Check It Out

'Step in here, please' -- and other chilling phrases

Brooke's couch session last week in which she shared the psychological trauma inflicted by a college job at Blockbuster prompted a similar recollection from Susie in Cary about a boss she once endured:

"He used to buzz me often on the interoffice intercom and his words were always 'Step in here please.' I would choke up, my heart would begin pounding, and I would almost break out in hives, thinking, 'What fresh hell is this?' (cheers to Dorothy Parker for this great quote), because I knew he had been sitting in his office dreaming up more impossible tasks for me. To this day, I can hardly bear to hear someone say, 'Step in here, please,' at a doctor's exam room, whatever. I can't even listen to 'Walk This Way' anymore."

There are several reasons we can't listen to "Walk This Way" anymore (unless, of course, it's an elevator version), but we digress.

Ah, the dreaded catchphrase of death. When we were growing up, the phrase that struck fear and canceled all weekend plans was Dad uttering the dread, "I have a project for you ... ." The project usually involved a wheelbarrow, a pickax and lots of cement.

To build on Susie's boss's pet phrase, another boss tactic we love is when the boss calls or e-mails to say, "Drop by my office tomorrow at 2 p.m.; we need to talk" and it's like 10 a.m. No hint of what he wants, just lots of time to twist in the wind. We had a boss do this a couple years back during a particularly brutal period of office turmoil. Unable to mutely sit, wait and wonder, we blurted, "So what's this about?"

Quickly, a little too quickly, he responded, "Oh, it's not really that bad ... ."

The pesky proprietor

Brooke's rant arose out of the faux customer service we've seen practiced at Blockbuster. Brooke advised that these customer assaults sure aren't the idea of the salesclerks -- pardon, "associates" -- that they're force-fed from corporate, where you can bet the glass office types aren't constantly yelling "Hello! Welcome to Blockbuster!" every time someone walks past their suite. Christine in Durham writes in with a tale of a local CEO who does just that.

"My friend and I enjoy visiting an independent pen store in a local shopping center because the owner has a great selection and lots of groovy stationery. However, we can't stand to visit when the owner is there, because he pounces on you as soon as you walk in the door, then follows you like a starving mongrel as you make your way through the aisles, ogling each item you pick up and giving elaborate commentary on the object. Because we spend so much time having to respond to his conversational inquiries, we don't have time to consider his products!"

We had to stop frequenting a certain Italian restaurant in downtown Raleigh for that very reason, Christine: He was so busy inquiring about our meal that we never had time to eat it So how did you solve your dilemma?

"Our solution is to shop when he isn't at work."

Ah, tie a cowbell around his neck, eh?

Clever.