TGIF - It's Not What You Think

So it's Friday, a day when beaten-down friends flood my inbox with TGIF messages followed by infinite exclamation points. Sure, TGIF is something to be excited about, but it used to have a somewhat different meaning in my corner cube of the world.

I worked with Gene, a charismatic, animated, and very Italian character who could sell you your own shoes -- which is good since he was the Director of Sales. Gene was a god in his own right. He would show up at the British Rose on Fridays, a strange little bar near work, with cigars and a credit card to buy beer for anybody from work who made an appearance. That's a generous man (or perhaps an overpaid man...or perhaps both).

At the time, I was relatively new to the workforce, still paying off college credit cards and surviving on white rice (white rice was still cool back then and much cheaper than brown rice). Any opportunity to meet my caloric deficit with free barley and hops was not to be turned down. I was a regular, as were a few inherently good co-workers. We all just needed to vent about our crazy CEO, who sexually harrassed most of the women in the office. He ended up divorcing his longtime wife and then marrying and divorcing a secretary that he had sexually harrassed from the very first day that she started working there -- who knows, maybe sooner. (During the interview, perhaps? I could totally see him saying, "You're a hot babe. Work here now. You know you want me. The bathroom's free. I'll do you in there and then decide on your starting salary. Let's go.") There just isn't enough alcohol in the world to make corporate dysfunction disappear, but talk therapy and beer helped us all hang on.

So my Fridays were definitely of TGIF nature -- Thank Gene It's Friday.