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February 5, 2007
A Teacher's Work is Never Done
Today is carpet installation day, or so it is supposed to be, therefore I thought I'd continue my reflections on swearing. The subject, swearing that is, reminds me of an abnormal situation at the company for which I still work a few hours a week.
When I first went to work there, full time plus in those days, I was hired as the Vice President of Marketing. Shortly thereafter, my title and duties expanded to Vice President of Marketing and Operations. From time to time, the CEO suggested additional responsibilities but I refused them on the basis that there was barely enough room on a standard business card to delineate the responsibilities I already had. However, I did proactively take on one task that never made its way onto my card. I decided to help the "senior staff" improve the quality of their swearing. With myself as the sole exception, the "senior staff," when I arrived, was 30 years old, plus or minus a year, and with exception of me and one other person, all were from China. I noticed immediately that despite their best efforts, the quality my Chinese colleagues' swearing was extremely underdeveloped. I had spent much of my career at companies where swearing had been elevated to a fine art and I was shocked to find myself in the company of executives who, try as they might, consistently failed to use the proper oaths in the correct contexts. In a word, the swearing was just awful.
I decided to focus on two of our senior executives because they both seemed to realize their shortcomings in this area and were always looking for ways to improve themselves. When those "urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances," as Mark Twain called them, arose and my colleagues attempted profanity, I would provide a gentle, helpful and edifying critique. Two events marked my success.
On one occasion, after months of gentle training, one of my students dropped a number of file folders she was carrying and scattered their contents over a fairly wide area. Even before the first folder hit the ground, she shouted "D. . ." and then turning to me and calmly asked, "Did I say that right?" I was so proud!
On another occasion, a different student needed to admonish an engineer. This engineer had the habit of saying whatever was on his mind at the most inappropriate time and in the most inappropriate way. He never saw a customer he didn't make mad. So my colleague had a little "meeting" with him. After the meeting, the engineer told several of us that my student had said, "Keep your f . . .ing month shut." I ask her later if she had actually said that. She blushed and denied it but I'm completely sure she said those exact words. It was at that moment that I realized that I also needed to work on the quality of her lying but decided against taking on this new assignment in my own self interest.
Posted by Duane Smith at February 5, 2007 1:28 PM | Read more on Humor |
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Comments
I'm here via afarensis and find your blog to my liking.
I had an extraordinary teacher in the art of swearing. I worked part time in college in a kitchen where the cook was an ex-navy submariner. He could swear for two or three minutes straight without repeating a word, and his swearing had a wonderful rhythm and cadence to it. His cooking was every bit as good as his swearing too.
Posted by: chezjake at February 6, 2007 9:03 PM
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