Nothing to See Here…

I’ve mentioned before that I work for a British company.  I’ve also mentioned that my boss isn’t just brilliant, he’s freaking hilarious too.  In fact, if the leadership team for my department was as strong in project execution as we are in humor (or ‘humour’), we’d get all our work done by 30-September and take the last quarter off. 

I started working for this company five years ago and it’s been an education in many ways.  I can now convert dollars to pounds in my head, I know that when a date reads 10/8/2007 it may well mean August 10th and not October 8th.  I know that some people like mashed up peas hidden under their fish and chips (not that I understand that one, but still…)  I know that the words fanny and pants will make the British people look at me funny because they mean something very different over there.  A slash is a stroke, the letter z is zed, a period is a full stop, and they prefer the letter s to the letter z in words like organisation.  When my document won’t print, I know to check and see if it’s set for A4 paper.  Stuff like that.

When last I visited my team in London, I somehow worked the word burglarized into a conversation.  “Burglarized?” my colleague said.  “What kind of a made up word is that?” 

Well, of course it isn’t made up.  But both my boss and my colleague insisted the word should be burgled.  BURGLED.  What a stupid word that is, right?  We were each exasperated with the other, but the debate raged on all week long.  That night at dinner, my boss poked at us Americans when he asked if he should pourerize some wine for me.  The next day in the conference room, he asked if I would capturize the white board notes before he eraserized them. 

You get the idea.  A real laugh riot.

It came up again the other day.  I got an email from my boss.  The subject line said “What does a robber do?”  Now, I’m not a moron, so I knew he was trying to trap me.  If I conceded that a robber robbed, he would then claim victory when stating that a burglar burgles. 

But I was too smart for him.

I replied answering his question with a question.  “What does a bastard do?”

He answered my question answering his question with another question.  “How long did it take you to think that up?”

We might have left it there, considered it an even draw.  But what fun would that be?

The next day, I got news about an unexpected hit to our already over-stretched budget.  I wrote to my boss and said “This is very disappointing.  I almost feel as if we’ve been robberized.”

His reply?

At least spell it properly.  It should be an S, not a Z.”

I give up.  It’s hopeless.  (Wildly entertaining, but hopeless!)

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If you’re interested in more escapades of my funny boss, you might want to read this old post.  It’s never boring!