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Babies
Today during the lunch hour, we had a lovely baby shower for one of our co-workers. This being her first pregnancy, many ladies with pregnancy experience shared stories and tidbits of advice.
Jan on going back to work: “When my oldest was 3 months old, I volunteered at a juvenile court because I was bored out of my mind at home.”
Jan on living with a newborn: “You soon learn to do anything with various forms of moisture on yourself.”
Sisters
Jan met sisters Salily (sounds like, “Sally”) and Sara at the same time. The older sister will be starting a job a day before her younger sister starts.
Jan: Now, who is older, Salily or Sara? I keep mixing it up!
Ellie: Salily.
Jan: Okay. I can remember that. “Sally” was the name of my oldest paper doll.
Employment Counseling
Jan had just been chatting with me in my office about setting a time to meet with a client. A couple minutes later, two of my co-workers came to my office giggling a bit, looking for the office camera, and remarking about Jan. I asked, “What’s going on?” My co-worker replied, “You should see Jan in the lobby doing some employment counseling.” Confused by this statement and knowing there must be some spectacle taking place in the lobby, I rushed to our windowed lobby to see Jan lounging on top of the lobby coffee table while two clients sat nearby. The accompanying photo is a couple minutes later.
Town Crier
This last week, the term “town crier” came to our minds as Jan and I heard a woman describe her work experience. This woman was tasked with “telling news” in the refugee camp. In an effort to exchange cultural information and educate this woman and her interpreter on our repeated use of the word “town crier,” we gave some (poor) examples of what a town crier might’ve said back in the old days.
Me: “Meeting!…. later today!”
Jan: “Storm’s coming!” and then with a laugh, “Everybody get your guns!”
"So, do you think he is the Housekeeping Manager? Because his voicemail says, “Housekeeping Manager,” but his business card says, “Operational Manager.” I mean, that guy doesn’t have a housekeeping bone in his body!"
Jan Greene
Hidden Messages
A couple weeks ago, Jan went to visit her mother in Florida. She needed to submit her online timecard while there, but forgot her passcode… or username… or both. I’m not blaming her - I do this, too. So, she called up my co-worker, Ellie, for some assistance. I was chatting with another co-worker in our office as Ellie starts searching for the username on any post-it note at Jan’s desk; she relays something to Jan and then hangs up the phone. A few minutes later, Ellie’s phone rings again. After a brief exchange, Ellie is looking through drawers at Jan’s desk again. Then, Ellie looks across the room.
*pause*
Jan likes art. She is an artist herself. She likes to decorate with original works of art, including vases and beautiful pieces of pottery.
*resume story*
Ellie starts giggling and walks to the opposite side of the room where a large, completely opaque, pumpkin-shaped bowl/vase with a little lid sits on top of a filing cabinet. Yes. Ellie then removes said lid, reaches her arm down into the giant vase, all the while laughing. (We are laughing with her at this point.) After pulling out random items (Christmas garland, rubber hamburger dog toy), she found a small sticky note with Jan’s username written on it.
Mohammeds
You may already know that “Mohammed” is the most common name in the world - in it’s various transliterations. As such, the name comes up quite often when you are working to help people from all over the world. We have Mohameds from Burma, M_h_m_ds (where _= any of the following vowels: a, o, u) from Somalia, and Mohammeds from Iraq.
You can imagine that one must know a Mohammed’s “last name” (it’s truly not a last name, but that’s a different topic altogether) to keep things straight. Sometimes this proves difficult as a last name might be outside the realm of English-speaking pronunciation, so the “last name” gets butchered into some mispronounced American version.
In an effort to pronounce someone’s name correctly, we ask multiple times, which probably gets old to the name holder. So, then, we might ask another person from the same country. Such a thing happened yesterday.
Jan, Ellie and I discovered that we were totally saying Mohammed Fatehi’s last name incorrectly after discussing it with his fellow countryman. We were saying something like “fa-TAY-hee” when in fact it was closer to “FA-te-HEE.” Later in the day, we were talking about him again and tried to remember how to say his name.
Jan: “So, we need to call Mohammed Fa…ta… Fat-teh…?”
Ellie: “I think it’s Fa-te-HEE, isn’t it?”
Me: “Yeah, that sounds pretty good. Fa-te-HEE.”
Jan: (with a hint of an Italian accent) “FAH, ta, HEE.”
Ellie: “Ooo! That sounds Italian!”
Jan: “How about Mohammed Fettucine?”
And now, we giggle every time we say his name - whether it’s Fatehi or Fettucine.
Entries from the Janlish Dictionary
I plan to compile enough words Jan makes up to publish a book.
blah·dee·doonoun\blä-`dee-doo\ DEFINITION : nonsensical filler word; someone’s name <gave blahdeedoo a big earful>
weird·zoo adj \ˈwird-zü\ DEFINITION : very weird <the whole thing was just wierdzoo>
jamb·ly adv\ˈjam-blē\ DEFINITION : in a confused or mixed up manner
thing·a·bob noun\ˈthiŋ-ə-ˌbäb\ DEFINTION : something that is hard to classify or whose name is unknown or forgotten; also see THINGAMABOB
