Pen-Elayne on the Web

No Hose, You Hosers

So many wonderful bloggers are keeping up with the important news that I might as well go for the trivial. The repercussions of idiotic actions are likely to be felt for awhile - in exchange for the US hissy fit over Canada feeling like it has better things to do than send its young people into the desert to die for no good reason at all, the head hoser honcho, aka Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien (sorry, tried to do the accent over the first "e" in his name but Blogger wouldn't allow it), has decided not to go to Washington to receive an award next month from the US National Parks Conservation Association. Honestly, how dare he consider creating 15 new national parks in Canada to be more important than killing suffering Iraqi civilians to pave the way for US oil interests? Why, I'll bet he wouldn't even allow drilling in any of those new national parks! That back-bacon-loving, toque-wearing, Labatt's-chugging, hockey-playing bastard! Heh, I'm sorry, that's all the Canadian content I remember from the old Bob & Doug McKenzie days. Come on, being pissed at Canada? Does the Bush administration really want to prove Michael Moore prescient yet again? Seriously, people, you don't want that rating to go from half a star up to 3, do you?

Speaking of hosers, according to "political and social reformer" Jennifer Schulz Medlock (whose blog so far consists of only this one post), Friday, April 25 is this year's Executive Admin's Day, or Secretary's Day, or Administrative Professionals Day, or Unofficial Company Doormat day, or whatever it is they're now calling us. And you know, they can call us whatever they want and we're still pretty much secretaries. Last year I pocketed 20 bucks from this sucker courtesy of one of our brokers, so "Hallmark holiday" (okay, Y&R Holiday, now in its 51st year of commemmoration) or no I'm tempted to make the most of it again. Of course, this is completely untrue; the day is actually celebrated on the April 23, the third (full-week) Wednesday in April. You know, the day before Take Our Daughters To Work Day, recently morphing into "Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work Day" even on the official Ms. site, which completely negates the original point of the day - "to introduce girls [my emphasis] ages 9 to 15 to the workplace, and to help them feel that their future participation in the labor force is both expected and welcome" because studies have shown that girls' self-esteem plummets at that age, whereas boys' self-esteem is just fine because, after all, they know they're inheriting the upper echelons of the business world... anyway, I digress. Back to It's All About Me the Secretary Week, which even Jennifer admits is "in the middle of Administrative Assistants Week, which starts on Earth Day (22nd)." To me it's not a good sign when an administrative assistant gets her days mixed up and doesn't equate "Wednesday" with "middle of the week." Anyway, Jennifer is urging all women to "please help social change by wearing no hose, heels, or skirts to work on April 25th to 'get back to nature.' This is a voluntary protest effort against society's old-fashioned expectations of women to wear nylons, high heels, and skirts, especially in business, and especially within big corporations. Leave your suffocating nylons at home, as well as those painful high heels, and replace your skirt with pants! Be comfortable, be natural, and take control! On Executive Admin's Day at least, we will not let powerful men dictate what we wear. Let's show these men we can 'wear the pants' and create a better world. We Can Do It!" I plan to wear pants on Wednesday 4/23 and Friday 4/25 and pretty much every other day, as I've done almost every day since I entered the work force 25 years ago. Is this really still an issue? I work in the New York City friggin' Fashion District, okay? Every secretary I've seen around here wears pants to work. Maybe it's different for "front office" folks, I dunno, I've never been conventionally attractive (read: thin) enough to be one. I'm sure Jennifer's heart is in the right place, but if she's not even organized enough to keep track of when the day is I have my doubts as to the rest of her assumptions.