Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack, In Which We Tell a War Story About Bein' Sexually Harrassed

Counting Crows, with one of the only two songs I actually LIKE by this group:



I bought their first album on the strength of this song and "Mr. Jones," both o' which got a lotta airplay in the near wayback.  And there's this about that...

When I first hired on at that start-up in San Francisco back in 2000 I had a cube-mate by the name o' Sherri (not her real name, which I don't remember and wouldn't use even if I did).  We... all of us employees at Mimecom... sat in low-wall cube farms, in keepin' with the founders' spirit o' egalitarianism.  There were only two people in the entire company who had hard-wall offices, those two people being the CEO and the CFO, for which should be obvious reasons.  The rest of us labored in cubes, and my cube-mate... sitting right next to me... was a woman with remarkable attributes, more about which, below.  Pardon the digression.  Please.

So, it came to pass one day that a song by Counting Crows came on my radio at work, at which time I IMMEDIATELY turned the volume down to zero while commenting to no one in particular "My GOD, but I hate those whiny bastards!"  At which point in time Sherri commented "Hey!  Adam is a friend o' mine and he's a really nice guy!"  I replied "That may be true, but he's still a whiny SOB."  I got a "harumph" in return and we went back to doin' what we were doin', in silence.

But.  Sherri.  The girl was a mid-20-something blonde, blue-eyed, woman of about 5' 6" and 135 pounds (or so).  You might think that a lil bit heavy but let me tell ya: it was NOT.  The woman was one of those proverbial Brick Houses, with ALL the attributes o' same.  And the girl was not at all ashamed of those attributes... she flaunted them, as a s'matter o' fact, including female bits similar to the ones at right, always unencumbered by the usual, customary, and reasonable female foundation garments.  So much so that... had she worked for ME... I'd have sent her home to change into something more appropriate for the workplace.  But she didn't work for me so we just enjoyed the sights, as it were.  And they were sights to see, Gentle Reader.  Oh, yes.

It doesn't end there, however.  Sherri had this habit o' rubbing her soft bits against me from time to time, usually when we passed in the hall or when we were in the elevator.  And then she'd bat those baby blues at me at say "Oh.  Excuuuuse me!" and give me this evil lil grin.  Or she'd come sit ON my desk, put one foot on my chair and the other on my desk and begin a casual conversation while striking a provocative pose, which is an understatement if there ever was one.  I let all this slide, not wanting to (a) play her game or (b) get my sensitive bits caught in a sexual harrassment wringer.  

(Yet another digression.  The Ol' Man gave me a classic piece of advice when I was a younger man, to wit: "You don't shit in yer mess kit, Boy."  I remembered that and ALWAYS practiced it, even if or when it meant passing up on "targets o' opportunity," of which there were a few.  But Sherri wasn't one of those... Hell, I was old enough to be her father.)

It also came to pass that I mentioned Sherri's behavior to one of my male co-workers, someone much junior than me in age.  The boy just laughed and said "You're not the Lone Ranger, Buck.  She does that to EVERYBODY."  Which made me feel somewhat better and somewhat worse.  Well, a LOT worse, truth be told.

So, we endured.  Sherri eventually married her boyfriend, a young lawyer in a rather prominent SFO law firm, went off on her honeymoon to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, and quit the company as soon as she returned from Africa.  She's prolly fat, dumb, and happy today... eating bon-bons and livin' in a tony SFO condo.  She was that kinda girl.

And that was the ONLY time I was ever sexually harassed.  It really wasn't all that bad, as experiences go.