Thursday, November 12, 2009

Being "Professional"

In the course of work today, I noticed a time discrepancy for an event so I called to check on it.

"That's very professional of you," the guy I called said.

My first reaction was that he was making fun of me.

I think that my generation is so entrenched in sarcasm that if someone ever compliments me my first reaction would be to think they are making fun of me.

Am I professional? In retrospect, yes I am. However, I do tend to get "professional" confused with serious or seasoned. I can be serious when I need to be, but I don't really want to consider myself "serious." There's a certain stigma there: stodgy, dour, etc. Also, I feel like I tend to say the wrong things. I also get made fun of A LOT. I don't mind, I can see the humor in it. That's just why I doubted that it was a compliment.

It also wasn't what I was expecting. I was just trying to do my job.

So thanks for the compliment. Next time I'll try to be more gracious and less suspicious.

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