Don't Be A Complete Tool

Your choices are:

Cell Phone Screamer


Don't laugh.  This is not really that far off from what she actually looked like.

When Mr. A and I get to the grocery store tonight, this is all we hear on our walk to the front doors:

"...AND THE KIDS WERE ALL CRYING AND THE ADULTS WERE CRYING AND I WAS ALL LIKE OH MY GOD WHAT'S GOING ON AND THE POOR KID COULDN'T EVEN TALK AND THEN THE GIRL WHO DOES THE YOUTH MINISTRY YOU KNOW MARY WELL SHE WAS ALL CRYING AND I WAS LIKE WHAT HAPPENED AND SHE WAS ALL OH MY GOD SHE HIT ME AND I WAS LIKE WHAT!! OH NO SHE DIDN'T! AND SHE WAS LIKE SHE TOTALLY DID AND I COULDN'T BELIEVE SHE WOULD DO THAT SO I CALLED..."

Holy Hell, lady.  If you talked any louder, you wouldn't even need a phone.  I don't care if the person you were talking to lived in Pittsburgh, they could've heard you clearly.


Your other purse slapping choice is:


Mr. A





 He's handsome and shit.

After about 15 seconds of listening to Cellphone Screamer, he decides to VERY loudly mock her.  So I'm stuck between her stupidity and...

"LIKE OH MY GOD! I'M TOTALLY IN A PARKING LOT AND I CAN'T TALK LOUD ENOUGH! I DON'T THINK THE PEOPLE ON THE OTHER END OF THE COUNTY CAN HEAR ME!  MAYBE IF I TALK LOUDER PEOPLE WILL PAY MORE ATTENTION TO ME! WHAT?! WHAT?! I CAN'T HEAR YOU BECAUSE SOME JACKASS IS YELLING OVER ME RIGHT NOW..."

Okay, I added that last part.

So who do you hit with your purse?

I have the Plague. 














This last week was spent in a lather, rinse, repeat-style cycle:  Work, home, cold medicine coma.  I did have the opportunity to observe some people in true fuckwad form, but I couldn't stir myself from the clutches of pestilence long enough to care or write about it.  I'll try it now (as I am not currently on any medication....I probably should be, but I'm not).

What brought on the ass clowns?  A network outage.  Yep, for 4 hours we had no access to client information.  We Scooby Dooed together a weird backdoor access path to some of their info.  I was actually pretty impressed by the ingenuity.  Otherwise, we would have had to turn away about 90% of the people who came in for services that day.

The other 10%, well we had to turn them away anyway.  As in: "Dude, I will call you when we're back online and take care of you over the phone so as not to inconvenience you further, but right now there's nothing we can do."

Where did this get us?

Fuckwad #1:  "You people are ridiculous!  I can't believe you can't access my information.  What else are you good for?"

Oh, again with the 'you people'.  I fucking hate that shit.  And how were we ridiculous again?  Network outages happen everywhere that computers are networked.  It's the law of computers.  What else are we good for?  Well, anything within our scope of responsibilities that doesn't require a computer.  It just happened that the only thing you needed today involved us accessing your records.  Sucks.  I'll call ya later.

This fuckwad called us assholes on the way out the door.

Fuckwad #2: "Can you tell me....?" "No?  Okay."  "Well, then can you tell me....?" "No?  What the fuck?!"

Seriously, what part of "no access to those records" do you not understand?  I'll call you later with the information you're requesting.  CHILL OUT!

This fuckwad flipped us off on the way out the door.

Fuckwad #3: "You people are making a big mistake."

I didn't even know what to say to such a ludicrous statement.  He was the only person who walked in during the Great Information Blackout of 2010 who we couldn't even identify as a client because our cutesy little backdoor access shenanigans didn't work with him as he was just a proxy.  Also, what exactly was our mistake?  Causing the outage?  We didn't.  Not just making up the information he needed?  We couldn't, we're really not that creative.  Not pulling out our magic wands and abracadabraing the computers back to life?  Fuck, you got us.

This fuckwad spent 15 minutes in our faces cussing at us before leaving the office, still cussing and threatening our jobs.

Dude, you can have this job.  Dealing with shithead assholes like you is not something anyone gets paid enough to do. 

The computers came back online 15 minutes after Fuckwad #3 left.  No one called him.

The week before last I didn't post because it was a fun week.  I actually enjoyed work.  It started out with EVM showing up late on Monday (in spite of her "miracle cure" shot), but then it just got better from there.  (Namely when she took off on vacation so I didn't have to listen to her bore our clients with the repetitive "I feel okay now...I'm just taking this one day at a time."  This isn't fucking A.A., you dumb attention whore.)

So what's my excuse this week?  I visited The United States of Zombieland.  Tuesday afternoon I was very suddenly overwhelmed by sinus pain and pressure (I'm not trying out for a Benedryl commercial, but I did put an employee of the company's kids through college this week.  You're welcome.) and by the end of the day, my eyes were swollen and my throat was closing.

I went home and immediately took 2 Benedryl.  Normally, I'm not one to take 1 of anything muchless 2, so I was basically in a coma within the hour.  The next morning I woke up and looked like this:


I knew it was going to be a horrible day when I went to make coffee and started pouring the coffee grounds into one of my son's bottles.  I also should have taken the hint when I: couldn't remember for a while how to turn the TV on, fell down the stairs, almost left the house with no shoes and locked my son in my room.

All of this screams: "CALL IN SICK, YOU IDIOT!!"  However, I have the opposite problem as EVM; I refuse to admit to being sick, or I'll admit it and severely downplay my symptoms.

I went to work for 6 hours before everyone told me to go home.  I've been feeling better since then, but I still don't have a voice.

So what do I do on my first of 2 days off?  I rested...

Fooled you!  I got up at 4:00 this morning and painted a fucking house.  Not just me, other people from my company, but what the hell was I thinking?  Around 10:00 my right ear stopped working.  I thought, "Huh, that's peculiar... I'm going to see if they have any good deals at Kohl's!!"  I think I have a mental disability.  Seriously.

By the time I was in the checkout line paying for about 25 items that I had to have (but couldn't describe to you now to save my life) my ear felt like it was about to rupture.  Seriously, I thought I was just going to hear a huge *POP* and my brains were going to splatter all over the bitchy lady in front of me. (I was aiming at her as best I could.)


I made it out of there alive (I should probably type it as "alive") and raced home, my ear brutally murdering the rest of my head the whole time.

Oh wait.  I didn't.

I volunteered to pick up lunch for everyone first.

Somebody help me.  I am a complete tool.

I almost forgot to say that I don't get paid to advertise for anyone.  As a matter of fact, I shelled out huge wads of cash to both companies mentioned in today's post.  It's kind of ass backward, but whatever.

After the last 2 weeks at work, I've had it up to my eyeballs with Employee Von Munchausen's shenanigans.  She is chronically "sick" (for attention - hence the Munchausen) and she calls in on days when we really need her the most.

The shit move she just pulled has permanently cemented her spot on the top of my shit-list.  I don't even want to work with her anymore.  The problem?

She intentionally fucked us all over for 2 whole weeks just so she wouldn't get fired.  Stay with me on this.

By the end of last year, she had proved herself so undependable that we needed to place her on a final "get your shit straight or you're fired" warning.  All we're asking is that she take care of herself so she doesn't miss so much work.  Rightfully, I hired her to work 40 hours a week.  I actually need someone to work those hours as we do have a lot of work to get done. 

The company we work for has a reasonable amount of sick time allotted to employees -- 6 days per year accrued at a 1/2 day every month.  You can take your sick time before it's accrued, but by the end of the year, they ask that you don't exceed the 6 days.  For the average employee, 6 days is more than enough.

EVM doubled that last year and that wasn't even including the 5 weeks of short-term disability leave that she took.  She was absent a lot last year.

The terms of her warning were that she not take her sick time this year before it accrued.  I knew this would be hard for EVM since she was "sick" on the 12th of every month (give or take a couple of days) for the entire first half of 2009.  I'm not kidding.  By April, I was calling that shit.

The Monday before last, she leaves me a voicemail indicating that she tweaked her back and it hurts so bad that she can't get out of bed.  I call her back to hear her coughing a lung out.  She needs to go to Urgent Care because she has a fever and can't stop coughing.  Really?  I asked her if she coughed so hard she threw her back out.  I wanted to make sure she understood that I picked up on her very drastic change of ailments.  Oh no, the back thing was something different.  "So is someone taking you to Urgent Care, because your back being out and all, I don't think you should be driving..." Yeah, I'm not letting that go, asshole.

Monday turns into Tuesday when now she "has walking pneumonia".  The doctors want her out for the rest of the week.

This last Monday she calls me again, "I'll be out for some time now.  My fever is out of control and it's not breaking so they want to do more tests on me."  Really?  I'm not a doctor or anything, but I'm assuming that if you go the doctor repeatedly with pneumonia symptoms and high fever that lasts for more than a week and is "out of control", that they'll probably just admit you to the hospital.

So I asked her where she was calling from.  "Oh, I'm at home."  Were you admitted to the hospital and now you're home?  "No. I've just been on the phone with my doctor."  Your doctor's performing the tests over the phone? "No, he's sending me to the emergency room for testing."  They ... he ... what? Okay, our pediatrician did that with us when our daughter got sick, but we actually visited the office...  "Anyway, so I'm on my way to the emergency room and I won't be back this week at all."

I'm not stupid.  I know what's happening here.  EVM is taking some time off, but doesn't want to get fired.  I get that, but all she needs to take to qualify for Short-Term Disability is 4 days.  Why 2 weeks?

The only conclusion I've been able to reach (based on her very obvious and awkward lies) is that she couldn't get a doctor to sign off on her Short-Term Disability papers, so she had to keep ramping up her "symptoms" until she found someone.

Congratulations on your exploitation of the FMLA system.  In the meantime, EVM, I've been doing my job and your job for the last 2 weeks.  2 very nice people from other offices have also pitched in to help do your job for the last 2 weeks.  One of our sales employees has lost sales to also help cover your job for the last 2 weeks.  MISMANAGER actually got off her duff to help cover you during the first week.

I went back to work the day after having a wisdom tooth removed to help cover for you.  This was a much needed personal day that I cancelled.  This is also not to mention the fact that: 1) last Wednesday your absence left me as the only representative of our department in the office 2) I have strep -- like, real strep and also possibly an ear infection and then finally 3) *TMI ALERT* cramps from Hell.  I don't mean to overshare, but this was not the most stellar week for an undependable piece of shit to let me down.

I actually felt kind of bad for my uncharitable thoughts when she left me a voicemail Tuesday night explaining that she is being rushed to the emergency room because her heart is beating out of control.  Don't worry, it was short-lived, because Wednesday morning she calls me at work and says, "Guess what!  They gave me a shot and now I feel super!!  I'll be back to work on Monday for sure."  Really?  Just a shot?  What was in that miracle shot?  A dose of Reality or a Clue maybe?  You didn't get a miracle shot, you just got some lazy ass doctor to believe your lies and sign your papers, you douche.  When I asked her whatever came of the heart thing, I get, "Oh, they ran some tests and it turns out I was just stressed, but now I'm fine."  You were stressed that you wouldn't be able to get your papers signed, dickweed.

And then, just the final kick to the teeth, when I tell her that we're incredibly busy and I have to end our conversation she says, "I kind of want to feel bad that I couldn't be there, but I don't.  You know, I've gotta take care of myself."  Oh no, everyone knows you're looking out for #1 EVM.  There's no misunderstanding there.