me and save them somehow, before they give way to more mundane daily tasks and are forgotten. Sometimes they're interesting insights, sometimes they're issues or ideas I want to look into more, and sometimes they're just plain funny.

But barring a trek out to the nearest electronics store to track down a tape recorder (do they even make them anymore?), the next best solution may be to record them here. So, here goes:

Overheard at Work #1: "So does the rest of Massachusetts not have an accent then?"

I definitely giggled.