It dawned on me this week that I've subjected some of my long-term staff members and colleagues to really unfortunate opportunities to bond with me. I'm a fairly transparent person about much of my life (who wouldn't be when they tell their deepest, darkest secrets to tens of thousands of people each year from the stage and the page). But what I realized after training my new executive assistant and event coordinator, Karen, is that at times my life is perhaps too transparent for comfort (mine, theirs, and sometimes both).
Karen started her first "official" day with me only two days after the recent flare-up of my back injury. I'd been confined to bed, high on narcotic painkillers, shuffling around like a little old man (when shuffling was even an option) and in excruciating pain. Karen's first full day on the job consisted of carting me to my physician's office and the pharmacy, along with a few personal and professional stops along the way (involving a massive order of chocolate bars and a healthy taco salad to balance them out), all while I took a critical conference call replete with routine yelps and the occasional expletive.
The pain had gotten so bad by the time we reached the medical appointment that they ended up giving me an injection of some kind in...well...a rather sensitive portion of my anatomy. Because we were in the process of rescheduling other meetings and appointments when the nurse came in to give me the goods, Karen was unfortunate to witness the baring of more than my soul that day (if you know what I mean). When she wheeled me out of the doctor's office she noted just how memorable her first day had been and that she'd been exposed to so much more of the business...and me as a human being...than anticipated. Indeed.
I got to thinking that Karen's not the first one to face the, uh, naked truth about the most intimate aspects of my life. When my Business Development Director, Katie, began working for me eight years ago as a grant-writer for a local non-profit, she started the day before a critical proposal deadline. When proposals are due, you do what you have to to get them out the door. So, as the nursing mom at the time of a bouncing baby girl with the capacity to chug milk like a frat boy strapped to a beer bong, I hooked on my breast pump and facilitated our entire strategy meeting together while affixed to my "mobile lactation station." Don't worry, I asked her first. (Oh, my human resources friends out there are shaking their heads and quaking in their boots...don't worry...no lawsuits have been filed...yet). And I knew she was the right woman for the job when she simply shrugged and said, "my sister has about a billion kids. I won't even notice."
And so, it seems that I do much of my long-term bonding in the buff. And I guess that instead of leaving the "pen a bestselling exposé revealing all of the sordid details of your employer's private life" to them, I'll just do it myself to get it out of the way now. I am a writer, after all.
*A note on my butt: Thank you to Karen for securing this fabulous picture from your anonymous friend, aptly titled "Emma's Butt" for use in this story. I guarantee the above-rendered butt is far easier on the eyes than my own. Enough said.
