Beloved co-worker, your asscheeks do not double as a hat. (An NSFW work rant)

[iampunha]

Dear Gertrude:

It's enough, to me, that you don't know the name of our company (itself an offshoot of one of those giant companies -- but I digress, as is my wont). As in, you use a name we haven't called ourselves in years. I know this because we are a newspaper, and the name of the company is the name on the masthead, the name on the giant sign outside where you park -- the name on the printed product you pull out so you can show our less-enlightened clients that yes, indeed, their add for little Suzie Space-Alien (honestly, hyphenated names these days are getting a little outlandish) and her fifth birthday did run.

So already, I know you're not necessarily the sharper tack in a pack from which the other tack (being sharper) has already been removed. And while I appreciate the difficulty in understanding how one object can be less sharp than nothing -- ... actually, let's drop the analogy.

I am saying that you lack basic job function skills, starting with not knowing the name of the company.

But it gets worse.

Let's say you're trying to spell a word like, oh, procrastinate. Now, because my job is predicated (ooh, another toughie -- sorry 'bout that) on being able to spell, I am happy to help you spell procrastinate.

Don't want me to? Don't acknowledge my presence even as I am required to be able to hear you and your whiny phone voice saying, in a state of constant complain, "Hello, ma'am, this is Gertrude from the Dumbass Gazette" -- it is actually the Dumbass Morning Gazette, though I grudgingly accept that for some of us, dumbassery is not restricted to the morning -- because I have to be able to hear other people who might have something important to say to me?

Cool, fine. Actually, given a choice between talking to people and not talking to them, especially when they are in the homo sapiens paulisper trinomial, I vastly prefer the latter.

But then one of our more enterprising co-workers, who is much less known for sitting on his head than you will ever be, points out that there is an actual, honest-to-Fred user of words mere feet from you. (Gotta love Fred; he never mistook a bat for a bird.)

So you tell me, reluctantly, to spell procrastinate. (You don't even ask -- you had asked the people in your department how to spell it, but you can't lower yourself to that amazingly low level of subservience, can't begin to contemplate a world in which an editor might actually be of some service to you in helping you not continue your streak of craptacularity.)

I spell it for you because I am way the fuck nicer and smarter than you will ever appreciate. ('nother long one -- but here it is for you to mess up once you're back to needing to warm your hair on your backside.)

You say thank you in that "I wish your mother had swallowed that load instead of taking it up her cooch" sense -- an amazing feat considering I am still at my desk and you now have information you likely would have spent half an hour looking for -- while not finding it, as usual. I can tell what products you're responsible for because they look like day-old kittens (who generally haven't opened their eyes) would've taken one look at your work and laughed.

(And yes, Google Chrome, cooch is a word. Stop putting a red line under it!)

But, see, here's the thing.

When I offer to come over and make sure your streak of mistakes has actually ended (cue picture of a blue moon), you say "THANK YOU" in that voice we all know as:

"Take one fucking step closer to me and I swear to God I will find some way to make you more miserable and I will enjoy it like thick, hard, strong, dark coffee (what, you thought I was going for a dick joke? You sit on your head; there's no room for a penis) from this day until the day one of us is not around to see the other."

Now, I am happy to invent a ZIP code with no numbers, just an asterisk, a heart, some cuneiform and a soggy Cheerio rounding it out -- if only because I would then have the opportunity to forget what a magnificent failure you are as a full-fledged human being -- but part of teaching someone a new skill is verifying that they didn't just screw the pooch by, for example, reversing the first r and the o in procrastinate ... a simple mistake, and one I've seen before, and even been guilty of myself (thus why I am familiar with spell check, dictionaries and similar useful tools).

So I don't know, even now, if you got the word right or wrong, and if you got it right, I am sure you will act like it is no big deal for you to spell a word with more letters than you have whiteout and space on your nails.

But if you got it wrong, you will point to me as the one who led you astray.

And bitch, that ain't fucking happening.

Don't ask me to identify words on a sheet of crudely mimeographed 17th century Afrikaans, but something like procrastinate?

I got that, yo.


Now, I am willing to admit some fault here. When I hear people struggling over some basic-to-me English, I am eager to help. Perhaps I do this too much, though, at a newspaper, I think it would be kind of difficult to have someone too dedicated to not printing crap -- especially so long before you leave for the day and forget you work here. (I got your back on that one, actually. I am longing -- longing -- for the day I leave this place and don't have to put up with, shall we say, the lesser among us. They don't know who they are, which is why they are the lesser.)

But all you have to do is look over at me kindly, the first time, and let me know you know where I am if you need help.

And from that moment on, I will mourn the language you are working so studiously to kill, from improper spelling to comma butchery to even failing to make sure all of the text in that advertisement fits in the space.

But I will do so quietly. You won't know -- not that, if past care factor impotence is any indication, you would care.

(Am I weeping on the inside? No, no, that's just that gosh-darned chronic pleurisy and a nasty case of heartburn from yet more of the local food, where tastiness is quantified in gallons of chemical-burn-inducing spices. Pay it and my labored, wood-charring breaths no mind.)

But if you ever want my help again, you'll at least pretend you care about doing something right because it's your job and not because your boss is standing over you suggesting you go ask the guy who wishes Merriam-Webster made flavored dictionaries (all the better to eat them with, my dear).

Otherwise, you are cordially invited to find out if your caecum makes a better hat than do your asscheeks. (I know the answer, but I know you're forever determined to find the wrong answer before the right one, and if I can't have you around as a useful, contributing co-worker, I'm happy to have you around as an endlessly entertaining one.)

love and kisses,

iampunha

[ivan astikov]

Now that's what you call a rant.

Go on, iampunha, you give it to the bitch.

[vison]

"You say thank you in that "I wish your mother had swallowed that load instead of taking it up her cooch" sense"

Wow. That deserves wide distribution!!!! That is something I am going to save and use when required and I sense it will be required soon.


Bravo, brilliant, wish I had written it, you rock.

[jali]

::applause::

[iampunha]

"You say thank you in that "I wish your mother had swallowed that load instead of taking it up her cooch" sense"

Wow. That deserves wide distribution!!!! That is something I am going to save and use when required and I sense it will be required soon.

I should mention, lest I become Internet-famous for something that is not entirely of my own doing, that the above-quoted line is adapted from something I first saw at least four years ago to the tune of "You're a load your mother should have swallowed."

However, and more to the point, I am happy to take credit for more artfully dressing it up, giving it a fitting context, etc. After all, if you can't be original, make the original better.

And now two shorter, less frothing rants:

Dear Eleanor:

I will never forget yesterday because you confirmed for me, once and for all, that you don't do your job.

... yeah, I finally figured it out for sure. You don't read the stuff you tell the designer to put on the page.

How do I know this?

Because registration for the event detailed in that article ENDED LAST WEEK.

Ended. As in, past tense of to end, meaning it already ended. Meaning people cannot currently register for an event detailed in an article for which your headline said REGISTRATION IS UNDERWAY.

By the way, you appear to be allergic to spelling that correctly. I've told you before. I promise to not tell you again because, as with pretty much every other thing I've told you that would make my life easier and make you a better editor (which is supposedly on your to-do list), you didn't remember.

So now I know you don't actually bother reading the things that are important enough for us to print 22,000 copies of.

Precious. I'll definitely remember this for the next time you feel the need to have a meeting with me during our work day to tell me you do a lot of work.

I'll remember back to all the articles you painfully clearly hadn't read, and I'll nod and smile and agree (that boy, copying and pasting is such VERY hard work -- almost as hard as writing a headline for an article you haven't read).

Oh, and this also makes your Jayson Blair joke that much funnier. At least he had the decency to resign once he was exposed.

love and kisses,

iampunha

Dear Stefano:

Most of the people in this office could arrive 45 minutes late every day and I wouldn't care. In fact, many do get here late.

But here's the deal: Because you, specifically, wanted budget meetings every day at 3 (or 3:30, or 3:45, or whenever we have the eight people involved free for 20 minutes), I get to work every day 20 minutes before 3 so I am prepared for these meetings.

You are occasionally in the office as early as 3:20, which is 20 minutes past the point at which you should be getting to work anyway.

And then sometimes you're here at 3:30.

So when we are all ready at 3 or 3:10 or something otherwise before 3 p.m. Stefano time, and when we have all done our meeting preparation for you, and we have to postpone the meeting you requested because you came in hung over and 45 minutes late,

...

please do not think I could possibly care less that you don't like that I am questioning your work ethic when you showed us you have none.

Really. Do not tell me to shut up about your consistent and unexcused lateness. Do not tell me to shut up about your not signing in to the messaging system I must use ONLY FOR YOU in case you're -- again -- listening to your music too loudly and thus unable to hear me. Do not tell me to shut up about your delaying my ability to do my job because you have to have been sitting at your desk for half an hour -- meaning I've been at work for more than an hour and I have put nothing on a page -- and you haven't done your page requests.

Your lack of professionalism is specifically, only and exactly the reason I am dogging you for being unprofessional. I will continue to do this until you shape the fuck up or want a meeting with me so you can tell me you don't like the fact that I continue to remind you of your job duties. Yes, even if it doesn't work -- because what am I going to do, forgive something you don't even lie about to excuse? No. I'm going to keep on you about doing your job, and if you don't like it ... what are you going to do, ask for a meeting with me and our boss?

If you do request such a meeting, here's my position.

You're chronically late.
You're chronically unprepared for the meetings you requested.
You're the one who takes an hour for lunch an hour after getting to work, meaning that of the first three hours of the work day, I am very fortunate when you're there for half that time.
You're the one who spends lots of time looking at his sports blogs when he should be working, thus delaying me and everyone else.
You're the one who comes to work hung over.

So go ahead and try me on this.

Oh! One more thing before I leave you to your stammering response:

Walking in 45 minutes late like you own the place and then being an hour behind everyone and then telling me to shut up when I kid you about it being 9 p.m. and look at the giant pile of work you have because you took an hour and a half for lunch and did Og only knows what else for the last six hours?

One of these days, during my "I'm sorry we went past deadline" phone call to the publisher, I am going to be honest and say "We were late because Stefano doesn't care about deadlines because so far, he can do whatever he wants at work and nobody cares enough to do anything."

And remember, I'm the one taking classes to become a teacher. This means I am probably out of here -- voluntarily -- before you.

love and kisses,

iampunha

[Zuul]

Good lord. I don't know how you manage not to beat those people's stupid, thick skulls.

[Sarahfeena]

And somehow, I imagine it's even worse than it sounds, if it got punha worked up to the point of typing out those rants.

[Clothahump]

<stands and applauds>

Now *that's* a rant!

[AllWalker]

I'm going to assume you work with at least 100 people, because i don't know how that business could have survived with this many incompetents floating around.

Forget the applause, I salute you.

[iampunha]

And somehow, I imagine it's even worse than it sounds, if it got punha worked up to the point of typing out those rants.

Once upon a time in almost-Mexico, it was.

The following statements are quoted from memory from an employee who was forced to resign:

"All black people are criminals."
"The Jews are a bellicose people."
"Madonna is the ugliest bitch on the planet."
"That NIU shooter was a pussy. I really admire the Virginia Tech guy; he got more people before he killed himself."
"Prissy little fag."
"Real bitchy city editor (to a potential recruit)."

When I finally tired of his everyone-else-is-wrong world view, I told our boss, who told her boss.

That was seven months into my stay at this place.

He -- this co-worker -- spoke three more sentences to me in his remaining five months. He obstructed my ability to work, he usurped my authority, he threw temper tantrums.

This is a guy who, while he was doing some work with children (in a previous job), openly questioned the worth of caring for children with significant medical special needs.

And he wasn't fired from this place. He was coerced into resigning because the newspaper publisher requires more evidence than Nuremberg if he's going to pass judgment on someone.

I'm going to assume you work with at least 100 people, because i don't know how that business could have survived with this many incompetents floating around.

I am trying to think of how I can fully express the extent of the situation without saying something that could enable someone to identify the paper I work for.

This place has several good people who work very hard to overcome the amazing "My dream today is to reach mediocrity" mass unwashed hired for reasons Og Hisself (let alone the FSM) doesn't know.

One of our reporters came to us unable to use commas properly. Another has occasional deep and abiding troubles writing complete sentences, but he's bilingual (his Spanish is much better than his English, I am told, and we have a large Spanish-literate audience), so he was hired. One person in the editorial department has come to work hung over or drunk at least three times while I've been here. Then there are the folks who have hidden -- for days -- and lied about their work and whereabouts and not been fired.

And there's a senior employee -- I'll let you sit there, horrified at the prospect of what role this person might play once this uniqueness hits -- who reads a ton, makes editorial decisions, uses "picayune" correctly, etc., and doesn't know what a verb is. In other fun, I taught him to copy and paste. (I've tried to teach him what a verb is, but it didn't stick the first two times, and I don't know how to do it more effectively without treating him like he's 5.)

Today's fun was the employee who, during an office mixer (held in a building maybe 30 feet away), stepped away from his desk for an hour to flirt with some girl who'd come to the party.

During the work day.

Feet from our boss's boss.

With a considerable pile of work pending because he wasn't there to do it.

Same guy who habitually comes in late. But he was 10 minutes early today, so I guess he figured he'd earned that hour.

Good lord. I don't know how you manage not to beat those people's stupid, thick skulls.

I learned long ago (in high school, probably) to channel deep and abiding fury with incompetence and indifference into deep and abiding amusement at how wonderfully shitty people are -- in this case, at their jobs.

Also, I have a patient work wife with a wonderful sense of humor. Otherwise, I'd have started mumbling about my stapler long ago.

[beebs]

That felt good to read. Feed me more whenever you like.

[Inner Stickler]

iampunha is making me scared to leave academia.

[Glazer]

iampunha is making me scared to leave academia.

You could always go into education. No one will ever expect anything of you.

[Inner Stickler]

Are you saying that no one would expect anything of me in academia or that no one expects me to thrive anywhere?

[iampunha]

iampunha is making me scared to leave academia.

Academia was worse.

I worked in college media. Let's focus on my newspaper experience.

I rewrote an entire section of the paper every week -- and the section editor and designer enabled it! They'd SNEAK out of production every week, and that was my cue to turn their garbage into something worth printing.

That section editor is now (or was last time I had the heart to look) a reporter at a TV news station. She looks nice, she can talk OK and she doesn't have to spell anything. Ever.

Then there was the president of the English Club -- whose grammar was made worse only by his spelling. And his lack of command of proper nouns. (He routinely misreferenced the school Internet magazine.) And his plagiarism -- which he didn't think was a big deal.

Then there was the guy who used his editorial column to run for student government president. (For two glorious weeks, he stopped writing articles about which demographic was going to hell that week.)

Then, on the "This is my job, but ..." side, there were all the course syllabuses -- in the English department -- with flagrant mistakes in them. (And there was the professor who would say, "Grab a copy of the syllabi.") The teacher who was unapproachable to the point that one of my friends got help from another professor when she was working on the seminal paper for the class. The one who thought the fact that insects have exoskeletons means they lack skeletons. (She taught a math and science teaching class.) The school release (think this but at another place) with the phrase "whom have impacted" -- and not as part of a prepositional phrase. The open bar "Thanks, donors!" mixer held in the library during midterms -- thus closing the library. During midterms.

And don't even get me started on our school president, whose previous experience was partly in industry (as a lawyer at a railroad company, I think) and partly as running the lottery.

The lottery.

Y'know, the thing where the tickets sell themselves. Where the thing you're buying is a chance at more money.

Yeah ... three years later, the only person who likes her is her secretary, who's putting together a great resume to be a political mouthpiece.


There are idiots everywhere in life. The librarian at a school where I'm getting my observation hours (so I can teach people how to not YELL THE WRONG COMPANY NAME INTO THE PHONE!) mistook the left side of the library for the right. Two of our photographers couldn't type "the" if you did it for them, unplugged their keyboards and then shut off power to the entire building. The intern plagiarized so much of her ONE article yesterday that I should have given a byline credit to the car company she wrote it for. (Weekly advertisement. Was biweekly until the economy died.) And one of our reporters has decided that showers are an affront to his skin and hair. (He'd already decided against deodorant.) I'm glad I don't sit near him, but I fear for our part-time reporter, who gets gassed daily.

And then there are the people featured in my GB rants. (I had to share the love, y'see.)

[eleanorigby]

Dear Eleanor:

I will never forget yesterday because you confirmed for me, once and for all, that you don't do your job.

... yeah, I finally figured it out for sure. You don't read the stuff you tell the designer to put on the page.

How do I know this?

Because registration for the event detailed in that article ENDED LAST WEEK.

Ended. As in, past tense of to end, meaning it already ended. Meaning people cannot currently register for an event detailed in an article for which your headline said REGISTRATION IS UNDERWAY.

By the way, you appear to be allergic to spelling that correctly. I've told you before. I promise to not tell you again because, as with pretty much every other thing I've told you that would make my life easier and make you a better editor (which is supposedly on your to-do list), you didn't remember.

So now I know you don't actually bother reading the things that are important enough for us to print 22,000 copies of.

Precious. I'll definitely remember this for the next time you feel the need to have a meeting with me during our work day to tell me you do a lot of work.


love and kisses,

iampunha

Hey! What'd I ever do to you? I can spell AND I work hard....

I apologize on behalf of all Eleanors everywhere (and there are none too few many of us). How about I take her out back and beat her to death with a shovel?