Faggotted Up

Here's a story that amuses me. It started last week, with the following email from my friend Jackie.

From: Jackie Loup
Sent: Friday, September 10, 2004 7:52 AM
To: Ben Schultz
Subject: Hello

Ben,

This lady is a friend of my friend, Gay. She just got laid off at FiServe and saw the posting on the web. Can you forward this to HR? She is interested in the Product Management Business Analyst position.


Thanks,

Jackie

Now you have to understand that Jackie and I worked together for several years. For most of that time, we even shared an office. She knows me well enough that by some clue in my glazed-over eyes, she could tell if I had spent lunch eating six pounds of cheese-laden Mexican food, or whether I had put myself through a rigorous workout. In other words, she knows me well. This will be important in a minute.

I opened the resume, and it had the normal bullet-point bullcrap that people put in resumes. Here's an excerpt:

• Conception and detailed business design documents for system enhancements.
• Partnering with and directing programming teams during the coding of system enhancements.
• Testing and certification of system enhancements, bugs, and special projects.

Coincidentally, I had just seen a page from The Onion calendar with "Words Most Commonly used in Resumes." There were a bunch of good ones, but one of the funniest (and most offensive) was "Faggoted Up." So, I opened the resume in Word, arrowed down four or five bullets, and added,

• Faggoted Up the help files for customers delinquent on their bills.

Then, I replied to Jackie with something like, "Nice resume, but what's with that fifth bullet point?"

That's when we had a minor Christmas miracle, right here in September. As well as Jackie knows me, she didn't get that I was messing with her. Fantastic! I never dreamed that there was the possibility that she would believe that she sent me a resume that included the phrase "Faggotted up."

First, she tried to explain, although she was clearly struggling...

Don't know...hopefully she was using faggot in the "bundling" context.......

Then I think she actually called the friend who sent her the resume, and recommended changing the language of that line item! I'm laughing at her out loud as I write this.

After a couple of days, I got a confused call from Jackie, wondering if she had sent me the right person's resume in the first place. She had gone back and looked, and couldn't find the reference to "Faggotted Up." I didn't really get a chance to speak. As soon as I chuckled, she knew that it had been me all along. I really enjoyed the whole episode, though, and I promise that I didn't forward the altered resume to others at APPRO.