Sometimes I wonder

[hrj]

So I really do like being the office's "walking reference book for grammatical information, trivia, and odd facts". It's a fun little game and it gives people a non-threatening pigeonhole to stick some of my otherwise-potentially-annoying quirks in. But there are days when I have to ask, "What have these people done with their lives that they don't know these things?" Is it really that esoteric and arcane a bit of knowlege who and what the Faust is behind "Faustian bargain"? It's not a litmus test -- it's just an example. But a lot of them are like that. My sanity is currently being saved by the admin who's been temporarily stuck in our bullpen due to some office-moving limbo. She and I are on similarly off-kilter wavelengths a lot of the time and half the time we're the only ones who laugh at each others' jokes. Don't get me wrong, I get along just fine with my co-workers. Couldn't ask for better. But I crave people whose minds are stuffed with something other than basketball, shoes, and American Idol.

Comments

[etfb.livejournal.com]

I sympathise, but my workplace isn't too bad. For example, one of the standard bits of test data we use for testing our medication management software is a list of fictional people, and the list includes one Miss Minnie Bannister. It was her 90th birthday last Tuesday, and with a little coaxing from me, the boss of our testing team brought in cake and we had a celebration in her honour. After all, she's done a lot of work for the company over the years, being dosed up with all sorts of electronic drugs, so it seemed fitting to celebrate an important milestone. I mean, she's so old she doesn't even trigger the "possible complications if pregnant" filter when you prescribe Warfarin!

I played a recording of Milligan and Sellers as Minnie Bannister and Henry Crun, singing "Dance With Me Henry"; it was widely agreed that this was the highlight of the day.

[madfilkentist]

Maybe they think a "Faustian bargain" means the president of Harvard is content with a lower salary than she could have demanded?

Once I took my cat, named Johann Sebastian Bach (Bast rest his soul), to a vet and gave his name to the receptionist. She asked without any indication of recognition, "Is that your last name too?"

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

The friend who's cat birthed our kitty named him "Sir Francis Drake," and half the receptionists at the vet look puzzled. Sigh.

HRJ, I don't have nearly as many odd pigeonholes as you do, but I do understand the problem viscerally. At least it gives me good excuses for making up arcane passwords and machine names.

(One of our engineers named a piece of security software that managed passwords and single-signon access "Kerberos," and finally had to post a FAQ because only a few of us knew what he was referencing.)

[madfilkentist]

The original Kerberos? Or is this a new piece of security software with the same name?

(The userpic this time is of a cat I named "Haydn," because that was what he did all the time.)

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

No, a new piece of software for a in-house production. (I did meet one of the designers for the original once....)

One of our cats is named "Archer," from the movie "Small Soldiers" (I think, the one with the toys who come to life?), because Archer was "good at hiding."

[duchessletitia.livejournal.com]

I had a co-worker once accuse me of trying to be superior because I used words she did not know. We finally settled on a system where she stopped in the middle of conversations to ask the meaning of words. I was amazed at the number of times she needed to ask.

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

In 3rd grade I was trying to use the words in the Readers Digest vocabulary test. My teacher finally told me that I was going to be totally disliked if I didn't stop that habit, because I was alienating the other students....Sigh.

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

I totally understand this.

[xrian.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm the "walking dictionary" over here. :>

[wulfsdottir.livejournal.com]

I run into people every day that I want to chain in libraries after screeching at them to read a book already. The worst days are when it's that goober in the mirror. I think I might be getting a little of my motheaten memory back, though, since I was actually able to trip a cascade about the civil war the other day. For the last seven years, it's been very neatly labelled, but extremely empty file cabinets in the dusty part of my mind...