JLO...Rear....see what I did there?
It's a slow day so I'll just tell you this. Back when I was working for the horse's ass known as "JLO" I composed the following letter for my own amusement. I'm pretty sure if she ever did write me a letter this would be pretty spot on. I found it in an old Live Journal entry.
You don’t water my plants enough. Just because I’m here doesn’t mean I am going to do it. I have stuff to do sitting at my desk looking at my feet. I have to clean my glasses, that kind of deal. In fact, if you could clean my glasses I’d appreciate it. Well, not appreciate it so much as expect it. Jump to it.
You may have noticed that I don’t know nothing about using a computer or indeed about double negatives. This is why you must do all my work for me. What’s the point in having an assistant if she doesn’t do stuff for me? Do you know a good long lasting mascara? Oh wait, I have no eyelashes.
Please compile me a list of how the fax machine operates. What numbers do I have to press to make it do that whistling noise it makes? Where does the paper go? How does my paper get to someone in Australia? Does it break into pieces and form again at the other end, like Mike TeeVee in 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory'?
How do I turn my computer on? Is my email on it? Please ask the IT department for me as I need to know these details. Can I have a higher quality Internet and not just the standard one everyone else has? I have important things to do. And Saks Fifth Avenue dot com has a sale.
Get me flights for next week to somewhere on some day from someplace. Make sure they have my points number. I have a lot of points because I am special. Make sure they know.
Please find out if our office services guy can install a toilet in my office? I notice the office next door is free maybe they can convert that? And can he prise open the window in my office? My office smells like poon.
Please let me know how to make the little paper clip man disappear on my word processor, he is making disagreeable faces at me. Drop everything and take care of me NOW.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
The Bells....The Bells...
At the same bastion of evil where I served time under (thankfully, for the laws of decency, not literally!) Mr. Panty-Waist, Cruella deVille and SBAS, I knew a man we shall call Quasimodo, due to the fact he loped, haphazardly off-kilter, around the corridors of the office like the giant cross between King Kong and the hunchback himself, while muttering obscenities under his breath to no one in particular. He’d come limping down the corridor, sending tremors through the office and as he passed your desk all you could hear was a whispered, “motherfucker, blah blah blah cocksuckers” as he conversed with some invisible force in his head.
Quasi was a man seen by all and known by no one. He was a great writer, a man who knew his job and got on with it, unlike most of the pretenders who held positions there. He was a fifty year old, chunky, grimacing stump of a man, not given to frivolous conversations or interactions that he didn’t have to. He was a man not only uninspired by the company of other human beings, but a man completely disgusted by them. He would sit, day after day, in his small office, with the door locked, tapping away on his keyboard, venturing out into the world only to pour some coffee in the makeshift kitchen or visit the men’s room, where I’m sure he made as quick an entry and exit as possible to avoid contact with other males.
Most people at the company disliked him intensely or at least, what they knew of him, which was virtually nothing. He had a somewhat handsome son, whose photos you could glimpse decorating the credenza near his desk, in the 2 seconds it took to deliver a fax or ask him a question, and it was understood he also had a wife, although most people weren’t terribly convinced his wife wasn’t residing in the crawl space under his house, wrapped in a tarp. He was kind of a creepy character.
There was a mini-scandal one time when someone launched themselves into his office unexpectedly and allegedly found him viewing a bunch of porn, so naturally those rumors further added to his “old creepy guy” persona.
He never minced his words, old Quasi. One time I took in a fax I’d found on the communal machine, addressed to him. It was a generic press release about some ex-employee’s appointment to a new position elsewhere.
“Oh JOY!” he bellowed sarcastically when I gave it to him, tossing it dramatically straight into the garbage can with the expression of someone who just inhaled dogshit. I had to hot tail it out of there like my ass was on fire before I guffawed right in his face. He was a truly, unintentionally funny man.
One time, when we were plagued by an infestation of young, female, rich, daddy’s girl interns, with shit for brains, he interrupted a gossip session between two of them talking in “OMG LOL” speak, by busting out of his office like the Kool Aid Guy and hollering, “Will someone please make some goddamn calls if you can fit it in between choosing a color of nail polish or swooning over the latest HUNK!” before stomping back into his office and slamming the door so hard a picture fell off the wall.
Personally, I kind of liked Quasi. He was a no bullshit kind of guy and you knew where you stood with him. He didn’t say one thing and do another. He didn’t pussyfoot around issues. What you saw was what you got and what you got was a great, big, sullen, grouchy, rubber-faced guy who didn’t suffer fools gladly.
I would make a point to say good morning or good afternoon to him if I passed him lumbering down the corridor and in time he would actually respond with more than a grunt of indifference. On a couple of occasions, when an emergency arose after most people had left for the day and he was handling it, I’d help him out with editing documents and general administrative stuff and he’d be genuinely grateful. After one such night, I arrived in the morning, bleary-eyed from a late night editing, to find a card on my desk thanking me for my time.
This was more than I’d gotten from anyone I actually worked for in the few years I’d been there. Really, it was just nice to know that there was someone working in that festering, shithole of a place who didn’t completely suck.
Quasi was a man seen by all and known by no one. He was a great writer, a man who knew his job and got on with it, unlike most of the pretenders who held positions there. He was a fifty year old, chunky, grimacing stump of a man, not given to frivolous conversations or interactions that he didn’t have to. He was a man not only uninspired by the company of other human beings, but a man completely disgusted by them. He would sit, day after day, in his small office, with the door locked, tapping away on his keyboard, venturing out into the world only to pour some coffee in the makeshift kitchen or visit the men’s room, where I’m sure he made as quick an entry and exit as possible to avoid contact with other males.
Most people at the company disliked him intensely or at least, what they knew of him, which was virtually nothing. He had a somewhat handsome son, whose photos you could glimpse decorating the credenza near his desk, in the 2 seconds it took to deliver a fax or ask him a question, and it was understood he also had a wife, although most people weren’t terribly convinced his wife wasn’t residing in the crawl space under his house, wrapped in a tarp. He was kind of a creepy character.
There was a mini-scandal one time when someone launched themselves into his office unexpectedly and allegedly found him viewing a bunch of porn, so naturally those rumors further added to his “old creepy guy” persona.
He never minced his words, old Quasi. One time I took in a fax I’d found on the communal machine, addressed to him. It was a generic press release about some ex-employee’s appointment to a new position elsewhere.
“Oh JOY!” he bellowed sarcastically when I gave it to him, tossing it dramatically straight into the garbage can with the expression of someone who just inhaled dogshit. I had to hot tail it out of there like my ass was on fire before I guffawed right in his face. He was a truly, unintentionally funny man.
One time, when we were plagued by an infestation of young, female, rich, daddy’s girl interns, with shit for brains, he interrupted a gossip session between two of them talking in “OMG LOL” speak, by busting out of his office like the Kool Aid Guy and hollering, “Will someone please make some goddamn calls if you can fit it in between choosing a color of nail polish or swooning over the latest HUNK!” before stomping back into his office and slamming the door so hard a picture fell off the wall.
Personally, I kind of liked Quasi. He was a no bullshit kind of guy and you knew where you stood with him. He didn’t say one thing and do another. He didn’t pussyfoot around issues. What you saw was what you got and what you got was a great, big, sullen, grouchy, rubber-faced guy who didn’t suffer fools gladly.
I would make a point to say good morning or good afternoon to him if I passed him lumbering down the corridor and in time he would actually respond with more than a grunt of indifference. On a couple of occasions, when an emergency arose after most people had left for the day and he was handling it, I’d help him out with editing documents and general administrative stuff and he’d be genuinely grateful. After one such night, I arrived in the morning, bleary-eyed from a late night editing, to find a card on my desk thanking me for my time.
This was more than I’d gotten from anyone I actually worked for in the few years I’d been there. Really, it was just nice to know that there was someone working in that festering, shithole of a place who didn’t completely suck.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Slackers
I mentioned the complete waste-of-space, Skankariffic Blonde Ass-kissing Sidekick (SBAS) the other day, so I thought I’d tell you a bit about her and what it was like working for her and her fantastically enormous bout of self-love which cast a shadow on the Earth with its vastness.
She was one of those people who, when you first meet them, seem like the nicest person you could imagine. Friendly, smiley, generally agreeable. Later, once you’ve gotten to know her better, you start to get frequent monumental flashes of the passive-aggressive, manipulative, two-faced, lying, scaly troll that really resides inside her skin, but by then it’s too late and you’re in for the long haul.
SBAS was Mr. Panty-Waist’s right hand woman. His Girl Friday (through Thursday). His Executive Vice President. His personal confidant, his sounding board and the only person in the workplace who saw fit to stroke his outrageous ego (and who knows what else) on a daily basis while giggling at his jokes and twirling her hair around her finger. She was a master of spin – namely spinning things in her favor at the expense of other people. She had him wrapped around that same little finger. Where client assignments were concerned she was clueless, but office politics she had down pat.
Let me elaborate. SBAS was as useful as a chocolate car in the desert. For a start she had a big problem with getting to work on time. If it wasn’t for the fact Mr. Panty-Waist was even worse, she would never have gotten away with it for so long. She was seldom in the office before 11 a.m., usually later if she could manage it. She would call me first thing claiming she had a doctor’s appointment for her kid, which, if she was to believed, he attended on average three times a week, but then she’d show up around noon with her hair mysteriously trimmed, blown out and styled, like magic!
I guess doctors provide a bigger variety of services these days.
She would then check if Mr. Panty-Waist had arrived yet (usually not) and shut herself in her office for an hour while she made some personal calls to her nanny, her large flabby husband who looked uncannily like Lurch from the Addams Family and her friends. By the time she’d done with all that it would be time for lunch so she’d hop off to meet Lurch at some fancy grill or restaurant for a leisurely two hour-plus dining extravaganza, during which time Mr. Panty-Waist would finally show up, see her office open and think she’d just popped out for a bite after a hard morning’s work. She was really quite expert at appearing busy while doing absolutely nothing. She’d get back around 3 p.m., look at a few emails, make some more calls and go home at 4:30 p.m. The whole team would diss her behind her back and plot her demise in the most painful, humiliating ways possible. It was the only benefit to working with her really, fantasizing about her excruciating death.
She was also constantly fucking up client work. She’d forget deadlines, claiming she'd never got them in the first place and then have a crazy rush at the last minute to get everything done, while whining about how overworked she was, fail miserably, have to have one of the other, more valuable team members correct her work and pull the project together while she bleated and giggled coyly and tried to place the blame on everyone except for herself. This was a weekly occurrence and eventually, I’m pretty sure, even Mr. Panty-Waist had enough of a brain in his giant Shrek-head to figure out that she was basically just fluff. The dilemma however meant there was nothing he could do about it because removing her would mean, who would laugh at his jokes and massage his ego and agree with his every ridiculous suggestion and his constant whining? He had no other allies and the other partners and top executives hated him.
One thing SBAS was expert at was spending lots of time we didn’t have complaining about something that was of relatively minor importance. We’d have a huge PowerPoint deck containing a creative presentation to the client and while the rest of us were proof reading for typos, grammatical no-nos and checking images etc., she was fretting and pouting over the whole thing being the “wrong shade of blue”. She would literally spend hours with our graphics freelancer getting gradually more and more irritated that she wasn’t producing exactly the hue of blue SBAS had locked in the vault of irrationality in her brain. I had another shade of blue in mind. The shade of blue you get around the eyes when pummeled with my fist, in particular.
It got so bad that certain people at the client refused to deal with her anymore. Basically they got fed up with never getting answers from her or work they requested arriving in a timely manner, so they stopped calling and started using another team member instead.
Inexplicably, this giant waste of space continues to 'work' for the company, still apparently massaging Mr. Panty-Waist’s ego and still complaining about the right shade of blue.
She was one of those people who, when you first meet them, seem like the nicest person you could imagine. Friendly, smiley, generally agreeable. Later, once you’ve gotten to know her better, you start to get frequent monumental flashes of the passive-aggressive, manipulative, two-faced, lying, scaly troll that really resides inside her skin, but by then it’s too late and you’re in for the long haul.
SBAS was Mr. Panty-Waist’s right hand woman. His Girl Friday (through Thursday). His Executive Vice President. His personal confidant, his sounding board and the only person in the workplace who saw fit to stroke his outrageous ego (and who knows what else) on a daily basis while giggling at his jokes and twirling her hair around her finger. She was a master of spin – namely spinning things in her favor at the expense of other people. She had him wrapped around that same little finger. Where client assignments were concerned she was clueless, but office politics she had down pat.
Let me elaborate. SBAS was as useful as a chocolate car in the desert. For a start she had a big problem with getting to work on time. If it wasn’t for the fact Mr. Panty-Waist was even worse, she would never have gotten away with it for so long. She was seldom in the office before 11 a.m., usually later if she could manage it. She would call me first thing claiming she had a doctor’s appointment for her kid, which, if she was to believed, he attended on average three times a week, but then she’d show up around noon with her hair mysteriously trimmed, blown out and styled, like magic!
I guess doctors provide a bigger variety of services these days.
She would then check if Mr. Panty-Waist had arrived yet (usually not) and shut herself in her office for an hour while she made some personal calls to her nanny, her large flabby husband who looked uncannily like Lurch from the Addams Family and her friends. By the time she’d done with all that it would be time for lunch so she’d hop off to meet Lurch at some fancy grill or restaurant for a leisurely two hour-plus dining extravaganza, during which time Mr. Panty-Waist would finally show up, see her office open and think she’d just popped out for a bite after a hard morning’s work. She was really quite expert at appearing busy while doing absolutely nothing. She’d get back around 3 p.m., look at a few emails, make some more calls and go home at 4:30 p.m. The whole team would diss her behind her back and plot her demise in the most painful, humiliating ways possible. It was the only benefit to working with her really, fantasizing about her excruciating death.
She was also constantly fucking up client work. She’d forget deadlines, claiming she'd never got them in the first place and then have a crazy rush at the last minute to get everything done, while whining about how overworked she was, fail miserably, have to have one of the other, more valuable team members correct her work and pull the project together while she bleated and giggled coyly and tried to place the blame on everyone except for herself. This was a weekly occurrence and eventually, I’m pretty sure, even Mr. Panty-Waist had enough of a brain in his giant Shrek-head to figure out that she was basically just fluff. The dilemma however meant there was nothing he could do about it because removing her would mean, who would laugh at his jokes and massage his ego and agree with his every ridiculous suggestion and his constant whining? He had no other allies and the other partners and top executives hated him.
One thing SBAS was expert at was spending lots of time we didn’t have complaining about something that was of relatively minor importance. We’d have a huge PowerPoint deck containing a creative presentation to the client and while the rest of us were proof reading for typos, grammatical no-nos and checking images etc., she was fretting and pouting over the whole thing being the “wrong shade of blue”. She would literally spend hours with our graphics freelancer getting gradually more and more irritated that she wasn’t producing exactly the hue of blue SBAS had locked in the vault of irrationality in her brain. I had another shade of blue in mind. The shade of blue you get around the eyes when pummeled with my fist, in particular.
It got so bad that certain people at the client refused to deal with her anymore. Basically they got fed up with never getting answers from her or work they requested arriving in a timely manner, so they stopped calling and started using another team member instead.
Inexplicably, this giant waste of space continues to 'work' for the company, still apparently massaging Mr. Panty-Waist’s ego and still complaining about the right shade of blue.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Mean Yet Justified
There is a woman who works in my current place of employment who is single handedly driving me to drink. I’ll admit, I’m halfway there to begin with, but the crazy bitch is giving me a severe push in the direction of the wet bar. I’d say this woman is doing it deliberately but sadly, I know her too well and I know that alas, this is her actual personality.
She’s a nice lady, don’t get me wrong. She’s helpful, she’s friendly, she’s reliable, she’s professional, she’s………..so boring I want to grab her by the throat and bang her serene, humorless little head off the nearest wall.
I know it sounds mean but I truly believe that mean is my vocation. She's the kind of lady who could not look more conservative if the God of Conservatism himself gave her a makeover. Bear in mind, we have no dress code, I live in jeans and Doc Martens and this chick just...she chooses to wear fitted office pants and blouses, that's all I'm saying. That right there should be a marker the FBI look for when profiling serial killers.
Let me give you an example of my frustration at this woman:
She arranges a trip for some executives she works with. One of my bosses is also going on the trip and I am taking care of his side of the plans. This woman has to call me several times in the day to coordinate - to tell me that “this is the location of the meeting, this is the time it begins, this is what we are doing with cars, when is your guy arriving?” and other relevant need-to-know things that benefit us both. I have zero problem with this. What I have the problem with is, she will call me to, say, give me a confirmation number for a car service and it will take her ten minutes to tell me because before she imparts the information I actually need, she will tell me: Every. Damn. Little. Tiny. Morsel. Of. Information. I. Do. Not. Need. To. Know. About. The. Trip. In. Excruciating. Detail. What all her people are doing, each of their flight plans, who is staying where and why they chose that hotel, blah blah blah blah, until I just want to hang up and slam the drawer on my head repeatedly till I pass out.
Seeing her name on my caller ID makes me tear up. I can't let her go to voice mail because then she leaves a ten minute voice mail that I daren't delete because somewhere, in the body of the message, there will be a morsel of relevant information that I really need.
Hey chick. I don’t need to know the problems you are having with your neighbors. About your illnesses. About the myriad of things your cats over the years have done. About what your boss has for lunch each day and why. About your new filing system. About the time you worked late despite being sick and no one bothered to thank you. Shut up! Shut up and die.
She’s a nice lady, don’t get me wrong. She’s helpful, she’s friendly, she’s reliable, she’s professional, she’s………..so boring I want to grab her by the throat and bang her serene, humorless little head off the nearest wall.
I know it sounds mean but I truly believe that mean is my vocation. She's the kind of lady who could not look more conservative if the God of Conservatism himself gave her a makeover. Bear in mind, we have no dress code, I live in jeans and Doc Martens and this chick just...she chooses to wear fitted office pants and blouses, that's all I'm saying. That right there should be a marker the FBI look for when profiling serial killers.
Let me give you an example of my frustration at this woman:
She arranges a trip for some executives she works with. One of my bosses is also going on the trip and I am taking care of his side of the plans. This woman has to call me several times in the day to coordinate - to tell me that “this is the location of the meeting, this is the time it begins, this is what we are doing with cars, when is your guy arriving?” and other relevant need-to-know things that benefit us both. I have zero problem with this. What I have the problem with is, she will call me to, say, give me a confirmation number for a car service and it will take her ten minutes to tell me because before she imparts the information I actually need, she will tell me: Every. Damn. Little. Tiny. Morsel. Of. Information. I. Do. Not. Need. To. Know. About. The. Trip. In. Excruciating. Detail. What all her people are doing, each of their flight plans, who is staying where and why they chose that hotel, blah blah blah blah, until I just want to hang up and slam the drawer on my head repeatedly till I pass out.
Seeing her name on my caller ID makes me tear up. I can't let her go to voice mail because then she leaves a ten minute voice mail that I daren't delete because somewhere, in the body of the message, there will be a morsel of relevant information that I really need.
Hey chick. I don’t need to know the problems you are having with your neighbors. About your illnesses. About the myriad of things your cats over the years have done. About what your boss has for lunch each day and why. About your new filing system. About the time you worked late despite being sick and no one bothered to thank you. Shut up! Shut up and die.
No Camels Were Harmed During This Entry
While working for the heinous ass-clown, Mr. Panty-Waist, it was inevitable that there would come a day when I would make a monumental decision in my life, between either finding a new job or coming to work with a chainsaw and bloody, murderous intent. While the latter appealed to me so much more, the former was necessary to preserve my sanity and possibly my freedom, though I doubt you could find a jury anywhere in the country who’d convict me for obliterating that waste of good skin and his Skankariffic, Blonde, Ass-kissing Sidekick.
The day in question - the straw that broke the camel's back - occurred on an otherwise quiet Thursday, shortly after our company had undergone the installation of a new phone system. The phone system not only was totally different from the previous version, but our phone numbers also changed, including the area code, a fact bound to confuse and baffle clients for months, most of whom would scratch their heads, frown and think “Did they move to Maryland?”
The day the installation was complete, Mr. Panty-Waist asked me to send an email to all of the people at our main client that we conversed with daily, informing them of our number change. I dutifully compiled a list of every person at every level of power, at this client who should receive the email, typed out a very polite, grammatically correct and brief email informing them that our numbers had changed, our address had not and attached was a spreadsheet with a contact list of all of the team members in our office and their new phone numbers. I told Mr. Panty-Waist the people who would be receiving this information to make sure I wasn’t missing anyone. He approved it.
Once I’d proof read everything I sent it to all the recipients. I cc’d Mr. Panty-Waist and his Skankariffic Blonde Ass-kissing Sidekick (SBAS).
Bear in mind, this was a trivial email with our number changes not the Declaration of Independence.
A few minutes later, Mr. Panty-Waist and SBAS were huddled in his office with the door closed, gossiping in annoyed tones. They called me in. Mr. Panty-Waist then proceeded to whine for twenty minutes that my email was “unprofessional”. He was vexed because he said not only would all the higher executives at the client be appalled to be receiving the same email as the lower ranked employees, BUT also, the subject line of the email? I'd typed it all in capital letters! *GASP* This is totally unacceptable. Capital letters? People will swoon and faint. Markets will crumble and crash. Birds will fall out of the sky like stones. The client will laugh sarcastically at our incompetence. They’ll call us and cancel our contract because we are amateurs who capitalize the subject lines in e-mails. They will have to rethink our whole relationship. I will have to sit in the stocks for a day having people throw tomatoes at my head for my hideous crime.
The SBAS giggled and twittered throughout the whole dressing down. I shouldn't really hold it against her, it's hard to do much else with only two brain cells.
I clenched my fists and tried not to yell, “What the fuck is wrong with you people? Are you really this anal and ridiculous? Have you any concept at all of magnitude? Of comparative importance?” I didn’t though. I just sat and sulked for the rest of the afternoon. Naturally, no one from the client called with their panties in a wad to complain about the audacious email and I got about nine responses from people thanking me. Those people must have been ill or mentally challenged because they hadn't even noticed the criminal, one-line capitalization, or maybe they were just too polite to mention it.
Next day, Friday, Mr. Panty-Waist was out of the office. He called – get this – three times just to go over the whole “unprofessional email” thing again on the phone. I sat in silence the whole time while he talked not saying anything. The third time he called I put him on mute and cussed like a sailor then hung up on him.
New phone systems have a habit of being unreliable, no?
The day in question - the straw that broke the camel's back - occurred on an otherwise quiet Thursday, shortly after our company had undergone the installation of a new phone system. The phone system not only was totally different from the previous version, but our phone numbers also changed, including the area code, a fact bound to confuse and baffle clients for months, most of whom would scratch their heads, frown and think “Did they move to Maryland?”
The day the installation was complete, Mr. Panty-Waist asked me to send an email to all of the people at our main client that we conversed with daily, informing them of our number change. I dutifully compiled a list of every person at every level of power, at this client who should receive the email, typed out a very polite, grammatically correct and brief email informing them that our numbers had changed, our address had not and attached was a spreadsheet with a contact list of all of the team members in our office and their new phone numbers. I told Mr. Panty-Waist the people who would be receiving this information to make sure I wasn’t missing anyone. He approved it.
Once I’d proof read everything I sent it to all the recipients. I cc’d Mr. Panty-Waist and his Skankariffic Blonde Ass-kissing Sidekick (SBAS).
Bear in mind, this was a trivial email with our number changes not the Declaration of Independence.
A few minutes later, Mr. Panty-Waist and SBAS were huddled in his office with the door closed, gossiping in annoyed tones. They called me in. Mr. Panty-Waist then proceeded to whine for twenty minutes that my email was “unprofessional”. He was vexed because he said not only would all the higher executives at the client be appalled to be receiving the same email as the lower ranked employees, BUT also, the subject line of the email? I'd typed it all in capital letters! *GASP* This is totally unacceptable. Capital letters? People will swoon and faint. Markets will crumble and crash. Birds will fall out of the sky like stones. The client will laugh sarcastically at our incompetence. They’ll call us and cancel our contract because we are amateurs who capitalize the subject lines in e-mails. They will have to rethink our whole relationship. I will have to sit in the stocks for a day having people throw tomatoes at my head for my hideous crime.
The SBAS giggled and twittered throughout the whole dressing down. I shouldn't really hold it against her, it's hard to do much else with only two brain cells.
I clenched my fists and tried not to yell, “What the fuck is wrong with you people? Are you really this anal and ridiculous? Have you any concept at all of magnitude? Of comparative importance?” I didn’t though. I just sat and sulked for the rest of the afternoon. Naturally, no one from the client called with their panties in a wad to complain about the audacious email and I got about nine responses from people thanking me. Those people must have been ill or mentally challenged because they hadn't even noticed the criminal, one-line capitalization, or maybe they were just too polite to mention it.
Next day, Friday, Mr. Panty-Waist was out of the office. He called – get this – three times just to go over the whole “unprofessional email” thing again on the phone. I sat in silence the whole time while he talked not saying anything. The third time he called I put him on mute and cussed like a sailor then hung up on him.
New phone systems have a habit of being unreliable, no?
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
So Many Wannabes
While working at the small Manhattan PR firm where I spent several years gophering for various bosses, 90% of whom were outrageous tools, I performed a stint working for a skinny diva who thought the sun rose and set over her gargantuan ego. We called her JLO due to her Lopez-like ego and the fact her name was uncannily similar.
She joined the firm in April and by June she acted like she was running it. It should be noted that this ridiculous, whining wannabe was a junior staff member with several layers of title still hovering, out of reach, above her head. She was amazingly incompetent at the simplest little task, like using Word or Excel, saving documents to the company shared drive and ordering her own lunch. She would yell like her ass was on fire, into a speaker-phone rather than pick up the receiver and talk to a person. When out of the office she would call several times a day to check her plants had been watered. She deserved death by the most painful method permissible and in my deepest fantasies, she got it, frequently.
At the time I was working for Mr. Panty-Waist and an equally loathsome female EVP (who deserves her own entries later) and this new junior staff member was tacked on because she had no administrative support and was quite clearly incompetent of providing herself with any. She took this to mean she had a personal secretary who lived only to fulfill her every dream and to hell with everyone else. So I’d be working on a 100 slide PowerPoint deck for Mr. Panty-Waist and co. and she would call me to screech things like, “Can you order me a salad? Can you call around local shoe repair places to see if they can fix my heel? Can you call my estate agent and ask….”
That woman is lucky she wasn’t discovered bludgeoned to death in a ditch.
Here’s something I wrote at the time I worked for her to make myself feel better.
Dear J-LO,
I realize it must be difficult for you, being an ultra important executive with many ultra important decisions to make each day, like “Do I wear the Prada top with these shoes?” and “I wonder if I can rent a car this weekend and charge the company for it, and OH does that come in green?” – decisions all so stupendously huge and time consuming that they prevent you from either entering your own time in the web accessible timesheet, checking your own voice mail or picking up your phone. I have noticed, however, that you’re not too busy to sit in your office and blankly stare at it ringing. I’m sure it’s hard to multi-task such strenuous chores that require so much brain power at once. However, here are a few simple points I think you may like to take into consideration. Pay attention because some of the words used have more than one syllable:
Yeah. I liked her a lot.
She joined the firm in April and by June she acted like she was running it. It should be noted that this ridiculous, whining wannabe was a junior staff member with several layers of title still hovering, out of reach, above her head. She was amazingly incompetent at the simplest little task, like using Word or Excel, saving documents to the company shared drive and ordering her own lunch. She would yell like her ass was on fire, into a speaker-phone rather than pick up the receiver and talk to a person. When out of the office she would call several times a day to check her plants had been watered. She deserved death by the most painful method permissible and in my deepest fantasies, she got it, frequently.
At the time I was working for Mr. Panty-Waist and an equally loathsome female EVP (who deserves her own entries later) and this new junior staff member was tacked on because she had no administrative support and was quite clearly incompetent of providing herself with any. She took this to mean she had a personal secretary who lived only to fulfill her every dream and to hell with everyone else. So I’d be working on a 100 slide PowerPoint deck for Mr. Panty-Waist and co. and she would call me to screech things like, “Can you order me a salad? Can you call around local shoe repair places to see if they can fix my heel? Can you call my estate agent and ask….”
That woman is lucky she wasn’t discovered bludgeoned to death in a ditch.
Here’s something I wrote at the time I worked for her to make myself feel better.
Dear J-LO,
I realize it must be difficult for you, being an ultra important executive with many ultra important decisions to make each day, like “Do I wear the Prada top with these shoes?” and “I wonder if I can rent a car this weekend and charge the company for it, and OH does that come in green?” – decisions all so stupendously huge and time consuming that they prevent you from either entering your own time in the web accessible timesheet, checking your own voice mail or picking up your phone. I have noticed, however, that you’re not too busy to sit in your office and blankly stare at it ringing. I’m sure it’s hard to multi-task such strenuous chores that require so much brain power at once. However, here are a few simple points I think you may like to take into consideration. Pay attention because some of the words used have more than one syllable:
- There are other people in the office besides you. I’m sure you haven’t noticed them since you continuously walk all over them. Maybe you left your glasses at home as well as your cell phone/brain/manners? Three of those people I provide support for, a fact which, I’m sure you’re not aware of, since you seem to think I have nothing better to do than run around after you, your plants and your inane wishes all day long.
- Boy, are you stupid! And you have no eyelashes. Go back to Mars, freak!
- Maybe you would like to take a short course in how to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint so that I don’t have to spend frustrating hours trying to correct documents that you started only to lose patience, screw up and attempt to blame me for.
- I’m sure our IT guys would be happy to put aside a half hour to show you how to save documents to our shared drive so that all we lesser mortals can access them when need be instead of recreating them from scratch at 6:30 p.m. for editing when we should be going home and you’re nowhere to be found.
- It’s flattering that you have all your workmen, friends and estate agents calling me at the office to give messages to you instead of maybe calling your cell phone, but I actually have other things to do that prevent me from sitting on my derriere at my desk all day waiting for your friends to call. Maybe you could, you know…don’t pass out or anything….deal with your personal life, YOURSELF?
- Perhaps you’d like to bend over so I can wipe your ass?
- I have a great idea. Why don’t you take a big step up and get over yourself.
Yeah. I liked her a lot.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
It's Amazing How Some People Find Their Way Home
When I first began working for Mr. Panty-Waist, he told me, “I have no organization. I need organization.”
So, I organized.
Mr. Panty-Waist’s idea of a filing system was mountainous piles of paper on his office floor in no logical order or system. So I filed everything I could get my hands on in his empty filing cabinets, labeled everything with colored tabs – a different color for each client. I boxed up files from the 1980s (really, WTF?!) and sent them to storage. I ordered hanging inboxes to hang on the end of my cube, so that when people dropped off things for him to sign or review, they would be right there in the inbox ready for his perusal. I even bought colored folders and designated different colors for different categories of materials, such as financial documents, client documents, HR documents, etc. If he was looking for invoices to sign off on, he would know to grab the green folder, where a whole exciting world of finance and numbers awaited his ok. For client materials to review - well he would know those were yellow. Great plan, right?
Wrong.
I came in one morning to find him standing by the inboxes, a confused, troll-like frown burrowing into his enormous, stupid fivehead, like the one on Encino Man’s face when confronted with modern day California. Not that I wish to imply that I’ve seen that dreadful movie but....
“I need to sign the invoice from Client A.” Mr. Panty-Waist was muttering. “But it’s not in here.”
“That’s because you’re looking in the purple folder – for general office materials.” I told him. “Finance is in the green folder cunningly labeled ‘finance’.”
He let out an exasperated blast of air and looked agitated. “It’s too complicated!” he complained. “I don’t have time to check four folders. Just put them all together.” And he heaped everything into one folder and threw it back into the inbox, exasperated.
So much for organization. Only a perpetually confused, farting imbecile like Mr. Panty-Waist could ever find memorizing four colors so perplexing.
For the rest of the long, excruciating months I worked there, I had to hear whining on a daily basis about, “Where is Document A? Where is Form C? Why can I never find anything?” to which I wanted to reply, “Well you can’t find your ass with a map, a giant arrow and a flashlight so why is that a great fucking surprise?”
So, I organized.
Mr. Panty-Waist’s idea of a filing system was mountainous piles of paper on his office floor in no logical order or system. So I filed everything I could get my hands on in his empty filing cabinets, labeled everything with colored tabs – a different color for each client. I boxed up files from the 1980s (really, WTF?!) and sent them to storage. I ordered hanging inboxes to hang on the end of my cube, so that when people dropped off things for him to sign or review, they would be right there in the inbox ready for his perusal. I even bought colored folders and designated different colors for different categories of materials, such as financial documents, client documents, HR documents, etc. If he was looking for invoices to sign off on, he would know to grab the green folder, where a whole exciting world of finance and numbers awaited his ok. For client materials to review - well he would know those were yellow. Great plan, right?
Wrong.
I came in one morning to find him standing by the inboxes, a confused, troll-like frown burrowing into his enormous, stupid fivehead, like the one on Encino Man’s face when confronted with modern day California. Not that I wish to imply that I’ve seen that dreadful movie but....
“I need to sign the invoice from Client A.” Mr. Panty-Waist was muttering. “But it’s not in here.”
“That’s because you’re looking in the purple folder – for general office materials.” I told him. “Finance is in the green folder cunningly labeled ‘finance’.”
He let out an exasperated blast of air and looked agitated. “It’s too complicated!” he complained. “I don’t have time to check four folders. Just put them all together.” And he heaped everything into one folder and threw it back into the inbox, exasperated.
So much for organization. Only a perpetually confused, farting imbecile like Mr. Panty-Waist could ever find memorizing four colors so perplexing.
For the rest of the long, excruciating months I worked there, I had to hear whining on a daily basis about, “Where is Document A? Where is Form C? Why can I never find anything?” to which I wanted to reply, “Well you can’t find your ass with a map, a giant arrow and a flashlight so why is that a great fucking surprise?”
Monday, May 7, 2007
Ode To Cruella De Ville
When my ex boss, Cruella de Ville (aka the Breast Milk Chick), turned fifty I wrote her a poem. If I wasn't such a pussy I would have actually given it to her too. She was a sorry, sour-faced little shrew.
FIFTY MY ASS
Wow, fifty
How nifty
But how thrifty
Except when shopping for oneself
Fifty today
Hip hip hooray
You don’t look a DAY
Over sixty
Boy you’re saggy
Your eyes are baggy
I don’t mean to braggy
But we’re all younger than you
Will you party tonight?
What a fabulous sight
Be careful you might
Put your hip out or something
You’re no spring chicken anymore
You might end up very sore
My God, look at your pores
Get the botox out now
So you’re creative billing
And your skin you are filling
With poison – how chilling
And you still look like a pig
So hope your birthday is fun
You might not have another one
You’ll soon be as old as the sun
But you’ll never be as hot.
FIFTY MY ASS
Wow, fifty
How nifty
But how thrifty
Except when shopping for oneself
Fifty today
Hip hip hooray
You don’t look a DAY
Over sixty
Boy you’re saggy
Your eyes are baggy
I don’t mean to braggy
But we’re all younger than you
Will you party tonight?
What a fabulous sight
Be careful you might
Put your hip out or something
You’re no spring chicken anymore
You might end up very sore
My God, look at your pores
Get the botox out now
So you’re creative billing
And your skin you are filling
With poison – how chilling
And you still look like a pig
So hope your birthday is fun
You might not have another one
You’ll soon be as old as the sun
But you’ll never be as hot.
Today...
- Just because a communal printer needs paper does not mean I have to be the one fill it. You have arms, fill the fucker yourself, you self-righteous, fresh from college little snot.
- Coffee? Do I look like a waitress to you?
- Just what is it that our in-house restaurant is serving that is causing the ladies’ room, at 2:30 p.m. every afternoon, to smell like the entire Eastern Seaboard took a monumental dump all at the same time, spritzed it with perfume and left it to brew in a steam of its own vapors?
- So basically, you had me pull strings and cajole with a haughty Frenchman to get you a reservation at Hot New Restaurant and now, two minutes before the reservation you are asking me to cancel? I have a novel idea. You call the place and have some temperamental Gallic madman yell at you for a change, asswipe.
- I WILL NOT DO AN EXPENSE REPORT FOR A BOTTLE OF AQUAFINA. I wouldn’t even expense a bottle of water and I don’t make six figures a year. Well, OK, I do, it’s just that most of mine come after the decimal point.
- Anything involving your laundry does not technically fit into my job description.
- So let me get this straight;
a) You earn almost a quarter million bucks a year?
b) You had a nice, expensive, exclusive meal with your wife and neighbor (who also earns a nice hugely insulting salary) at a top city restaurant and you want me to bill a client for it?
c) You also want to expense the gas your car used getting to the restaurant and the bridge tolls?
d) WTF?
Sunday, May 6, 2007
And You Think YOU'RE the Loser...
I once had a pain-in-the-ass female boss who made me draw up a breast milk delivery schedule. It was a complex business, full of color coding, a complicated rota system of players to track, receive and deliver the milk to her home in Connecticut and a relationship so close, with a poor FedEx rep in Memphis, that we were almost obligated to celebrate her birthdays.
Boss lady, you see, had a baby via a surrogate, in the lovely state of California and after the baby's birth, she had the surrogate pack her breast milk in bags daily, freeze it, cram it into a FedEx container with a wad of dry ice and ship the stuff to our office in New York.
Every. Freaking. Day.
The schedule documented how much milk was being sent (bags and ounces and probably viscosity and maybe hue and definitely what vitamins it consisted of and its boiling and freezing temperatures and probably its chemical make-up), in what sort of container and how much the surrogate projected would be sent the day after. There was, very briefly, a column at the end of the spreadsheet (complete with relevant formulae) which projected how many days of this batshit insane nonsense it would take before I emptied my 401K, bought a Glock and shot myself in the head.
Naturally, this whole shipping milk thing was a recipe for disaster since packages on occasion have the habit of not showing up where and when they are supposed to, or in the condition you expect them to. On these occasions, normally weekends, they show up two days late, at your apartment, after two whole days of having no life because you've been on the phone tracking them down (you try telling FedEx you're searching for some AWOL breast milk and see how far you get), totally thawed-out and leaking all over your kitchen floor where your cats try to eat them.
I don't care what you do for a living, documenting and tracking breast milk should never be part of your job description.
Boss lady, you see, had a baby via a surrogate, in the lovely state of California and after the baby's birth, she had the surrogate pack her breast milk in bags daily, freeze it, cram it into a FedEx container with a wad of dry ice and ship the stuff to our office in New York.
Every. Freaking. Day.
The schedule documented how much milk was being sent (bags and ounces and probably viscosity and maybe hue and definitely what vitamins it consisted of and its boiling and freezing temperatures and probably its chemical make-up), in what sort of container and how much the surrogate projected would be sent the day after. There was, very briefly, a column at the end of the spreadsheet (complete with relevant formulae) which projected how many days of this batshit insane nonsense it would take before I emptied my 401K, bought a Glock and shot myself in the head.
Naturally, this whole shipping milk thing was a recipe for disaster since packages on occasion have the habit of not showing up where and when they are supposed to, or in the condition you expect them to. On these occasions, normally weekends, they show up two days late, at your apartment, after two whole days of having no life because you've been on the phone tracking them down (you try telling FedEx you're searching for some AWOL breast milk and see how far you get), totally thawed-out and leaking all over your kitchen floor where your cats try to eat them.
I don't care what you do for a living, documenting and tracking breast milk should never be part of your job description.
Friday, May 4, 2007
Keeping You Down in Ridiculous Ways
Some companies have traditions in place for things like anniversaries. You know, “Mr. Tongue-Down-Pants has been with the company for five years, let’s get everyone in the conference room, order in sub-standard catering and the CEO can talk bullshit for twenty minutes about dedication.”
After the talk everyone gets to eat mediocre cookies, warm fruit plates and drink iceless Diet Coke, while Mr. Tongue-Down-Pants is presented with a gift of appreciation for his time with the company.
And he stands, beaming in the middle of the floor, opening the rather corporate looking packaging, so sterile it looks like it was decontaminated beforehand, although the paper probably cost $30 a sheet from some high end designer store, while gushing about the honor bestowed upon him. And when the wrapping is off he holds up…a stuffy leather portfolio folder with his initials embossed on the front and his grin gets wider and he says “Gosh…thanks a lot!” while his glazed, glued-on expression is screaming, “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this shit, where is the $500 gift voucher to J Crew and my Yankees season ticket you fuckwads?”
And so begins another year of disillusion.
After the talk everyone gets to eat mediocre cookies, warm fruit plates and drink iceless Diet Coke, while Mr. Tongue-Down-Pants is presented with a gift of appreciation for his time with the company.
And he stands, beaming in the middle of the floor, opening the rather corporate looking packaging, so sterile it looks like it was decontaminated beforehand, although the paper probably cost $30 a sheet from some high end designer store, while gushing about the honor bestowed upon him. And when the wrapping is off he holds up…a stuffy leather portfolio folder with his initials embossed on the front and his grin gets wider and he says “Gosh…thanks a lot!” while his glazed, glued-on expression is screaming, “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this shit, where is the $500 gift voucher to J Crew and my Yankees season ticket you fuckwads?”
And so begins another year of disillusion.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
When Psychos Get Titles
I used to work for a small public relations company here in the Big Apple. And let me tell you, this company boasted many high-up executives with more issues than the Yellow Pages. Mostly socially retarded, some with severe personality defects and one with a phobia of all people in any situation and zero ability in dealing with any of them.
One of the bigger calamities was the company CFO, a nasty little rodent of a man despised by literally everyone, including his female boss who used him as an easy go-to man for her dirty deeds, using him to spy on employees, commit acts of probable fraud and generally partake in underhand techniques to ensure the company continued to pull in a tidy profit and keep its executives in caviar.
Don’t feel too sorry for him though. The man was (and still is!) a dastardly little pimple on the butt of society. He was never happier than when he was trolling around the halls, snooping in people’s private mail in their inboxes, peering over their shoulders when they were typing or making sarcastic or smarmy comments that didn’t even thinly veil his self-loathing.
I had the displeasure of working for this man in some capacity for a short while. Everything about him was objectionable – the way he plucked boulders out of his nose right there in front of you while barking commands, the way he stalked down the corridors picking his pants out of his ass crack, his never-ending supply of shit-brown loafers and sensible corduroys, the way he added suffixes to people’s names and his fake-sincere cheery manner. Then there was the way he pulled rank at every conceivable opportunity and his using my time to have me type out his train schedules and make him lists of personal shit that normal people wouldn’t even contemplate. He would creep up behind you stealth-like from absolutely nowhere and watch what you were doing, then make a comment about it, in his faux-happy, good-old-boy voice.
“That IS company business, right kiddo?”
“No Sir!” I wanted to cheerfully reply, “It's a letter of intent I aim to send to the first hit-man I can find willing to shoot you in the knackers with a nail gun!”
He prided himself on his fake nice guy demeanor which didn’t fool anyone. We learned fast that he was not a man to trust or befriend. I’m pretty certain that he had a 666 tattoo somewhere on his person and maybe some sawn-down horns though I wasn’t up for getting close enough to him to find out.
Whenever we had a pretty, teenage intern who was usually the daughter of another client we were trying to curry favor with, he would take her under his wing with his, “I am your best friend kiddo!” routine, while leering at their teenaged legs in that summer skirt or that blouse unbuttoned below the collar bone where he could envision their young, firm breasts bouncing in his face. He was a sleaze of the highest order and everyone knew it.
The whole firm was pretty dysfunctional as a whole. The partners hated each other with a violent passion and avoided each other where at all possible. No excuse was too far fetched to get out of that monthly partner meeting. The place was stock full of ass-kissers who would say or do anything to get ahead, then talk about everyone else behind their backs with gusto. There were people who’d openly diss some boss or other then stick their tongue down their waistband ten seconds later. But this unpleasant little CFO was the worst. I used to wish that one day he’d hit on some cute, meek-looking, little blonde thing who was a secret black belt in martial arts and who would then karate chop him into next week, then sue what was left of his ass. Even now, years later, when the company is a dark, distant nightmare, I have faith that one day, somehow, it will happen.
One of the bigger calamities was the company CFO, a nasty little rodent of a man despised by literally everyone, including his female boss who used him as an easy go-to man for her dirty deeds, using him to spy on employees, commit acts of probable fraud and generally partake in underhand techniques to ensure the company continued to pull in a tidy profit and keep its executives in caviar.
Don’t feel too sorry for him though. The man was (and still is!) a dastardly little pimple on the butt of society. He was never happier than when he was trolling around the halls, snooping in people’s private mail in their inboxes, peering over their shoulders when they were typing or making sarcastic or smarmy comments that didn’t even thinly veil his self-loathing.
I had the displeasure of working for this man in some capacity for a short while. Everything about him was objectionable – the way he plucked boulders out of his nose right there in front of you while barking commands, the way he stalked down the corridors picking his pants out of his ass crack, his never-ending supply of shit-brown loafers and sensible corduroys, the way he added suffixes to people’s names and his fake-sincere cheery manner. Then there was the way he pulled rank at every conceivable opportunity and his using my time to have me type out his train schedules and make him lists of personal shit that normal people wouldn’t even contemplate. He would creep up behind you stealth-like from absolutely nowhere and watch what you were doing, then make a comment about it, in his faux-happy, good-old-boy voice.
“That IS company business, right kiddo?”
“No Sir!” I wanted to cheerfully reply, “It's a letter of intent I aim to send to the first hit-man I can find willing to shoot you in the knackers with a nail gun!”
He prided himself on his fake nice guy demeanor which didn’t fool anyone. We learned fast that he was not a man to trust or befriend. I’m pretty certain that he had a 666 tattoo somewhere on his person and maybe some sawn-down horns though I wasn’t up for getting close enough to him to find out.
Whenever we had a pretty, teenage intern who was usually the daughter of another client we were trying to curry favor with, he would take her under his wing with his, “I am your best friend kiddo!” routine, while leering at their teenaged legs in that summer skirt or that blouse unbuttoned below the collar bone where he could envision their young, firm breasts bouncing in his face. He was a sleaze of the highest order and everyone knew it.
The whole firm was pretty dysfunctional as a whole. The partners hated each other with a violent passion and avoided each other where at all possible. No excuse was too far fetched to get out of that monthly partner meeting. The place was stock full of ass-kissers who would say or do anything to get ahead, then talk about everyone else behind their backs with gusto. There were people who’d openly diss some boss or other then stick their tongue down their waistband ten seconds later. But this unpleasant little CFO was the worst. I used to wish that one day he’d hit on some cute, meek-looking, little blonde thing who was a secret black belt in martial arts and who would then karate chop him into next week, then sue what was left of his ass. Even now, years later, when the company is a dark, distant nightmare, I have faith that one day, somehow, it will happen.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Bosses
It seems to me, the higher you rise on the corporate ladder, the more marbles you lose along the way. By the time you're CEO or CFO or some other high echelon of authority, you're probably spending your private moments alienating your family, painting on your face with crayons and calling yourself "Susan".
Every single person with a high end title, that I've worked for, has been completely and utterly clueless about the real world and its inner workings. One of my ex-bosses, a squat, timid, bearded, gloomy little man with the mind of a genius in certain areas and that of a medical vegetable in others, thought a loaf of bread cost "about nine dollars". Well yeah, if you have it sprayed in 24ct gold and hand delivered by Celine Dion, maybe... Another boss, the previously mentioned Mr. Panty-Waist, used to have me scope out the corridor before he went to the bathroom to make sure no one clocked him sneaking in there with his Wall Street Journal each day. Boy, I felt bad for anyone who had a desk up near the men's room. Mr. Panty-Waist would creep back down that corridor after 20 minutes of polluting the air with his acrid bathroom doings, followed by a dark, odorific cloud of nasty that could be smelled for hours and cause severe cases of "lemon face" to anyone caught in its caustic path. This was only the tip of the Mr. Panty-Waist iceberg of strange. I'm sure I'll mention the rest as we progress.
My point is, there is no such thing as a "normal" boss when you get to a certain point. The tiny morsel of power they have acquired goes straight into their dome-like heads and is immediately converted into irrationality and craziness on a mountainous scale. If you want a sane person in an office, find a secretary.
Every single person with a high end title, that I've worked for, has been completely and utterly clueless about the real world and its inner workings. One of my ex-bosses, a squat, timid, bearded, gloomy little man with the mind of a genius in certain areas and that of a medical vegetable in others, thought a loaf of bread cost "about nine dollars". Well yeah, if you have it sprayed in 24ct gold and hand delivered by Celine Dion, maybe... Another boss, the previously mentioned Mr. Panty-Waist, used to have me scope out the corridor before he went to the bathroom to make sure no one clocked him sneaking in there with his Wall Street Journal each day. Boy, I felt bad for anyone who had a desk up near the men's room. Mr. Panty-Waist would creep back down that corridor after 20 minutes of polluting the air with his acrid bathroom doings, followed by a dark, odorific cloud of nasty that could be smelled for hours and cause severe cases of "lemon face" to anyone caught in its caustic path. This was only the tip of the Mr. Panty-Waist iceberg of strange. I'm sure I'll mention the rest as we progress.
My point is, there is no such thing as a "normal" boss when you get to a certain point. The tiny morsel of power they have acquired goes straight into their dome-like heads and is immediately converted into irrationality and craziness on a mountainous scale. If you want a sane person in an office, find a secretary.
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