Overheard at Work

This is a special edition of "Overheard from my Office." I wanted to share this story to show you how sometimes, adults can be just as ridiculous as teenagers - sometimes more so.

This morning, I volunteered for an event my organization puts on several times a year at various junior highs in Bloomington. I volunteer at every one because I freaking LOVE IT. It's called Reality Store, and it's an exercise to teach students about how much stuff costs in, you know, the "real world."

Based on the kids' GPA, they are assigned a level of education, and from there, a career. For example: A student with a 4.0 has a "graduate degree" and then can choose from something like a lawyer, a doctor, an engineer, etc. (As an aside: nobody is ever a social worker. Ummmm that needs a graduate degree! What the crap?! Haha...) This is of course supposed to teach them that grades are important in the grand scheme of things...yadda yadda. They can choose if they are married or single, and then they have to roll dice to see how many kids the have. There are a gazillion tables set up around the gym/library (depending on the school) and there is a "Housing" table, then a "Utilities" table, "Transportation," "Child Care," etc. There are also tables where you can buy a vacation to Hawaii or a dog or whatever. It's always fun to see when a kid will buy a Hummer before getting a place to live and stuff like that. Gotta love it!

Anyway, the event is run/organized by my boss but everyone who works it are volunteers. There is a diagram of all the tables, and the kids have to go to every table before they're done. We mark off each table on their little diagram with a marker. And you probably didn't need to know all of these details but I wanted to set it up properly. The main thing here is that it's fun and volunteer-driven. And at the end of the shift, all the volunteers fill out a survey discussing their experiences.

Some event occurred this morning that were detailed on someone's survey:

Apparently, a lady was marking off tables on the students' papers with a smiley face. Pretty innocuous. Well shortly into the class, another lady walked over to her and said, "I see you're using a smiley face to mark off their sheets. I just want to let you know that I've been volunteering at the Reality Store for several years, and I use a smiley face. I would appreciate it if you stopped using the smiley face at your table."

??????

Well the lady who received the talking-to naturally thought that the Smiley Face Nazi was joking around, and continued marking off papers with smiley faces. At that point, Smiley Face Nazi started sending students back to the first lady's table and asking her to remove her smiley faces!!!!

Oh gosh, I'm worried that this just came out in the most complicated way possible, and I am impressed if you actually made it to the bottom of this post. The moral of the story: even adults say the most ridiculous things. I am pretty sure that two people can share a smiley face, but....what the hell do I know??!