Laudations

"When she agreed to have me join her team a couple years ago, I doubt my new boss realized she would be fielding questions about the best solutions for cleaning dog vomit out of carpets and the proper application of banana guns in the workplace. She puts up with a lot, and I'm grateful to have her."

This was the status I posted last evening on my favorite social media site.

I posted it because it's true.

Not only is this boss the first boss who's stuck with me for more than 18 months, she's the first boss who treats me like an equal and a friend. While having a relationship with one's boss outside of the typical office structure can make some individuals uncomfortable, I find it a refreshing change to being a pee-on and a nobody. My boss stands up for me, makes me feel important and valued and even takes time out of her busy schedule to care about me as a human instead of just an underling.

When Boyfriend of Amazingness's father passed away, my boss gave me bereavement and an open schedule to take as much time as I needed to make sure he was okay. She gave me a hug and told me to take special care.

When I was going through the house-buying process and we hit snag after snag, I started to feel distracted and frustrated and upset. She would call me into her office and ask about how it was going, and then offer words of encouragement or a hug. Not once did she berate me for my inattention to detail or the errors I made from not focusing.

She's full of funny stories about her pets and funny anecdotes to make me feel better about my own office nincompoopery because of some more nincompoopish individual who did something completely braindead.

And, in general, she's just a really sweet person.

Sure, there are people who disagree. If you cross my boss, you're in for a helping of wrath unparalleled by most in the mortal realm.

But if you treat her with basic decency, a portion of respect and general human compassion, she's a treat (and a hoot-and-a-half to boot).

Yesterday afternoon, I got a phone call from Boyfriend of Amazingness that the Young Master wasn't feeling well. He deposited the contents of his stomach onto our guest bedroom carpet. While Boyfriend of Amazingness picked up most of it, he's got a sympathetic tummy and the deeper cleaning was left to me.

Because this is my first dog for whom I am a primary owner, this was a new situation for me. Also because I'm a new homeowner, I've never been exposed to beige carpeting decorated with puppy hork before.

I needed help.

So I walked into my boss's office and said

"I have a question for you that has nothing to do with work."

Pushing away from her desk, my boss smiled and said "Okay, shoot. And, by the way - thank you for choosing me for these questions!"

Knowing her to be a lifelong-haver-of-pets, I laughed and opened with this:

"So... Have your cats ever thrown up on the carpet?"

She burst into a hearty laugh and said "Oh, many-many-many-many-many-many-many-many-many-many-many-many-MANY times!"

Being terribly

"I'm kind of glad to hear that... It seems that the Young Master is doing some redecorating for us. So now my question is... how do you get it up?!"

She laughed and filled me in on her best cleaning tips.**2

All that laudatory happiness aside, what I really wanted to share is the subsequent chain of chuckles that resulted from my original post:

"Engineer crap - dog vomit... just splittin' hairs."

"Nah, the vomit is easier to clean up!"

"Yes, it's hard to 'dab' an engineer and then SpotBot them..."

"But oh, wouldn't it be fun to try??"

"Well, they probably wouldn't know what was happening during the dabbing, but I bet we couldn't get them to sit still for the SpotBotting. And they would have to sit still."

"'Commence with the dabbing!' That's how this would go down."

And oh, my ReaderFriends, it would be glorious.**3


**1 I've been with one company for almost seven years. I've gone through five bosses in that time. That's a lot of bosses, and a lot of change. The only more frequently changing aspect of my work life is my cubicle, of which I am on number nine. Three of those happened within a span of 8 months. Talk about a dizzying situation - I was living out of boxes in my own office. What a mess.

**2 One of these is a SpotBot. Although I didn't need to resort to that, I was thrilled by the idea. You set it on the carpet and it does its cleaning dance, and then TA DA! It's like your carpet was never the recipient of partially-digested food stuffs. SpotBot is the anti-hork. All praises be unto it.

**3 Ever seen Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, where Caractacus goes to the circus and accidentally gives some guy a really horrid haircut? I imagine a SpotBotted EngineerFriend looks like that.