We love jokes in this house. Love love love them!
Puns, clever and whitty jokes, bad jokes, and even… the practical joke.
In fact I am famous (in my household) for the “rubber band on the dish sprayer” joke. It’s always a crowd pleaser. Unless of course you have to be the wet victim… then I hear it’s not so funny.
Tonight however it is my father who gets the “Best practical joke” award.
Several weeks ago my father installed a fancy under-the-counter Stereo thing in the Kitchen for my mother. We love it. It has a radio with all these pre-sets, a CD player and a clock. Plus in the location he installed it, it gets great reception. KQED comes in perfectly.
Earlier this evening my parents and I were in the kitchen getting dinner ready. At some point my mother asked “Why aren’t we listening to NPR?” (I don’t spend any time in the kitchen really without NPR.) So I said something like “They have been telecasting the Alito hearings all day, and it just depressed me to keep listening to them, so I turned it off.” “Well they should be over now. Let’s see!” she piped up.
She turned on the brand new fancy radio and tried to find KQED (88.5 FM in case you were wondering). It is set as the first pre-set station. However whenever she hit the pre-set button, it would skip to the next station or switch to the AM band or maybe just turn itself off all together. After a minute I went over to help her and we both began frantically hitting buttons and trying to figure out WHY we couldn’t get it to work. This frantic button pushing and wacky maneuvering went on for about five minutes before we noticed my father giggling behind us.
It turns out he had the fancy remote… and was messing with us the whole time. (We had forgotten all about the fancy remote. It has a magnet on it and is kept on the refrigerator. He had subtly grabbed it and every time we pushed one button, he would push another.)
I would be upset, but I was laughing too hard.
I just had my first job interview since returning home.
It was with an organization that provides in home care for people with disabilities. I met with the owner of the company and her office assistant. The owner was a very nice woman who has been an RN for about 30 years. She is an SF native and we talked for about 2 hours about nursing, hospice, healthcare, spirituality, and San Francisco. It seemed like more of a visit than an interview.
I really like her. We connected in a very…comfortable way.
She offered me a job (provided my background stuff checks out).
Then her office assistant told me I would need to take out my nose ring. She also made several disparaging comments on my hair.
She went on about how, the company has many older patients and we needed to respect them by living by their “professional” standards. I just stood their dumbfounded.
The whole conversation left a real bad taste in my mouth.
I am not sure I’m willing to take out my nose ring. I lived without it for several years in order to better fit into a corporate environment. I hated it. I really like the way my face looks with my nose ring and I recognize myself in a mirror when I see it. It is a big part of how I see myself.
Do I pass this gig up because of it?
Do I compromise and remove the ring or maybe get a small stud or something?
How am I going to handle this?
It is the first offer I have gotten… there could be others.
What would you do?