Professionalism in the Workplace

Some background: A. uses our home landline phone for his home office. Because cell phones usually don't work here, he needs the landline. Through the miracles of modern technology, it routes through his old work number. No one knows the call is going to or from our home, but it is through our landline. He takes the mobile handset into his office when he's working, so I don't pay any attention if the phone rings during a work day.

When he makes a call out via his computer (again with the miracles of modern technology), the phone in the house rings, for reasons I'm not very clear on.

There is a corded phone downstairs on which I usually have the ringer turned off, so it doesn't wake the kids up. But when we had a power outage a few days ago, I turned the ringer on so I would know if someone was calling. I hadn't yet turned it off again.

And now the stage is set . . .

I was upstairs in the kitchen preparing to do battle with sourdough dough. All three children were downstairs playing some game that was rendering them increasingly hysterical. The phone rang. I ignored it, because A. had the handset in his office.

And then I heard A. bellowing, "KRISTIN!"

I thought he had gotten a call saying someone had been in a horrible accident or something. I went to the door just as he came in scowling and saying, "I'm trying to make a work call and the kids are shouting 'wiener' on the line."

I went downstairs to find the phone back in its cradle and both Charlie and Cubby disavowing any wrongdoing. I suspect Cubby was the one who picked up the phone, and Charlie was the one shouting the offending word.

A. left the house yelling, "No wieners when I'm on a work call!"

I impressed upon the children the importance of them never picking up the phone or saying that word*. And then I turned the ringer off again.

When A. came back in a little while later, I apologized for the incident. He shrugged and said he got the case anyway. I asked who had been on the line. "A private client who wanted to hire me. It's okay, though. I just told him, 'That was my kids on the line yelling wiener. It wasn't a prank call or anything.'"

I'm sorry, anyway. For all of us.

* And Cubby wonders why I yell more than Ma. I bet Laura and Mary never did anything like this.