Every Monday afternoon, I am cordially invited required to attend our weekly management meeting. Generally, it’s a complete waste of time where nine of my coworkers seize the opportunity of having a captive audience to bitch about their subordinates and supervisors. “Oh, you are in trouble with your jerk boss because your jerk employees aren’t doing their jobs? Only one jerk missing in *that* chain, my friend.”

Anyway, it’s usually so mind-numbing that I tune out, possibly missing some tasty bloggables. Today, I sat on a shelf next to Mr. MeatsForOpiates and leaned back just enough so the boss couldn’t see that I had my eyes closed. I came around just in time to hear the Deli Manager say, “Sometimes, when I cut my cheese…”, which elicited a good-sized, and somewhat surprising, “HA!” This caused Mr. MFO to jump and hit his head on the bunker where we were sitting, which made me laugh even harder. PITA pulled his head out of the boss’ booty so that he could shoot hate eyes my way.

After the boss was finished hearing complaints (I don’t mean the complaining was over, I mean he walked away while someone was still going on about something and never came back. It’s how he is.), PITA took over with a lesson about July’s “Company Spotlight”, which is harassment. He distributed a hand out, which was just a copy of the one page of the employee handbook that covers the subject. He read aloud from the sheet about what constitutes harassment. “Something something DISCRIMINATION something something RACE something something GENDER something something SEXUAL ORIENTATION…” and so on. “I’ll tell you what else is important,” he said, his volume slightly higher, “recognizing what ISN’T harassment.” Where was PITA going and why did he keep looking at me? He went on, “For instance, your boss telling you ‘Hurry up, you’re working too slow’ is NOT harassment. Even if he tells you thirty times in one day. STILL not harassment.” I looked around at my fellow employees like, “Yeah, you guys, that’s not harassment!”

*gulp*