Memoirs Of J

I found myself almost –almost – kissing some  ass  at work today.  Now, I’ve got a long history of scoffing at the ass-kissers, sycophants, obsequious fools…whatever you want to call them and I’m not about to just abandon that.  I like scoffing too much and it amuses me to laugh at people, primarily 23-year-old newbies groveling at management’s feet, lips secured tightly to ass.  So I guess groveling at ass, not feet.  ‘Groveling at feet’ is obviously a euphemism.  The lips attached to ass is sadly only a very slight exaggeration of reality.

So anyway, our department is going through this ‘sourcing’ initiative as we speak, and by that I of course mean outsourcing work to India.  We are told we have plenty of work to keep everyone employed, which I suppose is really all I actually care about in regards to my job.  I’m not hugely worried about the prospect of layoffs, especially after a chat I had a few weeks ago with our department head, then today with my own supervisor.  But you can never be too cautious, so I’ve been taking extra care to get my name out there (ie, in front of managers / execs who don’t already know me) in a positive light.

I volunteered to work in a community service tent for our department picnic.  Not really my bag considering my generally unsocial disposition, but execs seeing my name attached to this sort of thing shows I’m  ‘energized and engaged’ or whatever.  Well today was a party to celebrate the success of the picnic where we could chat with the execs and eat cake.

I gotta say I was quite proud of my performance today.  All chatty and outgoing and so … unlike me.  I wonder when I developed this ability because I really never had it before.  It must just naturally appear after so long working in an office.

Here’s a handful of things I find so utterly annoying that I decided to…um..write a blog about it.  Because what else could I do?  Come on…

When a guy calls another guy “brah” (aka, bra or bruh).

Why?  Because you have to be saturated in douche to actually allow yourself to utter this pet name.  “Bro” is ok* since it is short for brother, which in my humble opinion is not a douche thing to call someone.  But white dudes from the midwest calling other white dudes from the midwest ‘bra’?  Please stop.

*As long as it is said only once per interaction / conversation.

When people make statements totally incongruous to their situation.

Why?  Because it is induces confusion headaches.  Today I was chatting with a lady who is a heavy smoker.  Not sure if you would classify her as a chain smoker because I don’t know what the technical definition of that is.  She smokes a lot though-  several ciggies during the course of a work day.  So anyway, she was telling me how there were spiders in her office and she grabbed some wasp spray and sprayed it all over in hopes of killing the spiders.  She then said “I hope I don’t get cancer from all this spray.”  I hope she was being facetious.

When people post 50,000 music videos from youtube on facebook.

Why?  Because it fills my entire feed.  You blast out 10 videos in a row and a song is about 4 minutes on average, right?  So who is going to sit there for 40 minutes watching the videos you so painstakingly shared?  Nobody!  Nobody watches any video you post, music or otherwise!  Oh, and your taste in music sucks.

Mosquitoes.

Why?  Because who doesn’t find them irritating, and they’re especially abundant this evening.  They’re even coming into my house.  I’ll probably have to wear repellant to bed to avoid being eaten.  Even the dogs are being devoured by mosquitoes.

For someone who cringes at the concept of expectations presented by pretty much anyone, I seem to easily fall into little traps regularly.

While at a meeting today, our new leader had a meet-and-greet of sorts with all of us and went over his expectations for our team.  I’m not saying his expectations were unusual or unreasonable in any way.  That’s not the point.  It just got me thinking about how masochistic is it to have any expectations of anyone for anything whatsoever.  You’ll invariably end up disappointed and jaded.

I learned long ago to avoid having expectations after being bitten in the ass countless times by people not fulfilling said expectations.  So of course I do not make a habit of expecting really anything other than from the petite handful of trusted people who’ve somehow never let me down.

But here’s the thing; you should be able to expect people to keep to their word, so I never really looked at ‘people keeping their word’ as much as an expectation but more of a given.  I mean, why would people explicitly tell you they will do something and not follow through?  It makes no sense.  If I have any doubts on whether I will do something, I’m not going to commit to doing it, thereby eliminating the need for others to have an expectation of me.  You create an expectation by committing.

I’ve recently fallen into this trap of taking people’s word for something, only to have the exact opposite occur later.  I think my new rule will be no more taking for granted that people do what they say.  The only thing I’m  going to expect is to be disappointed.  That way, the actual outcome can only improve.