If You Googled "Pasties," "Yooper," and "Microsoft Word," You're in the Right Place

So. Ten days in and I'm doing OK, right? Yes, some of my posts are lame (my BFF pronounces that "lem," very Valley Girlesque, as in, "my mahm is sehh lem!" and that is now how I always hear that word in my head, assuming it's used to mean "pathetic" as opposed to "crippled." Wait, where was I?), but I'm here! Granted, I haven't read anyone else's blog in weeks, and I'm relying on my househusband to prepare dinner, the leftovers of which I then use for lunch, but hey, that's why I set the bar knee-high.

Elly, who I think reads me out of pity, has offered up another topic for tonight, and I'm grabbing it. I keep making notes to myself about things that I should blog about, but when someone says, "Write about pasties," well, I hear and obey.

So, I'm guessing that when Elly writes "pasties," she means something like these. Or these. Or, dear God, these. And, I gotta say, with the current MNP (mysterious nipple pain), I'm not thinking sequins, I'm thinking some sort of analgesic patch. With a tassle, if you like.

However, when I see the word "pasties," in my head, I don't read it as PAY-steez. I read it as PASS-tees, with a nice flat, broad A sound, and I hear it in a very particular northern Michigan voice.

Several years ago, I worked in a small adoption agency. After I'd worked there a little over a year, they hired a new front desk person, a girl I will call...Danika (because she was Dumb ANd KIndA mean...I realize the letters are screwy, but go with me, will you?). So, good ol' Dani was always talking about her husband, Bri, and how she (please put on a proper Yooper accent here) "made him a whole batch of pasties dis weekend." And, while I have nothing against meat turnovers per se, this particular phrase, in that particular grating voice, became the quote that my friend M and I would use as a shorthand for, "Oh good gravy, can you believe they hired this chick and that she makes more money than us?"

Now, lest you think I'm being too harsh, allow me to share some illustrative moments. First of all, this girl had no computer skills. She had to constantly ask M or me about how to do x. We'd show her, then she'd ask us again the next time. Then again. Eventually, one of us would just do it so that we could move on with life. Then the Big Bossman would compliment her on x, and she'd smile and say "thank you" with some "aw, shucks" false modesty. And then she'd take a long weekend.

Just seems like your average office oops? I got another one for you: Without going into too much detail, the fee structure of our agency for a traditional domestic adoption was that you paid for some services (application fee, etc.) at the beginning of the process, and then a whopping ($18,000) placement fee at the end. This is because the agency paid for all the advertising, screening, birth parent counseling, medical bills, etc. The adoptive parents paid a placement fee only after the adoption was finalized, so the agency took on the financial risk. Now, our primary demographic was upper class white people (everyone's favorite!), but we had non-white birthmoms, as well as white birthmoms with non-white babydaddies. Because our primary client demographic generally wanted babies who looked like them (white, in case I'm being too subtle), biracial or African-American babies were sometimes harder to place. For these babies, the agency offered a "scholarship" for the placement fee: a discount of about $10,000 for biracial babies, and the entire placement fee waived for African-American babies.

Now. This was the policy that was in place, and I had nothing to do with it. As someone who often answered the phone, however, I did have to explain it to prospective adoptive parents. I tried to present it as neutrally as possible, of course, as did my friend M, who also answered the phone quite a bit.

One day, M and I were both up in the front desk area, making copies and filing and whatnot, when Dani answered the phone. We listened to her fumble through the explanation of the process and fees, and then we heard her say Yoop, "Now. If you're willing to take a black baby, den you don't have to pay dat fee. Dat's if you could do dat. I don't tink I could, but you know..."

Yeah.

She also had some charming stories about "dese black guys" in her neighborhood. You get the idea. And yet, the Big Bossman loved her, probably because she was willing to suck up (or she actually felt like this receptionist job was her dream), whereas the rest of us were willing to do our jobs, but not to pretend that we were fulfilled by bureaucratic paper-pushing. She got long weekends, long lunches, and special field trips (she got to go to a filming of Oprah!).

So, given that, and the fact that we were young and stupid (although much, much less stupid) ourselves, I hope you won't think too ill of us when I tell you that one day, M came back to my cubicle, giggling and snorting and gleefully rubbing her hands together.

"I fucked up her buttons!"

"What?"

"I fucked up her buttons!!"

In the olden days, before Windows Vista, Microsoft Word had a customizable toolbar. This meant that you could assign icons to functions, like a pair of scissors for "Cut" and a clipboard for "Paste." Now, the icons were only one way to cut and paste. You could also use the right-click shortcuts or the drop-down boxes, or Ctrl+X. That is, if you knew anything about Word. But if you were really dependent on the little pictures AND a little dumb and racist, and someone...switched the icons, well, then you'd cut every time you tried you paste, and vice versa. And if you'd constantly taken credit for work you hadn't done, you wouldn't have anyone to turn to to ask for help. And if you'd let your boss think you were terribly proficient, you wouldn't be able to explain to him why you were having such trouble finishing that document.

Hee.

Oh, unclench. M only left it that way for a few minutes, then when Dani was at the copier, she went back and fixed it. Which, of course, only confused Dani more.

Luckily, she could go home and drown her sorrows in pasties.