As a software trainer, I’ve had to work in some embarrassing places.
There’s the normal level of weird like in a small office with fighting spouses or a frigid January in Wisconsin at the Friskies pet care plant (nothing like the smell of “meat mix” to put you off food for a while).
Since I live in Southern California, there’s also the usual-to-us venues like soap operas and movie studios. Even though I’ve often walked away shaking my head muttering, “5’10 and 125 pounds is NOT FAT,” for the most part I just take it in stride.
Until my database project with the porn clinic.
Yep, you heard me. Porn. Clinic. This is a health clinic that caters to “the adult film industry,” testing them to make sure they’re able to work without spreading disease.
You know I love undies as much (if not more) than the next gal but I just could NOT relax with people walking back and forth in the area where I worked, dropping their drawers to show off a new tattoo or a snazzy new thong.
I couldn’t focus with photos of naked entwined bodies, or close-ups of crotches, dropping onto the desk next to me with loud complaints about having to do “X and such” with “so-and-so.”
Database work is painstaking and it was um…a very distracting work environment.
I swear to God, I wanted to pin this sign to my back and tell them all to “Leave me alone!”
The final kicker came when a friendly gent named Billy Banks came over and started giving me a neck and shoulder massage. I don’t know about you, but I DON’T DO MASSAGING AT THE OFFICE.
I turned beet red and told him I was fine (even though my shoulders were locked up around my ears from stress by this point). The clinic administrator (my friend, who got me the gig) steered Billy away with a severe scolding to “Leave the civilian alone. She’s a friend of mine!” (Civilian? WTH?)
Billy sent me a huge smile over his shoulder as he left and said, “Hey, if you step into the other room for a test, we can make it a full body massage tonight!”
Never before or since have I ever been propositioned at work. Certainly, no one’s ever matched Billy’s style!
Perhaps I’m just sheltered, but I swear my jaw dropped. This world, where people could casually stroll through, parade around half-naked or offer to have sex with strangers made no sense to me.
I dragged my friend to lunch and by the time we were finished eating, I had the outline for a book with a “civilian” heroine who had to go work in – you guessed it – a porn clinic.
The place…Billy…the photos…the pheromones… They’re all imprinted on my brain forever. There’s just nothing like having porn intrude in your workspace (*if you know what I mean*).
What’s the most embarrassing moment YOU’VE had at work? Details and locations, please! Enquring minds always want to know these things here at More Cowbell!
Jenny
ANNOUNCEMENT: Tomorrow’s Techie Tuesday is going to be like no other. I’m doing a post on OneNote and you’ll also be treated to a special history of THE COWBELL by K.B. Owen. I can’t wait for you to see this blogiversary treat!!
Holy smokes!!! I would fall over and die!!
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I can safely say that most people would’ve, Kasey. I mean, really…photos of copulation on my desk? Before coffee?? Come on!!
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Hahahaha. Jenny, I would have had a hard time concentrating too. But probably because I would have been dancing on the desks with all the other people. And a free backrub? When is that ever bad? You might not have guessed this about me, but I have a little exhibitionist who lives inside of me. She’s wild. 😉
Seriously. Probably. Or hyperbole from a housewife. You decide.
Off to do laundry.
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I love your hyperbole, Renee! And I’ve seen you do your hat dance on video, so I’ve got your number. (You AND that little vixen who lives inside.) 🙂
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Now that went a bit far! Perhaps projecting with a porn clinic made a lot of your co-workers looser?
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“Looser” is a kind term, Chihuahua!
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O.M.G. That’s definitely book material!
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It most definitely is, Patricia (it’s the fiction I put aside for my memoir)! 🙂
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Now now, Jenny. Porn didn’t intrude on your work space, you intruded on porn’s work space.
Makes for a great story, though. 🙂
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Excellent point, Mike! they were indeed doing what they normally do. It’s just not normal for the office space. (They forget to keep it to the set.)
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I spent almost twenty years as a software trainer, and not once did anyone give me a massage…
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That’s crazy talk, John!! Evidently, you weren’t teaching in the right places. (I consider you lucky, FYI!) What did you teach?
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I did training for MSA/D&B Software/Geac, primarily technical training. When I left there, I worked for Servigistics, training the whole product to clients and to new hires. I did consulting as well. They kept me busy…
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That’s fantastic, John! The only tech training I’ve done is Microsoft and Lotus Notes.
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Jeez, creepy much? LOL I would have screamed and ran away!
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LOL, Juliana! I wanted to, but I had a database to do. 🙂
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I am laughing so hard right now. Probably not what you were going for, but thanks for making my day brighter 🙂
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LOL, Lori – we always laugh on Monday’s here so my mission was successful if you busted a gut laughing. 🙂 Why should I be the only one?
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LMAO porn is a business and they treat the “work” they do as if it mattered. Never got into porn after I read a report on the industry in a semi-Right wing mag. A cop who raided a porn sight seemed fixated that the female star had dirty feet. She was boinking a guy on camera. Dirty feet aren’t the problem.
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Tom, do you know what the name of the database was? (It kills me every time I say it.)
The Talent Database.
No foolin…
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Laughing hard! I once had a job like yours, but I taught people to use copiers, faxes and phone systems, instead of software. Dallas certainly isn’t Hollywood, but we have our fair share of sexually related businesses. Sometimes I knew what I was getting into, just from the name of the place, but sometimes something like “John Doe” Publishers, would catch me unawares. How was I supposed to guess I was walking into a place where they produced all those weekly newspapers sexual adventurers utilize to find one another? Some days I miss it – most days I don’t!
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Fabulousness, Jane! And wow…did you ever just lift one of the papers to see what they had to say? I’d have HAD to. Enquiring minds need to know and all… 🙂
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Oh my goodness! I’ve worked on a church staff, so I’d have to say that our job experiences here run the gamut. LOL. I’d give the advice of “just keep your head down,” but I’m guessing that phrase wouldn’t sound quite the same in that environment. (I can’t believe I said that.) As we say in the south, bless your heart!
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LMAO, Julie!!! I’m dying over here at “the church lady” giving me an *if you know what I mean*!!! OMG, where is Leanne Shirtliffe when we need her? LOL.
I can already tell you’re going to be the one to get me in trouble. You’ll sit there looking all innocent and will say something to make me guffaw in the middle of a workshop. Curses!
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Perhaps instead of saying “I can’t believe I said that,” I should have qualified it with “I can’t believe I said that so loudly.” LOL.
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OMG…ROFL…I gotta say THAT work experience trumps any I can come up with. However, awesome story material. I so want to read that book Jenny! Get writing 🙂
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Yes, but you have FOUR boys. I’m sure your writing material is constantly multiplying like rabbits.
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Sounds like an interesting book. Well, when life hands you lemons as they say. I would not have handled that very gracefully. lol
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No? You’d have been like CC down lower in the comments and decked the guy? She’s a feisty one, that Christine!
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Is the guy who invited you there still a friend?
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The GAL who invited me there is still my BFF…but she doesn’t work there anymore. She used to call herself “the Christian in green scrubs” while she worked there. And the stories have definitely worked their way into my fiction. 🙂
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Wowzer–my “holy crap” work moment (when I still worked at a real job) was the associate who told filthy jokes and blocked me in narrow hallways so I’d have to rub against him to pass by. I didn’t. Stood and glared and told him to move. He just grinned. And this was an attorney’s office, you’d think they’d know better!
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Wowzer is right. Touchy-feely offices give me the heebie-jeebies. (How’s that for some clean words?) 🙂
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Hilarious, Jenny! Sounds like the premise for a great short story or novel bit. 😉 I’ve had lots embarrassing work experiences. One took place in NYC when I was modeling underwear with 11 others—half girls, half guys. The guys hands and shoulders covered our other-wise bare breasts. The guys were more embarrassed than we ladies, particularly when the fans came in to reduce the um…hard parts. LOL
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Nooo??!! OMG, I don’t think I could be naked at work. Even if that WAS the work! I’m a definite “non-stripper.”
p.s. Hard bits…LOL…
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Nothing I could say could ever beat this. OMG, Jenny, this is hilarious. When you write the book, I want to read all about how your heroine deals with the total embarrassment! 🙂
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I promise, Sheila. It was just beyond the tools I had at the time and I mostly stammered. However, my heroine? I’ll let her do all sorts of things. 🙂
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Yikes. Sounds an awful lot like the backstage part of my job (theater). Lots of half-or-more-naked people who are always trying to, for lack of a better phrase, stand out. Great post!
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OY! I’m sure you get used to it, but I don’t think I’d want my co-workers to “stand out” around me. Really, just stay in… I’m great with that.
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Hate to say it, since your post is hilarious, but I am a massage therapist. There is nothing wrong or sexual about a shoulder rub at work OR a full body massage. The massage organizations work hard to ensure people know that we are a health care profession. It sounds like this guy wasn’t just giving you a shoulder rub, he was either teasing you or trying to pick you up and that’s a whole different deal.
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In a massage therapy environment, I wouldn’t find it out of line. But in an office desk in front of a computer on my FIRST DAY there? Holy cowbell, he scared the crap outta me!
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Oh, Jenny! Unbelievable. Good thing I didn’t know that before I wrote your “history” LOL! Looking forward to our swap tomorrow, girlfriend!
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Yep, you’d have fried my face in tomorrow’s post. I’d have been red all day long, since half my co-workers read my blog. Of course, they’re all buried in taxes right now so I might get a reprieve…
So excited about tomorrow!!
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Wow! Jenny, what are you like?
When I was a young thing, it was my first job in an International Bank (so you’d think the clientele would have style) I was asked to take a tray of coffee into the manager’s office. I should point out my skirt was not short. As I placed the tray on the table, the ‘client’ slipped his hand under my skirt. My boss stared at me because I’d jerked and had big eyes before blushing the colour of beetroot. I don’t come from Glasgow for nothing, my temper spiked, I turned round and gave him a golf swing of a slap across his face and told my boss what he’d done before I walked out.
The ‘client’ was shown the door and his account closed.
Even then, at nineteen, I had zero tolerance.
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You GO, girl!!! I love it! And good for you boss for closing the account for “the groper!”
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Just hopped over from a-z! I can’t think of anything terribly entertaining from my years of office work before I did the stay at home thing, but in my recent life as a cleaning lady, I did suck up a woman’s um…restraints from the post of h bed in the vacuum cleaner hose…oops!
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Hi Andrea!!! OMG, restraints in the vacuum??! Did you have to go dig ’em out? Don’t want to upset the bondage twins when they get home from work and find no restraints, you know. LMAO…
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Oh my gosh. Seriously!? That’s nuts! Literally. LOL! You take the cake with that story for sure.
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Yep, seriously. It was about 8 years ago, and the whole experience is burned into my brain. LOL. 🙂
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I’m pretty sure you win the award for most embarrassing moment at a job.
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LOL, Sheena! Thanks for stopping by. I love meeting new people (as long as they’re not throwing nekked photos at me)!
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And the title of this post was: “No Porn On The Job” – and why not? If porn is the job then there will be porn on the job, Right? It can make for a great certain kind of job! 🙂
This was a great post Jenny! As for other readers, I laughed and had a smile on my face long after I had finished reading the post. I had also to share it with some friends who would get a kick out of it and would be smiling too!
Monique
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Thanks, Monique! I’m glad you liked it. I hear what you’re saying about porn BEING the job, but hello?? Get your body parts out of my face…
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Oh, Jenny. Write what you know.
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LOL, Sherry! I’m trying…I’m trying…
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Ha ha, where did you find that No Entry sign?
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I found that sign on Google images. I believe my search term was “Work in Progress.” Isn’t it a stitch?
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Ha! One of the best awful work stories ever….and it will make one hysterical read!
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Thanks, Nadja. It was a moment, that’s for sure. 🙂
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I think I love the fact that they have a clinic for porn stars! That’s 100% cracklesauce. Billy is a hoot. I wonder what he would’ve done if you went in the other room. Guess we’ll never know.
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Hey, adult film stars have health needs too, you know! Plus, they like to be with their brethren. There’s not a boundary to be found in the whole place. 🙂
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That’s just… priceless! As is the fact that my hubby looked over and saw your post pictures as I was reading *giggles*
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OMG, Ruthie! That is hilarious!!! Why is it that the guys seem to have that radar that says, “Sex over here…get to reading!” But they do. 🙂
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