Dangerous Type

For those of you who don’t know what I do for a living, I work for a dentist who is an idol for many dentists around the nation. He lectures, teaches, publishes, films instructional DVDs, and occasionally sees patients. The primary focus of my job is selling the DVDs and courses we offer. I travel, usually once a month, to sell during meetings to doctors. I put together print ads and still frequently act as primary on the phones. I am constantly wearing different hats in the office. Lately, he’s had me working the front desk on patient days, because he wants someone who is friendly to interact with patients. Over the past 12 years, my job has run the gamut of picking up dry cleaning to designing our company website. It rarely gets dull.

Today, my boss comes to the doorways of my and my coworkers’ offices. He wanted to talk about his plans for our upcoming video filming, a DVD on preventing embezzlement in the dental office. DVDs are interesting to produce. They can get pretty boring if it’s just my boss being a talking head. To flesh out a concept, I’ve been dragged in before to act as a front desk person on camera, talking to a patient. I’ve sat in the dental chair with a stupid paper bib on and pantomimed asking questions to a dental assistant. I’ve demonstrated how to properly brush your teeth; and I’ve faked passing out for our medical emergency video. After watching these segments, I figure it was a pretty good thing I didn’t decide to be an actress. I can hardly keep a straight face.

Back to my boss – he wanted to know who would play the embezzler for the video. Toni will have to be the experienced office manager, so SHE can’t be the embezzler. Resounding silence in the office, then I open my big mouth and state I would do it if I got to wear a mask, like Hamburglar (back-in-the-day McD’s pop culture reference), or he would have to put up a message that says “not an actual embezzler”, because I may actually want a job in dentistry after this one, and my reputation doesn’t need knocking. Boss-man started laughing and said “Okay! Alycia will be our hot-looking embezzler.”

When will I ever learn?

On the plus side, boss-man said I should wear something really attractive and costly, as if I’m living outside the means of what my pay would be (a potential sign-post of an embezzler). I told I would be happy to get a new outfit and maybe a diamond tennis bracelet with matching earrings. He can expect me to submit the receipt next week. I told him that while we were at it, we should also get some footage of me driving his Porsche, so that it’s really apparent I’m living outside my means.