Keep Your Damn Hands Inside the Bus

I just had some representative from the French Senate (did you know France had a senate?) who came to visit our office and “find out more about your agency, blahblahblah.” I hate these things and I’m usually much better about ducking out of them, but this time I was distracted and suddenly I’m Little Miss Foreign Exchange Guide. We tend to get lots of the foreign nationals, aliens really, breezing through here, using us as an excuse to visit San Francisco. Do you think the Little Rock office has to put up with this? Hell, no. Some of them practically show up with a surfboard under their arm and actually they’re the best. A few insincere pleasantries, a couple of jokes, point them towards the good dim sum restaurant downstairs and you’re good to go in ten minutes. Everybody’s happy. It’s these ones trying to ask intelligent questions that chap my last nerve. Most of the discussion dissolves into a civics lesson - “What is a federal agency?’ “Where do you get your money?” “Who decides what your priorities are?” I just make shit up.

We used to have this pompous, fatuous ass who was worthless for any other function except to turf these visitors off onto. He was so very self-important, he seemed to be exactly what they expected a government official to look and sound like, but he died, the bastard. I show up and they obviously think the janitor’s here to empty the trash, and then I have to start talking about the federal budget. And are they ever cute? Do we ever get a delegation from Brazil of bodybuilder go-go boys? Again, hell no. I’m not bitter, just resigned. Plus all this has seriously cut into my time for reading other blogs.

I gotta go.