Bullshit Avalanche

5/24/06


You may remember, dear readers, a post I did about 10 days ago (The Old, Wooden Cross) concerning the terrifically undeserving, self-proclaimed martyr in my office, and why I should get on a step-ladder so she can jump directly up my ass. If not, here is a link. All done? Okay.

I should preface this by saying that this woman is actually pretty nice, just powerfully, powerfully annoying. Whenever she speaks "to" me (this is a mercifully rare occurrence) it's always "through" another person. She'll be talking to someone about, I dunno, her ability to knit mittens for puppies, probably, and just randomly spout off something that was clearly meant for me, but has been couched in such language as to be purposefully overheard, and supposedly tongue-in-cheek. For example, she might turn to whomever and loudly say, "Oh, Ryan just loves it when we talk about babies," and then give me some stupid sidelong glance. I assume the woman is trying to engender camaraderie with yours truly, but I find this sort of low-grade humor almost as irritating as people who constantly refer to themselves in the third person. Its just lame and weird and about as funny as that douche-bag who gets drunk and throws up in your houseplants.

I guess this broad is trying to share some kind of joke with me in homage to the fact that I hate talking to 99% of the population, and find the same fraction's conversations about as appealing as a debate with an angry garden slug. What genius here doesn't realize is that she's in that category, and therefore I find her little "jokes" terrifically annoying. You want me to like you, lady? Don't talk to me at all; that'll go a lot further than this abortion of clever banter you seem to spew all over me on nearly a daily basis.

But she's not our Least Deserving Martyr of the month for nothing; this morning I was treated to another example of why she deserves a crown of thorns. LDM lady has a second job. Admittedly, this would be pretty exhausting, but she's not married and doesn't have any kids, so it's not like she's a poor single mother or anything, most of whom mention their award-worthy achievements a damn sight less than this broad, but I digress. Today's installment? How great she is at said 2nd job. (Which is customer service taking catalogue orders over the phone, by the way; it doesn't exactly take a member of MENSA to do this.)

LDM, spouting off to whomever is unfortunate enough to possess ears, informed us that some of the girls at 2nd job were talking about how much they have to work and "...I was like, 'you think you work? I haven't been home since 7 a.m.' And they were all like, 'how do you do it?'" Uh-huh. I'm sure they were. These must be the most easily impressed human beings on the planet. They must gaze in bright-eyed wonder whenever someone pulls a quarter out of their ear. Impressing such people is sort of like being the funniest guy in the leper colony.

Then there was her review.

Anyone who has worked in an office is familiar with the hated "reviews." These demonic annual or semi-annual darlings are gauntlets of pain one must endure in order to find out what paltry increase you can expect to your pauper's salary. Well LDM had hers last night, it seems. As you may have already guessed, it went swimmingly. In her own words:

"Now they only give 2-3% raises and I got a 4%. My supervisor said I had one of the highest reviews..."

This is the oldest trick in the supervisor's handbook; it doesn't matter what kind of raise the person is getting, you always tell them the company only allows less and you're giving them more because you're just so impressed with their performance in this job a trained monkey could master. It not only makes the terminally average employee feel like maybe they shouldn't go home and eat a bullet over their dead-end job after all, but makes you, the supervisor, look like a magnanimous humanitarian bucking "The Man's" attempts to keep them down. That is, if they can clock-in for work in the first place.

LDM complains every day that the intranet Time Center is malfunctioning and attempting to personally attack her by not allowing her to clock-in properly I find it hard to believe that such a person could be in the upper echelon of productivity. There's nothing wrong with Time Center. I use it flawlessly every day. She is by no means the only one who makes the complaint that it doesn't work properly, but the group which hollers such claims is not one I would trust to check their email without accidentally deleting the internet. The fact that I have thrice attempted to explain to these human computer viruses how to easily work the program and still successful execution eludes them like a greased eel calls her superior raise because of exemplary skill severely into question.

In the process of writing this LDM actually gave voice in our department meeting as to whether we could "do anything about how fast the cars come through the alley" on the side of our building. Naturally, like a growing ball of smoldering turds rolling downhill, a bunch of other jerks jumped on this chromosomally-challenged bandwagon, culminating in a complaint that "sometimes the other businesses leave their dumpsters sticking too far out into the alley." Its a fucking alley, you jackasses; we don't own the alley, we don't manage the alley, why don't you just ask if we couldn't, you know, just maybe "do something about all this water falling from the sky from time to time." Serenity now!