{"id":1084,"date":"2012-10-10T20:52:59","date_gmt":"2012-10-11T00:52:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/?p=1084"},"modified":"2012-10-26T15:51:41","modified_gmt":"2012-10-26T19:51:41","slug":"ladies-auxiliary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/2012\/10\/10\/ladies-auxiliary\/","title":{"rendered":"Ladies Auxiliary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When you know people for twenty five years they in turn know you.\u00a0 You can\u2019t hide, or make any new face they don\u2019t already recognize.\u00a0 You can\u2019t clean up your past because, eh hem, they were there.\u00a0 You can only be yourself, tell the truth and frankly you can just be.<\/p>\n

We were women in foodservice.\u00a0 Marge is still in foodservice professing, at one time, that it is in her blood.\u00a0 Ridiculous but, God love her, she\u2019s still in Manhattan working the salespeople to be their best.\u00a0 I bailed long ago and Barb bailed shortly after me.<\/p>\n

Foodservice distribution is a hard business.\u00a0 There is no distributor loyalty and if your #10 green beans are 2 cents more than the other guy, the other guy gets the business. If you can\u2019t deliver before lunch then you don\u2019t get the order.\u00a0 If you can\u2019t call me on Monday at 4pm for Tuesday delivery you don\u2019t get the order.\u00a0 Oh my God, stop me I\u2019m speaking that language again.<\/p>\n

There is a deadline every day in foodservice distribution. I know, I was the one enforcing the deadline, the one they were whining to when they missed that deadline.\u00a0 I was the one who had to hear them lament, \u201cPicture this, I\u2019m standing on the chair with the rope around my neck\u2026I\u2019ll do it if you don\u2019t give me an extension to the deadline.\u00a0 Kick the chair my friend you\u2019re not getting an extension.\u00a0 Getting nickel and dimed each day does not lead to good customer management.<\/p>\n

What it does lead to are friendships that are born in the trenches, which cement in an instant and last for, well, twenty five years.\u00a0 These women have been there for me in my very darkest hours.\u00a0 They have sat at my kitchen table and not left until I was breathing again.\u00a0 They allowed me to be the third wheel at any number of functions just to get me out in the fresh air.\u00a0 They breathed for me when I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

We have been very close for most of the time.\u00a0 There were several years that I withdrew for reasons I can\u2019t fully grasp anymore and it was not pleasant for me nor was it fair to them. Tragic things happened while I was gone and I deeply regret that I wasn\u2019t standing next to them where I belonged. I hope I\u2019ve apologized enough for that but the fact is once I took the first step back, I was back and so were they.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not altogether sure how to explain that we are completely different people but we are exactly the same.\u00a0 Marge is much more serious than she once was, Barb is deeply spiritual but amazingly funny and they are both fun to be around.\u00a0 We were christened the Ladies Auxiliary (meaning supplementary, supporting, and ancillary) many years ago.\u00a0 I say it was our first boss; a smart ass food guy who emphasized everything with his reading glasses and could drink you under the table. They both say it was our second boss; aptly named Batman, you know who you are you wanna be superhero, who could also drink you under the table but wasn\u2019t quite so mean when he did so.\u00a0 It was the 80\u2019s what can I tell you\u2026They thought we were ancillary to them but we knew better.\u00a0 We were supporting one another in a crazy business that had daily deadlines, no boundaries, no time off (what\u2019s a holiday again?) and plenty of atypical customers who had very little manners.\u00a0 Did I mention I bailed quite some time ago and yet\u2026?<\/p>\n

At any rate, it was duly recognized then that the Ladies Auxiliary was something to be reckoned with and that still holds true today.\u00a0 Do not mess with these women, I can still summon up that deadline enforcing, quick tongued lunatic that I was back then and so can they. \u00a0We will be supporting one another well into our old age (no Marge you\u2019re not there yet for crying out loud) with no anticipated break in the monthly (or as close to monthly as possible) meetings anticipated.\u00a0 We did decide tonight that there would be no red hats involved, but if you know me you already knew that.<\/p>\n

See you next month, same place, and same time with coffee to follow.\u00a0 Love you both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you know people for twenty five years they in turn know you.\u00a0 You can\u2019t hide, or make any new face they don\u2019t already recognize.\u00a0 You can\u2019t clean up your past because, eh hem, they were there.\u00a0 You can only … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-company-of-women-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27hQ5-hu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1084"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1119,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084\/revisions\/1119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}