I work at a bank. When I relayed this tidbit to my buddy Rich, he asked, "Couldn't you find something more ethical? Wasn't the mafia hiring in your area?" Yes, banks are evil. But repugnance comes in degrees, morality in shades of gray. My bank, the one from which I now collect an arguably honorable paycheck, is better than most; it accepted no TARP bailout money and enjoys pretty high ratings for customer service. I can live with that. But if somebody makes me an offer I can't refuse... Most days, it's busy enough. I'm either helping customers with financial transactions, reading up on riveting new banking regulations and internal bank policies and procedures, filing, counting, organizing, sanitizing my hands for handling all that filthy money. But there are occasional lulls, during which a mind like mine is wont to wander. Today, on one such occasion, I was struck with snippets of self-amusing, cliché-riddled bank humor.
Hi. I'm Penny. Wanna meet my new boyfriend? His name is Bill.
You can always count on me to coin a phrase.
If bankers were gymnasts, they'd specialize in the vault.
Banking. Where nothing is constant but change.
Hey, it was just a few minutes.
Another few minutes, on another day -- though to be clear, I was not at the bank, but rather just cleaning the bathroom and listening to a painful interview on the radio -- had me pondering verbal fillers, those devices we all use to buy time to think, or to fill awkward silence between thoughts, especially when we're self conscious. There is, of course, the ubiquitous and timeless um and its famous cousin, uh. These were my favorites as a radio producer, because they're usually drawn out long enough to cut, which I always did, making the speaker sound brilliant. There's the teenager's favorite like, which has bled into the ranks of the middle aged. I have friends pushing 60 who use like like salt and pepper. In college, I had a friend who used all instead: She's all, "They were such jerks," and I'm all, "Why?" and she's all, "Because they were all, 'You look rich and snobby,' which I'm not, so I'm all, 'well, I'm not' and they're all, 'well you seem like it.'" And I'm all, "Wow, they do seem like jerks," and so on. I like all, much better than like.
There's the classy, Obama-esque look, which makes you seem smart as you pause to think of what to say next. It goes like this:
Wolf Blitzer: "Mr. President, you promised us change we can believe in. What happened?"
Barack (that's how he signs his personal emails to me): Well, Wolf, look, being president is not as easy as it seems, or as easy as we thought it would be and, look, we've had some setbacks, and certainly no support from the Republicans..."
There's a proliferation lately of what I'll call the intellectual's verbal filler of choice, sort of. I'm not fond of sort of. It's a pretentious version of like, but no less annoying. It works like an adverb, watering down verbs, diluting whatever follows. She was sort of pregnant. I was driving sort of fast when the cop pulled me over. They were sort of making out when his wife walked in. Right. There's Will Smith's fave, you know, which works well if used sparingly, but gets on people's nerves with overuse. I went through a you know phase as a kid. My mom was relentless with her parody in response, spewing back a plethora of you knows and worse, responding to every you know with, "No, I don't know," until I got the point. I know a fellow who uses please, which is, please, a very polite verbal filler. It's jolting for its weirdness, but effective in diffusing heated conversations. Not surprisingly, he's a lawyer.
When Bill Gates or Steve Jobs had time to think, they came up with ideas that changed the world. Of course, I don't suppose either of them ever worked at a bank, cleaned a bathroom or spent time splicing the opposite sides of ums together to make a sentence. Still, it appears the old NAACP slogan is true: a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Maybe it's the altitude.
More musings for Christmas. Until then, a a hui hou. Aloha!
Hi. I'm Penny. Wanna meet my new boyfriend? His name is Bill.
You can always count on me to coin a phrase.
If bankers were gymnasts, they'd specialize in the vault.
Banking. Where nothing is constant but change.
Hey, it was just a few minutes.
Another few minutes, on another day -- though to be clear, I was not at the bank, but rather just cleaning the bathroom and listening to a painful interview on the radio -- had me pondering verbal fillers, those devices we all use to buy time to think, or to fill awkward silence between thoughts, especially when we're self conscious. There is, of course, the ubiquitous and timeless um and its famous cousin, uh. These were my favorites as a radio producer, because they're usually drawn out long enough to cut, which I always did, making the speaker sound brilliant. There's the teenager's favorite like, which has bled into the ranks of the middle aged. I have friends pushing 60 who use like like salt and pepper. In college, I had a friend who used all instead: She's all, "They were such jerks," and I'm all, "Why?" and she's all, "Because they were all, 'You look rich and snobby,' which I'm not, so I'm all, 'well, I'm not' and they're all, 'well you seem like it.'" And I'm all, "Wow, they do seem like jerks," and so on. I like all, much better than like.
There's the classy, Obama-esque look, which makes you seem smart as you pause to think of what to say next. It goes like this:
Wolf Blitzer: "Mr. President, you promised us change we can believe in. What happened?"
Barack (that's how he signs his personal emails to me): Well, Wolf, look, being president is not as easy as it seems, or as easy as we thought it would be and, look, we've had some setbacks, and certainly no support from the Republicans..."
There's a proliferation lately of what I'll call the intellectual's verbal filler of choice, sort of. I'm not fond of sort of. It's a pretentious version of like, but no less annoying. It works like an adverb, watering down verbs, diluting whatever follows. She was sort of pregnant. I was driving sort of fast when the cop pulled me over. They were sort of making out when his wife walked in. Right. There's Will Smith's fave, you know, which works well if used sparingly, but gets on people's nerves with overuse. I went through a you know phase as a kid. My mom was relentless with her parody in response, spewing back a plethora of you knows and worse, responding to every you know with, "No, I don't know," until I got the point. I know a fellow who uses please, which is, please, a very polite verbal filler. It's jolting for its weirdness, but effective in diffusing heated conversations. Not surprisingly, he's a lawyer.
When Bill Gates or Steve Jobs had time to think, they came up with ideas that changed the world. Of course, I don't suppose either of them ever worked at a bank, cleaned a bathroom or spent time splicing the opposite sides of ums together to make a sentence. Still, it appears the old NAACP slogan is true: a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Maybe it's the altitude.
More musings for Christmas. Until then, a a hui hou. Aloha!
Comments
Cannot help myself, you know.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and Ron!
Anne