Random Stupidity in Corporate America Edition

So it isn't even really corporate - it's non-profit, and the stupidity is astounding.  This is an organization that hires new temps every year to produce their major benefit, yet surrounds itself with so much jargon that it takes a week to explain its version of the English language to the newly hired corps. 

The best example so far?  Did a person on our calling list participate in this fundraiser last year?  The simple English answer would be yes or no, (no rocket science, right?).  Instead the company insists on true and false, and refers to them as trues or false.  (Yes, as in this person is a true.  That person is a false.)  The organizing mom in me wants to ask why on earth they are making life more complicated than it needs to be, but it's a national corporate directive and I'm a temp in a small satellite office.  All my years of yoga breathing, flew out the window in the first fifteen minutes of cubedom.

I shouldn't complain, because I do have a view out the window behind someone else's cube.  But I don't get to decide if the shade is up or down.  The lucky window cube owner has that distinction.  And my boss keeps walking over to my desk and turning on the small florescent light that attaches to my cube.  She doesn't seem to understand I prefer it off.  But the absolute grossest thing?  She turns pages by licking her fingers - not the usual gross enough index finger lick, but instead by squeezing her tongue in between her index finger and thumb to moisten them both thoroughly before touching each page.  I shudder just writing about it.

Friday's stupidity will surely come back to bite me in the butt on Monday.  My boss (at this office, not my boss I've never met in the main office) told me to send an email to a high ranking politician, thanking him for attending our kick-off event.  Even though I asked her if maybe someone that important should be handled by someone way more knowledgeable than a temp in her first week.  Even though I asked if they had someone who was supposed to handle the VIPs. And even though I mentioned to her (a lot!) that the info we had on the database was wrong all over the place, she told me I had to assume in every case the data base was right (the data base is after all,  sacred) and write the email without further checking in to the facts.  And even though his office said to send all communications to his Chief-of-Staff, she wanted the email sent only to him to try to do an end run around. (She doesn't seem to understand that he probably isn't reading his .gov emails himself.)  Monday will surely find me yelled at by the other boss for sending a communication to such a high ranking official without her authorization.  I can't wait.  The most amazing part of the day was when this boss later wanted me to wait for her approval of my copy before I sent out the same email to all the rest of the people on my list.  Can't be too careful you know.