Usually, I'm Pretty Smart!

But there's always an exception to that rule! Oh, yes there is.

I consider myself to be a pretty smart cookie, and what I may lack in common sense, I make up with my wonderful personality ... in fact, I know I'm smart, because I'm made in the Lord's image, and frankly, no one's as smart as he is, and that's gotta say something, right??? um ... anyway ... At work, I have to analyze commodities, market rates, financial documents, overheads, estimates, etc. So, yeah, I figure you have to be pretty smart for that, right?

So I thought... until about 45 minutes ago, when one of the estimators came to my desk to go over his basis for his pricing on a new estimate. He's very young, very smart, married to a beautiful Mexican woman, and he's just about to be a daddy, so we talk a lot, as we find we have much in common. He speaks a wee bit of Spanish, I speak Spanish fluently, and I love to tease him about his "accent."

Anyway, he came to my desk and started to go over his pricing basis -- he told me that he followed the 6/10 rule, and "...based it on the duty of the current estimate over the duty of a past estimate which was 2528 mmbtuh versus 3320 mmbtuh which, when applied to the total cost, and divided by itself, then taken to the sixth power gives you your new cost."

I just nodded as if I was agreeing (and understood), but the more he droned on, the more I stared at him, a little bit glassy eyed, and when he was finished, I said what would only come natural in a circumstance like this... "Yes, well ... I used a curling iron this morning. Sometimes, I'll flatten my hair with an iron, and sometimes, I'll use curlers. Sometimes, I even leave it curly with some product in it. "Product" can be either gel, or cream, or mousse ... whichever one is appropriate for my mood ... and when combined with another product, such as a fiber-forming cream, mud, wax, pomade, or glue of sorts, and applied to the hair along with several spritzes of hairspray, I then usually get the desired outcome."

He looked at me like I had fallen out of the "stupid tree" and hit every blond-haired branch on the tree (sorry, blonds) as I was falling. I looked right back at him, and said, "When you were telling me your pricing basis, I felt just as confused as you do this very minute. Habla Ingles, por favor."

I think he got the point, and went over it in layman's terms before he left, but he couldn't wait to get out of my cube.

I was left staring at my screen feeling oh, so stupid... but with good hair.