first impressions

March 22nd, 2007

I love being in environments where a bunch of people who have nothing in common are put in a room together. People watching is one of my favorite things to do and what better time to people watch than while at a conference in such a room? After carefully selecting my seat and getting settled in, it didn’t take but a few minutes before one woman stood out to me. Talking to her co-worker in an unnecessary loud tone about how everyone at the office has no idea what they are doing but her, I began to think that she must be the boss and this led me to begin sizing her up; her attire - not so bad (note: doesn’t mean I’d wear it but it was very “boss-like”); large date book making her look very important - check; co-worker hanging on every word she said - check; palm pilot that she whipped out every two seconds - check. Yep, it seemed as though she was the boss; boss of what? I don’t know but never the less she was in charge of something. Continuing to listen to hear drone on about how not one member of her staff is as intelligent as she is and dreaming about how huge her paychecks must be and what I’d do with them, my eyes wandered under the table. It was there that I got a view of one the most unacceptable things I have ever seen …I will give you a hint:
mmbag
This is actually a more acceptable bag than the one I saw. Just as I was putting this woman on a pedistal and beginning to believe that everyone she came in contact with was an idiot, I saw her bag. It was white leather with a silver handle and had a silhoutte of mickey mouse’s head outlined in rhinestones one on side of it. My immediate reaction was to laugh…and then cooly pull my cell out of my designer bag (that I now had a strong desire place on the table in plain sight) to text my co-worker and explain what I was witnessing. It only got better a few moments later when I saw her dig out her matching wallet and key chain! Who are these people and why do they think this is okay? Here I was believing that this woman was in charge of people and a real power player and it all went out the window the minute I saw that handbag. No one with any sort of power and certainly not a woman who claims to be more intelligent than others would be caught dead carrying this bag! The point of the story is this, what you wear really does matter, so skip the cartoon character accessories.