How to be remembered...

I'm attempting to follow in the footsteps of Condon (it looks sorta funny when I step through doors sideways) and just pick a topic every day or so to write about. So here goes nothin...

At my job, I meet a lot of people from all around the world. I make daily calls to Moscow, Budapest, England, and South Africa. I've found that you need to really make an impression on the person if they are going to remember who you are.

After some serious research (watching SNL) and experimentation (pulling pranks on co-workers) I believe that I have devised a comprehensive guide to making someone remember who you are.

I've broken it down in to the following categories:

The Zack Morris impression:
You look the part, and you talk the part, but you have no idea what you're doing.
Example: One of my biggest duties is to be a laison between our programmers and clients. I help the clients decide what changes need to be made to the software and then tell the programmers what they need to do. One day, I was talking to my head client. Mind you, this was my second week at the job. He started talking all this jibba-jabba about minor details that I've never heard of...so I smiled and nodded, and pretended to know exactly what he was talking about. But then he asked me a question. Why did he have to ask me a question??? So I was honest. I said "Paul, I gotta be honest here. I have no idea what you've been talking abut this entire time. I haven't even seen the program that we're working on yet." Well, long story short, he knows who I am...he'll never forget the incompetent kid who was put in charge of his project.


The O.C. impression:
You mack on the wrong woman.
Example: I have a lot of bosses...it's like Office Space. If I do something wrong then I get 10 phone calls about it. Well, one day I was getting some coffee (read as: coffee flavored ice cream) from the kitchen and I saw an attractive woman. It's not very common to meet a girl who's near to my age and this good looking. So, I hit on her. I laid it on smooth like butter. I even asked her to get some lunch with me. That was when boss #6 walked in...and kissed this beautiful women right in front of me (I somehow missed the ring on her finger). I don't know if she ever said anything to him about it...but she sure knows who I am now...


The Foot-In-Mouth impression:
I think you can figure this one out on your own
Example: One of the things I do here, is try to be a face of the company which I represent (symbiosys). People feel more comfortable knowing that someone from the company is always on hand to help with a problem. So I try to get to know people and befriend them. On one such soon-to-be-dreadful day, I was talking to a client about his hobbies and family. I noticed a picture of him with his wife. Now, this guy is like 50 years old...and his wife looks only slightly older than me. So I say "Hey, Bill, how did you land a wife like that? She's a fox." I'm not sure if I said fox...but it was something similar. and this was his reply, "Well, Rob (pause) That's my daughter. (longer pause) And she's 17."


There are more, I'm sure. And I've made positive impressions. But these are much funnier.


Disclaimer: The preceding was an advertisement, and a dramatization. Events may, or may not, have occurred as depicted by the author.

Tune in on Monday for the horrible story about how Matt Weng ran over a pig while driving once.