I’ve got a confession to make: I’m a thief. But apparently, my mom is to blame.
My crime involves pilfering glassware from restaurants and bars. And maybe I’m trying to put lipstick on a pig by using a fancy word like pilfering, because at the end of the day, theft is theft, no matter how much you dress it up.
The first time we emerged from a dining or drinking establishment and I gleefully whipped out a glass that I’d concealed in my coat pocket, Tara was mortified. The seventh time we emerged from a dining or drinking establishment and I gleefully whipped out a glass that I’d concealed in my coat pocket, Tara was mortified.
Geez, you’d think she’d be expecting this by now…
Maybe my moral compass is broken, because I have absolutely no qualms doing this. I figure:
- They buy glasses by the gross, so they probably cost something like two cents apiece, and
- It’s free advertising for the business. Hell, I’m doing them a favor. They should pay me a royalty!
Betcha didn’t know justifying anything and everything is my superpower.
Tara, sadly, doesn’t view it the same way. Once, she saw me eyeing a beer stein in a tavern in the Columbia Gorge, and pulled the ultimate cockblock by telling our server we wanted to purchase a glass. A new one was brought out, and not only were we charged for it, but we actually paid for it, too.
Walking the straight and narrow felt weird. What can I say? Once a bad boy, always a bad boy.
When my parents were visiting a few weeks ago, somehow the topic of shoplifting came up. Suddenly, my mom was admitting that she has, on occasion, slipped a glass inside her purse when dining out.
Tara was mortified (she gets mortified a lot). I, on the other hand, was thrilled. At least now I know where I get this bad habit from. It’s genetic!!
I may be going to hell, but I’ll have an extensive glassware collection from which to sip ice cold drinks. Take that, Satan!
Today was a very unusual day at work. For starters, I went into the TobacCo office. I can’t remember the last time I was onsite on a Thursday. It might have been around Christmas? I normally only go in on Mondays and Wednesdays, working from home the rest of the week. Which is a really sweet gig, lemme tell ya! But today, TobacCo’s biggest client was visiting from Fond du Lac for a marketing meeting, and my presence was requested.
This is also unusual. It’s the first face-to-face meeting I’ve ever been invited to involving TobacCo senior management and clients. Here’s the deal: the Fond du Lac team loves me. In fact, when I walked into the room, they were all, “Mark! We were singing your praises the whole drive down!”
Fond du Lac is an hour and 45 minutes away by car. Them’s a lotta praises to be singing.
A couple of months ago, I was assigned a writing project for these guys. (Err, gals…all five visiting Fond du Lac reps were women.) The TobacCo account manager warned me that they are very protective of their brand voice and never contract writing to outsiders, but they were short staffed and had a tight deadline.
In other words, desperate.
Well, they liked what I wrote enough to request my services for monthly blog posts. And apparently I knocked their socks off with those too, because they sent an email yesterday that read, Thanks again for working on the first few blogs so quickly! You’ve impressed us with your content and tone – you’re a natural! If you have the bandwidth, we’d love to get your support on a few additional content pieces.
Best of all, they CC:d the CEO. If a client is going to gush over your work, CC:ing the CEO is huge.
So, anyway, we had a good and productive meeting today. And then we all walked two blocks downtown, where Janesville was hosting the Tour of America’s Dairyland, the largest competitive bicycling race in the U.S. I am famously and on the record not a fan of bicycle races, but when lunch (and a cocktail!) are included, and you get paid for sitting around outside and chatting with people who think you’re a rock star, your tune changes.
I did not steal the cocktail glass, by the way. It’s one thing to mortify your wife, but mortifying your boss is another.
Mark My Words 
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