Last night I had a very vivid dream with a familiar voice and face...and I awoke and realized that I was influenced by the movie I watched before bed. I watched "Confidence" - and I'd recommend it - great crime/con game movie with Dustin Hoffman and starring Edward Burns. If you are not familiar with him (EB), he is a New Yorker with typical Hollywood pretty-boy features (doesn't do much for me) but he DOES have the most wonderful raspy quailty to his voice. It has always seemed eerily familiar to me and I could never put my finger on just why.

After dreaming about that voice on the face/body of a bizzarre merging of Jason Bateman and Michael J. Fox...I knew who it was. 

Years ago in my "Android" years, I worked with a guy in the IT department who, although a Chicago native, had that EXACT raspy Irish-wise-guy vocal quality. Plus, he was short and was actually nicknamed "Michael J. Fox" by a number of folks.  He was about my age and used to flirt shamelessly with me - which didn't go unnoticed by my female boss who actually encouaged me point-blank to "work it". He (I'll call him "S.") supervised a team of network techs and we frequently needed their asssitance in managing our projects, but sometimes getting their cooperation in a timely manner was like pulling teeth.  I think the conversation in her office went something like this:

BossLady (paraphased): "You know, I think S. likes you. You should play on that so that we can get what we need out of his team."

Me: (somewhat taken aback but also laughing internally) "Ok. I'll try." (or some similarly dumbfounded response).

I had experience in the past of being sexually harassed by a male supervisor - not that he came on to me per se, but rather used his gender to make me uncomfortable in my job and thus assert his position. It was inane and he was reprimanded for it when it creeped me out and I complained to the manager.

But this time, I thought it was genuinely COOL that my boss encouraged me to sort of turn the tables on the flirty-bordering-on-harasssment guy and use it to my advantage. In other words, to empower myself. It worked! I led a team, with him and his staff included on it, and we put toghether a few well-received research reports.