Last week my husband and I were afforded the opportunity to go see the San Diego Padres play the Milwaukee Brewers, courtesy of a client. We got to sit in the sky box and watch the game while munching on appetizers and reclining on a leather sofa. Although it was a work thing, so we had to talk about work stuff every now and then with the client.
All in all, it was a pretty entertaining game. And then there was the ride home.
Because of the scarcity of parking downtown, where the stadium is, a group of us from the office carpooled to the game. One of those people happened to be a Really Important Person who was in town from our corporate office in Kansas City, Missouri. Like, my boss’s boss’s boss kind of person. You know, the president of our whole company.
It turns out, the Padres had a pretty good game and soundly trounced the Brewers. In the car ride back, I heard the boss’s boss’s boss ask one of my co-workers,
“Where is Milwaukee at?”
I thought about this question for a minute. It occured to me that there was NO WAY he was actully asking what it sounded like he was asking. I started to open my mouth to answer – and then thought better of it. I closed my mouth. The question wasn’t being asked of me, after all. And I do have a history of making stupid comments before I think them through.
However, he then asked the question two more times.
“Do you know where Milwaukee is at?”
I couldn’t help myself. I just couldn’t. I mean, surely my boss’s boss’s boss, being the Really Important Person that he was in our company, knew where Milwaukee was at. But he had asked the question three times and the poor man did not have an answer yet! I had to at least tell him something. Since I wasn’t quite sure it was really the answer he was looking for, it came out more like a question:
“Wisconsin?”
He looked at me for a second, then said, deadpan, “Yeah, Krista, I don’t get out of Missourah much.”
All I have to say is that THANK GOD my boss’s boss’s boss has a sense of humor. He was, obviously, not asking in which state was the city of Milwaukee. He simply wanted to know where they ranked in the baseball standings, so he could judge the weight of the Padre’s sound victory at the game.
I believe everyone in that car was laughing at me for a full 10 minutes. At least the boss’s boss’s boss was laughing as well.
