Dreams: A trio of work-themed vignettes.

The Woman in the Black Flannel Suit
I was dressed all in black, walking back and forth up in front of a meeting room full of all the managers in my organization. I was berating them for the amount of time they had taken (months!) to figure out how to charge their employees' time on their time sheets for the user conference we ran last March. They seemed stunned that I had taken such an interest in this matter and were shocked that I had used such harsh words with them. Apparently, I long for the command-and-control leadership style of the 1960s. Either that, or I still am channeling Leona Helmsley.

Do You Know The Way To Baltimore?
In preparation for setting out to drive down to Baltimore, I had to drag some large object (rather like a piece of a metal bed frame) outside my office, through a garden full of sharp turns and deposit it where it could be loaded into a van. Another woman was helping me carry it and she was concerned about being able to turn it around all the corners we had to pass. I, on the other hand, was far more worried that we didn't have enough time to make it to Baltimore. It's common knowledge that it only takes 90 minutes to get from here to there, when, in fact, it's actually closer to two and a half hours to actually get to any destination in the city. Regardless, it turns out that my boss was driving the van that we were taking and it looked like we'd have room to spread out until he made stops at several other locations to pick up passengers. One programmer-type charged onto the van swearing and bemoaning how drunk he had gotten the night before. My boss didn't seem to notice, though I was appalled by the coarse language.

Cafeteria Style
I was working in a new office and realized I had forgotten to bring my lunch. There was a kitchen that doubled as a cafeteria and I tried to figure out which food was provided by the company for everyone and which had been brought in by co-workers. I was looking for a loaf of bread, but could only find Tupperware containers of diced tomatoes and red peppers. There were many bananas on top of what looked like the donut case at my local Wawa, but I had a hard time reaching them. Most looked either bruised enough to use in banana bread, or way too green for my tastes. A young man was reaching for them also and made a comment about how many there were to choose from. Sometimes I really want a banana to just be a banana.