 I’m the chick who always puts her foot in her mouth. Sometimes I open my mouth, and the wrong words just come flying out. It’s a tricky gig being me, my brain and mouth don’t always operate on the same frequency. Fortunately, I’ve been blessed with a wicked sense of humor and the ability to laugh louder at myself than all the people around me. But needless to say, it can be very embarrassing.
Years ago, when I was just starting out in the insurance world, I was hired to work for Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown was a very old-fashioned southern gentleman. He was, if nothing else, steadfast in his convictions. He never swore, never told a dirty joke, and never said anything even remotely inappropriate. I made concentrated efforts to be as ladylike as possible when he was around.
One morning Mr. Brown asked me to call an insured and break the bad news about his denied claim. Said insured was known to be the meanest, most hateful, scariest insured ever to walk the planet. I knew that it would be a hard call to make, dreaded it, and put it off… while I worked up the courage. I got busy doing other things while working up the courage though, and kind of forgot about it.
After lunch Mr. Brown came to me and asked how the call went. I’m not a good liar and making excuses is a stupid, so I decided to just be honest.
I wanted to say that I didn’t have the ‘nerve’ to call because I was scared. But, in the same split second that I started talking, I decided to say that I didn’t have the ‘guts’. The first part of ‘nerve’ got mixed with the last part of ‘guts’… and ‘I don’t have the nuts!’ is what came out of my mouth.
Mr. Brown just stood there, like a tree, he was in both shock and awe. I was instantaneously mortified. I tried not to laugh. I tried to explain. He called me into his office and stoically advised me not use that kind of language anymore.
Working for Mr. Brown tested my salt in more ways than one. Luckily, there was Penny, my coworker who appreciated random acts of nuttiness as much as me. We reveled in it in fact, and used every opportunity we could to showcase our flair for zany antics.
Mr. Brown was out of the office more than he was in it, which behooved our shenanigans to no end. Even though we played a lot Penny and I worked hard. Business eventually doubled and it was time to hire another hand. A Want Ad was placed in the paper and soon there would be new blood in our mix.
I remember one girl who came in, I handed her an application, but I knew that Mr. Brown wouldn’t hire her. I felt bad because she was wasting her time so I had to do something to help. While she sat there dutifully filling in the blanks I told her how awful the office was to work in. I told her all about the hysterectomy I was forced to have on account of all the asbestos in the ceiling. Penny didn’t miss a beat as she confirmed the horrors and expressed disgust over the fact that Mr. Brown didn’t even let me file workers comp. We were so engrossed in our fantastic fiction I barely caught a glimpse of her bolting for the door.
Other obviously hopeless candidates were subjected to my painfully incoherent lisp or Penny’s violent stutter. Humanitarians is what we were. No sense in giving them false hopes.
Somehow Mr. Brown ended up hiring Perry, a man ten years his junior but nearly identical in stoic resolve. Penny and I weren’t thrilled but it was only a matter of time before he was putty in our hands.
On Perry’s first day we initiated him with a rigged game of charades. He had to be a ballerina, a cat on a hot tin roof, and a mermaid. He performed brilliantly while Penny took pictures with her phone. On his second day I told him he was going to have to dive in and stop asking so many questions. I taped a sign to his monitor that read, ‘I’m not dealing with your issues today.’
Soon he began getting prank phone calls from Tammy and Paula. He was clueless to the fact that they were being made from inside our office. As it turned out, Perry was a great sport, and we were very pleased. He never got irritated despite our unwavering attempts to drive him over the edge.
We were never able to successfully rattle Mr. Brown until the day the Girls Only box showed up in the bathroom. Wrapped in pink wrapping paper and filled to the brim with tampons, heavy flow pads, anti-itch creams, and Summer’s Eve; it looked downright perky perched on the back of the toilet.
I knew the temptation to open the shoebox would be impossible for him to resist and it was only a matter of time. The Girls Only box would be my vindicator, and it was.
I was the only witness but I heard it all go down. The calamity, the mysterious crash, and the expletives that rolled off his tongue. He came out of the bathroom as pale as a ghost and hid his face in shame. I felt mild remorse so I took him some coffee. He apologized for his vulgarities and asked me to remove the box as soon as possible.
Sweet redemption was mine.
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