Have you ever been accused of being a corporate spy? I was accused of this several years ago when I worked for a Bank as a teller when I lived in Arkansas. After I first out-processed from the U.S. Air Force and before I landed a computer job, I took a job as a teller at a local bank while I was trying to land a job in my career field, Information Technology.
Before I joined the Air Force, I worked as a Bank Teller so when I was looking for a job in IT after the AF, I decided to go ahead and work as a teller again during the transition. When I was a teller before, I worked for a company out of Alabama. Well, during my time in the Air Force the bank that I had worked for in Alabama became a very large bank and the company bought out multiple banks across the nation and this bank was a parent company to other smaller banks that had different names but fell under the corporate bank that was my previous employer. I had no idea this was happening.
When I filled out the application, I did list my time as a teller to show that I had experience working as a teller. I was hired and as I worked with my co-workers for several months, I realized that they were not very friendly to me and even seemed hostile towards me at times. I told my friend about it, and she said, “What’s not to love?” I had just never experienced this before. I have always gotten along with co-workers and even in High School I was never picked on or bullied; everyone always liked me as a whole. There may have been times when I may have had beef with one or two people here and there but for the most part as a group, I have never been disliked by a whole group like that.
I had heard that if you want to figure out if someone likes you, tell them a funny joke and if they don’t laugh then they probably don’t like you. So, one day I told a really funny joke that always got plenty of interaction and laughter. …Crickets! No, response at all. It was an awkward silence, so I had to tell the punchline by asking the question that they were supposed to ask me. lol Still no laughs. So, I was just determined to make the best of it, and it did motivate me to really look for a computer job that much harder. I guess it was a blessing because I could have really gotten complacent and stayed in that job longer than I should have without that motivation.
I finally got a job working in the IT Department at a State University in another town over. That meant that I had to commute to work an hour each way, but it was the job that I really wanted, and I was happy to be able to put in my notice at the bank. When I gave my letter of resignation to my supervisor, she got a puzzled look on her face and looked up at me from the letter and said, ‘So you really were looking for a computer job?’ She said that they all thought that I was a corporate spy sent down from the ‘BankCorp’ to spy on them. “BankCorp” being the bank that I had worked at when I lived in Alabama. I thought that was amazing that they would treat me so horribly when they thought that I was someone that could take their jobs or recommend they be fired. Of course, I did not say that to her, but it made no sense to me that if they were going to be phony, why not be a “nice phony” instead of a “mean phony” to someone that may be reporting on them. Or maybe I had the wrong idea of what a corporate spy was. But during my two weeks’ notice they were just as nice to me as could be.
The Funniest Joke…
This joke is the funniest one in my joke bag… telling this joke earned me a nick name so I will talk about the time I told this joke and my friend who nicknames everyone, gave me the nickname, ‘Gayfers’…
When I was in the Air Force, I went home for Christmas to visit my family and while I was gone my friend met the guy that she would end up marrying. Well, after they got married and moved to the town he was from, sometimes I would go visit them some weekends and sometimes just drive up for Church on Sunday. My friend’s husband had a group of friends and one of them was a nickname giver.
After church one Sunday, we went out to eat and we were sitting at a very long table because we had so many people from church there. So, I decided to tell my funny joke to break the ice and let them get to know me a little bit. In the middle of telling the joke I realized that the entire table was quiet, and they were all listening to me tell the joke, even the preacher. I was like, ‘oh no, I don’t want the preacher to hear this joke!’… but I decided to continue because it is a clean joke and plus it will help me to see if she has a good sense of humor. Of course, she did and everyone at the table loved it and laughed, especially the guy who gave me the nickname. See below for what I told them…
I recently got back from visiting my family in Alabama and while I was there something crazy happened to me and my mom. We went to the mall to get some last-minute Christmas gifts and after we had been there shopping for a few hours we decided to go to the food court to grab some lunch before heading home. The lines were pretty long at the various places in the food court, so I asked my mom to go find us a table while I went to stand in line to get us something to eat. While I was standing in line, I pulled my money out of my pocket and I dropped a dollar on the floor and before I could bend down and pick it up, a little boy of about 8 years old grabbed the dollar, looked up at me, stuffed the dollar in his pocket and then he ran back to his mother at their table.
I went ahead and got our food but as I sat down, I told my mom what happened and she said, ‘you need to go tell his mother; I’d want to know that he took something that he knew did not belong to him.’ So, I walked over to their table and said, “Excuse me, ma’am, I dropped a dollar on the floor and your son picked it up knowing it was mine and I just wanted you to be aware of it.” She looked at her son and then looked at me and then back to her son and said to him, “Did you get this woman’s dollar?’ He said, “No momma! This is my dollar!” She said, “let me see that dollar!” He handed her the dollar bill and she held it up and looked at me and said, “Is your name, Washington?” I said, ‘No ma’am’ so she said, “Well, it aint your dollar then!” Then she gave the dollar back to her son. He sitting there grinning up at me. I’m shocked and thought, ‘No wonder he’s like that with this type of example.’ So, I just went and sat down and continued my meal with my mom.
As we sat there eating, a little while later we noticed the woman and her son got up and left the food court and I noticed that she left her shopping back under her seat. I walked over and got it and took it back to our table. A few minutes later she came back looking for her bag. She looked over at me and I was grinning at her. She walked over and said, “That’s my bag; you took my sack!” I held it up and said, “Is your name, Gayfers?” She said, “NO!” I said, ‘well, it aint your bag then!’ She left in a huff and I kept the bag and took it home.
So, everyone at the table were all into the story and they asked me, ‘So what was in the bag?’ I said, “A bunch of bologna, just like I just fed you!”… So, my friend said, “Is your name Gayfers?!?! <laugh> OK from now on YOUR NAME IS GAYFERS!” So, he gave me that nickname. If you don’t know, Gayfers was the name of a clothing store at the mall back in the day, but they’ve since gone out of business and was bought out by Dillard’s.
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