Friday, February 6, 2009

The Tom and Tim Show -- Episode 2

Note for the guys: This one is 100% true (at least, as I remember it).

It was Tom and Tim who showed me that I wasn’t cut out to be a motivational speaker.

Poindexter (not his real name), our Systems Analyst, had an odd gait; rolling onto the ball of his leading foot with each step, so that his body bobbed up and down like a merry-go-round pony when he walked. His glasses looked like they'd been ground from the bottom of a pair of highball glasses, and behind them his eyes were always in motion, not just roaming, but flickering. His eyesight was so poor that he practically had to be on top of things to see them.

Our boss thought Poindexter was brilliant, but among the staff he was less popular. He had a reputation for being a little too touchy with the department females, which we, at least in part, excused because of his bad vision, but Tim and Tom flat-out hated him. To his face they were barely courteous. Behind his back they made endless mockery – of his walk, of his eyesight, of his habit of trailing his finger along his computer screen and leaving marks that they insisted were nose-prints.

I wasn’t wild about Poindexter, either – he once lifted a necklace I was wearing right off my chest, all but burying his face in my bosom to look at the pendant --but one day he told me a story that made me view him differently. We were talking about our eyesight – mine was poor, too – and he said his was caused by something that happened before he was born. His mother had tried to have him aborted.

I was in my twenties, sappy enough to fall for a hard luck yarn and naive enough to think that a sad story could change people’s hearts and minds. So I related the tale to Tom and Tim, figuring that compassion would make them ease up on the poor guy.

And it actually seemed to work. Over the next couple of weeks, they stopped giving him grief. I felt pretty good about my powers of persuasion, right up until I walked into Tom’s cube and saw a cartoon that looked a lot like this hanging on his wall:

Zig Ziglar, I think your job is safe….

17 comments:

  1. Great story. What was the truth of it though, do you know? (Cynic, me!)

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  2. Gotta say...I'm glad I'm not in an office environment anymore!

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  3. Kinda makes my 'Chucky' nightlights a little creepy aye...COOL!

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  4. Wow...gotta love co-workers.

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  5. My Mom tried to abort me too, but fortunately I was 18 yrs. old, and could defend myself...

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  6. OMG - somehow you hope kids grow out of this sort of thing when they become adults.

    Apparently not.

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  7. Being home alone all day sounds better and better.

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  8. Oh no! Was the story true I wonder! I would have believed it too.

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  9. Wow that sure sounds like and iteresting enviornment to work in.

    Thanks for stopping by from SITS today. I am very sorry to hear about losing you mother when she was so young.
    Hopefully all the work that the American Heart Assoc is going to try to raise awareness in women will help women become more informed and they will be able to take an active roll in preventing it from happening to them.

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  10. Okay, seriously, just when you think you have any chance of hope for "man"kind ...

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  11. dont think for a minute that because you dont see a comment from me that I am not reading -everything-

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  12. I can't understand it. Everyone knows you are the greatest motivational speaker ever.
    Right up there with you direction giving skills!

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