When are you gonna come down
When are you going to land
I should have stayed on the farm
I should have listened to my old man
You know you can't hold me forever
I didn't sign up with you
I'm not a present for your friends to open
This boy's too young to be singing, the blues
So goodbye yellow brick road
Where the dogs of society howl
You can't plant me in your penthouse
I'm going back to my plough (plow)
Back to the howling old owl in the woods
Hunting the horny back toad
Oh I've finally decided my future lies
Beyond the yellow brick road
What do you think you'll do then
I bet that'll shoot down your plane
It'll take you a couple of vodka and tonics
To set you on your feet again
Maybe you'll get a replacement
There's plenty like me to be found
Mongrels who ain't got a penny
Sniffing for tidbits like you on the ground
So goodbye yellow brick road
Where the dogs of society howl
You can't plant me in your penthouse
I'm going back to my plough (plow)
Back to the howling old owl in the woods
Hunting the horny back toad
Oh I've finally decided my future lies
Beyond the yellow brick road
Songwriters
BERNIE TAUPIN, ELTON JOHN
Published by
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Today, we said good-bye to one of our Quality Analysts, the divine Ms. R.
I met R in October of 2013 which absolutely seems like a lifetime ago. She was one of the experienced agents on the floor and us newbies sat with those old timers (they were there a year before us) to learn from their experiences.
I remember after our month long training class how nervous I was
R was so gentle with me, so patient explaining how the computer program worked, letting me listen to her real life calls. She helped me see immediately that the calls coming in to the center were not going to follow the script we'd practiced for hours. Rather, she showed me how to adapt to the particular needs of the caller. She left me know flexibility existed in the laminated pages of the sales script.
Later R went to the quality department. I followed a few months after. In the beginning we were a quiet bunch. We had a lot of work to do each week for our agents. I think it took D to make us a bit rowdy but that's another story.
By mid fall the powers that be moved us into the Imagination room. We went from having our private cubicles, decorated with all our laminated scripts and other guidance to being on long, thin tables. We saw a lot in that room. We witnessed the utter melt-down of another QA. We learned to navigate a two screen system. R and I interviewed for a QA position in another department and I went into individual and family plans. R was one of the first to witness the isolation I was forced to endure and let me know it wasn't in my imagination.
For a time our departments were separated. Then we joined forces where I had two unenviable seats - one across from the operations manager and the other across the tiny aisle from the ice box. Eventually we were back to where it all started and is now ending.
R and I sat across from one another and uncovered things that linked us - like our fathers being in the military, and our sons being
While we have had every reason to be down about our circumstances, and there were definitely days that were difficult to bear, one of the blessings in the rain was our ability to cement our friendship with each other and with other members of the quality department.
I seriously don't know where I would be today without each and everyone of them (and M I will always remember you and the rattlesnake in your laundry room!). Each member of the quality department made coming to work fun, and in the last days, bearable.
So, Ms. R. I know we don't know what is going to happen with our lives. We have faith they will turn out as the Father intended. But, I couldn't help but think of this one line from Elton John's "Good Bye Yellow Brick Road." It wasn't until Dorothy Gale of Kansas taught us about following the yellow brick road to find the Wizard of Oz that we got a sense of the value of individual choices. Well, we know about that yellow brick road, and we know about the crossroad Dorothy was at when she met Scarecrow and the decision she eventually made on her own since Scarecrow was so confused.
Some of the directions in our yellow brick road have been closed to us. We can't go back. We can't imagine what is to the left or right, so we'll forge ahead into the unknown. R, "Oh I've finally decided my future lies beyond the yellow brick road."
