You Gotta Laugh...

I love work. There, I said it. Lots of people don’t get it, and I’ve given up trying to explain it. I’ve had great jobs, and a really shitty job, but, I love work. For me, it’s about the people. I have worked with some freaking awesome people in my career. Rockin’ bosses, great peers, and I’ve been lucky to have the very best people working for me. I’ve also worked with a couple of losers. Big time losers. This blog isn’t about the losers. It’s about somebody that I worked with for a short time who continues to make me smile every time I think about her. This is about Margaret.

Margaret and I were a very unlikely duo. Margaret is a petite, whispy little thing, and I’m, well, whatever the opposite of petite and whispy is. We looked painfully mismatched when we were together. Margaret is a wife, mother and grandmother who brings a boatload of life and work experience to the table. I, on the other hand, was a prissy young manager with a thimble full of life experience. I think it’s safe to say that she could easily look down her nose while staring up at me. So I’m not exactly sure where or when it was that I discovered Margaret’s awesomeness. She was good at her job, and her team liked her, but that’s not where her awesomeness came from. It’s because she made me laugh. A lot. It’s also from the fact that she had absolutely no trouble telling me like it was, and calling me on my bullshit. To me, that’s awesome. I managed her remotely, so a lot of what we did was on the phone.

One morning I was on the phone. She could talk. Blah, blah, blah. This is not what made her awesome. If it could be said in 5 words, Mags could say it in 50. During this conversation, I zoned out and went to the happy place I go when I’m not paying attention. I’m not sure how long I was gone for, but it was bliss. I was gone. Like really gone. At some point, something snapped me back to attention, and still the incessant blah blah. With that, I looked at the phone, and hit the key to delete this never-ending voicemail message. I was wondering why Margaret’s voice wouldn’t stop, and she busted me…”What the hell are you doing?  You’re trying to delete me, aren’t you?  You think I’m voicemail, don’t you?”  To that I responded that she was rambling and I thought it was a voicemail, to which she responded, “For Christ’s sakes Sean, you called me.”  And with that, Mags became totally awesome.

For some reason, Miss Margaret didn't appreciate being deleted.

Another time, I arrived to visit the team. I had this little sweatbox of an office where the temperature hovered somewhere between Sahara and Hell. I arrived at work tired, and not at my best. My first order of business was a meeting in the sweatbox with Mags and two other team leaders. It took about 8 minutes of all the nattering, together with the crazy heat, and the lack of sleep the night before to lull me into slumberville. I put my head back, closed my eyes, and I was out. Not just in my happy place, but in dreamland. Gonzo. I haven’t the foggiest idea how long I was out, but at some point the three team leaders noticed I was sleeping and decided to make me pay.

Margaret, the most petite of all of them, hopped up on my desk, crawled across, got right in my face and clapped her hands like she was killing a fly in midair. It was a tiny office so I was wedged between my desk and the wall, and that’s a good thing, because I was so startled that if I had jumped up, I would likely have killed poor Margaret. Mags and the two other team leaders were on the floor, tears rolling down their cheeks, in hysterics over me being about 8 seconds away from a coronary. I would love to say I learned my lesson, but later that day, when I was out for lunch with the three musketeers, I nodded off at the restaurant. I still haven’t lived it down.

Months later, I got a call from Margaret’s husband. He was calling to say that Margaret wouldn’t be in for a couple of days, and when I asked why, his response:  “She fell in a hole”. Now imagine my response. Remember that I’m not well known for my diplomacy. I was in full roar before I even thought to take a minute to find out if she was really hurt. Turns out she was hurt, and it took a while for Mags to get back to work. Apparently she opened some hole in her floor to access a crawlspace, and forgot it was open, and backed up, falling ass over tea-kettle into this hole. The whole thought of Mags stuck in a hole makes me laugh even to this day. That is if I don’t think about her injuries. (She recovered fully, by the way, I’m not that heinous.)

I'm sure it's not nice to laugh when people fall in holes, but I laughed.

I’ve gotta laugh. That’s my motto. Work is serious, but you don’t always have to be serious at work. Luckily, I’ve got a bunch of Margaret-types in my work life today (although nobody has fallen into a hole, at least that I know of), and they are why I jump out of bed ready to rock and roll every day. But there is only one Mags. I miss working with her, but when I really think about it, if we would have kept it up, we very well may have hurt each other.