“Oh, you hate your job? Why didn’t you say so? There’s a support group for that. It’s called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.”
-The Drew Carey Show
Tag Archive for 'quoted'
This month’s Glamour offers “16 Seduction Tips.” One of those tips:
In case you were wondering, I don’t advocate this.
Thanks to Jezebel for reading Glamour so I didn’t have to.
“I make a lot of money, but I don’t want to talk about that. I work very hard and I’m worth every cent.”
Really? Want to talk about hard work, Naomi? I’ll give you a hint. It involves continuing to put up with a horrible rich woman’s diva behavior every day despite the threat of a cell phone being thrown at you.
Context: Kirk and Luanne (Milhouse’s parents) get divorced, and Kirk thus loses his job at the cracker factory owned by Luanne’s family.
Kirk: You’re letting me go?
Cracker Factory Executive: Kirk, crackers are a family food, happy families. Maybe single people eat crackers, we don’t know. Frankly, we don’t want to know. It’s a market we can do without.
Kirk: So, that’s it after 20 years? “So long. Good luck?”
Cracker Factory Executive: I don’t recall saying “good luck.”
I was an English lit major in college, but I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to make a living as a poet. However, British poet David Whyte has managed to find a way to buck that trend by becoming an organizational consultant. How does he integrate his two professions? By bringing poetry into the workplace, of course.
“So much of leadership has to do with conversations, and making sure conversations happen,” Whyte said in a phone interview from his office north of Seattle. “If you look at the tradition of poetry – at Wordsworth, Coleridge, even contemporary poets like Mary Oliver – they’re all incredibly good at paying attention to what is occurring around them.”
For 20 years, Whyte has been speaking to corporations, crafting speeches from his literary influences and quoting from the more than 100 poems he has memorized. ”In many ways, poetry is about making you more dangerous again, and re-creating a kind of innocence you’ve had all along,” Whyte said.
Whyte urges managers and workers alike to find pockets of silence – as called for in every spiritual or contemplative tradition – to ask themselves questions. Or as he quoted poet Wallace Stevens: “Sometimes the truth depends on a walk around the lake.”
OK, then. I have some poetry for you.
I wanted to make money from verse
But others’ opinions of me were rather terse
So I had a brilliant idea one day
That I’d make companies pay
For poetry to make working slightly less worse.
In order to prepare for her role as Carrie Bradshaw’s assistant in the Sex and the City movie, what did Jennifer Hudson do? Why, trade places with her own assistant, Walter, of course. Here’s what Jennifer said in an interview with Newsblaze.com:
Oh, lord! I think it’s fun being somebody’s personal assistant. In a movie! But I’m not that organized. And I can’t work no computer! At all. Although I did switch roles with my assistant, so I could get the feel of it. Which I don’t think I did too good of a job! Like, I would answer my phone and say, ‘this is Walter’s assistant’.
Maybe more celebrities should try role reversing for a day and see how they like it. Ready when you are, Naomi.
The super-badass Cyndi Lauper tried to be an assistant once, but it didn’t really work out. About the job, she says:
I tried to work in an office. Apparently, my clothes weren’t right. I was a Gal Friday the 13th. I would answer phones and people would call up very upset. Then they’d call back screaming and yelling because I had to go to the file room and I would get sidetracked. I used to fall asleep reading the mail. I didn’t want to. But it was so boring to me and I hated it.
Oh, Cyndi. Want to be the first honorary member of the administrative professionals’ union we’re going to start?
Although this interview on Beliefnet is ostensibly about his new film The Music Within, it seems no reporter can talk to Ron Livingston without asking about his role as Peter in Office Space, the movie that launched a thousand disgruntled workers. Here’s what he had to say (interviewer’s question in bold):
I’m a firm believer in leaving the past in the past, but I have to ask about “Office Space.” Why do you think that film still resonates with so many people?
I think the fundamental story of that movie, which is about people trying to find where they fit in life, is just something everybody connects to. And the fact that [director] Mike Judge took it upon himself to make a movie about that without really trying to force a solution down everyone’s throat, and that he could do it in a lighthearted way, makes that movie still relevant to people. They just seem to like it.
We love you, Ron. Call us! Anyone who dumps Carrie Bradshaw on a Post-It will always be tops in our book.
“If you don’t like your job you don’t strike, you just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way.”
–Homer Simpson
We love Michael Urie’s portrayal of Marc, sycophantic and neurotic assistant to fashion magazine editrix Wilhelmina Slater (Vanessa Williams) on Ugly Betty. We’re also thrilled that the writer’s strike is over and we can get our Marc/Betty fix back. Michael gave a very personal interview to the L.A. Times recently. Among the things we learned? He, like us, is obsessed with Celebrity Rehab and, unlike us, is a giant “Fanilow.” Somebody needs to find a role for Barry Manilow on the show this season!
The interview can be found here.
