Friday, February 6, 2009

Piss-umd

About… 4 years ago, I had a boss. Well, someone I worked for. Hmmm… I’ve never really liked the term ‘boss’. Anyways, worked for this guy, THE MAN.

He had a lot of stuff come across his desk, daily, of which he would look at. Look at, review, approve, send up to be approved, etc. A myriad of different things, and I wasn’t the only one that gave THE MAN things to be looked at.

Sometimes, he would have a question about something he was looking at. So, he would write on (or put a post-it on) the paper in big bold letters at the top, “PSM”. None of us liked it when he did this.

Why?

Because it meant, “Please See Me.”

Usually we found this gem of a note in our room, on our desk, etc. It could be anywhere, even under your pillow probably. It was never good to have one of these.

If we saw a “PSM” note on someone else’s desk that they hadn’t seen yet, we would tell them that they were “PSM’d” (pronounced ‘piss-umd’, or something like that – hey, I can barely read). They would be nervous until they finally went to talk to THE MAN, usually not good.

This morning, when I was talking to The Girl, I was at work. Since my computer screen was staring at me, I noticed when the little Outlook new email desktop alert came on. I saw the header of an email from someone like THE MAN. That is, I work for him indirectly, though have never talked to him. This THE MAN, is probably considered ‘higher’ than anyone in the Sandy Eggo (my home) office.

It said:


What is your extension.

Sent from my iPhone


Coming from someone I had never talked to, that I knew was a little ‘stern’ on occasion, couldn’t help but make me feel like I was just PSM’d. But, instead of getting nervous, it just made me laugh.

Its nice when you can look at things of the past… to make you feel more comfortable about the present.

11 comments:

Fluffycat said...

Y'know I read that as PMS not PSM. Funny though. I wonder if that boss knew the effect of those notes.

TC said...

I think it's a nice little coincidence that it's so close to PMS :)

rachaelgking said...

HA - hilarious!!! Someday when I'm a bigwig, I'm totally going to use that...

Lailani Ali said...

My former boss did the same, with "let's discuss". Which meant "You are wrong. I am right. do it my way." without fail.

OK Chick said...

HAHA! Fluffycat, I read it as PMS too. I mean, I was reading PSM, but all I could think of was PMS. HA!

Le Meems said...

Oooh, dang, that would make me nervous.
Have you called/been called yet?

W T G said...

My old boss would scribble LRT (meaning let's review this) and his name was Al so we all knew it as ALeRT ...... oh this silly things we humans come up with ....

Megan said...

My boss has a note card he leaves in you chair. It just says 'Please see me'. After complaining that we never knew whether it was good or bad, he added a smiley face to one side and then wrote the same thing on the other side with a frowny face. You don't want to get the frowny face....

jo said...

i'm glad that my boss has never had any variation of the PSM. she would probably just send me an email saying that needed to discuss a particular thing related to work so i was never blindsided. then again i love my boss haha!

Anonymous said...

I hate getting PSM'd by the boss!! I'm sure it's no biggie :)

Aaron said...

That sounds so high-school.

One of my work pet peeves is when someone Emails me to ask for something such as my extension number. They could have looked it up on the online directory faster than two email could have crossed the email server.