Tag Archives: asshat

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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Note: I know I missed last week’s edition, so you’re getting a “best of” What Annoys Jeff this Week that covers that last two weeks. No extra charge. Enjoy.

1. Meetings that start at 6PM. Saying this out loud is probably detrimental to my career, but I can’t think of any good reason aside from executive ego that justifies starting a meeting at 6PM when most everyone in the room start their day between 7 and 7:30. You either have no respect for their time or really bad time management skills. Either one of which is generally considered bad form by fancy business schools everywhere.

2. People with no sense of urgency. When I’ve been telling you for more than a week that something needs to happen by X Day, don’t be surprised, offended, or otherwise defensive on X+2 when I tell you what you’re giving me is too late to include. I don’t care that you worked really hard on it. In conclusion, you’re a douchebag.

3. Large volumes of small children. Individually and in small numbers, I’m surprisingly ok with (other people’s) kids. Pack lots of them into a relatively small space and it has a tendency to make me twitchy. It’s just that they’re collectively so loud… and fast moving. When you’ve spent your entire adult life living in blissful solitude, I’m not going to lie, a gang of 15 six year olds reeking mayhem and chaos next door is something of a shock to the system. It’s a shame that the uberwealthy hiring a hermit to live on their property to give it a pastoral feel went out of fashion with the Victorian Age. I think that’s a career path where I could have really set the standard for excellence.

4. “Scooter” People. If you’re going to ride the electric scooter at Walmart, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that you pay at least partial attention to what you’re doing. And by that I mean try not to drive it directly into my back while continuing your conversation with whatever slack-jawed yokel you came with to do your grocery shopping as if it didn’t happen. I have to admit it took real stones to give me a dirty look when I called you on it. Most of the time, I have an instinctive tendency to defer to my elders, but in your case I’ll make an exception. You, you muumuu wearing, blue haired battle-ax, are an asshat.

On notice…

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To the asshat who decided playing mailbox baseball with my mailbox was a good idea this morning, please consider yourself on notice. There’s a better than average chance that I’m older than you are. That translates into me being smarter, sneakier, and far, far more vindictive than you could possibly imagine. The first one was a freebie. Everything’s reattached, no harm, no foul. If I have to put it up a second time, I’ll be suspending my mail delivery and filling the box with concrete so that you’ll get that nice tingling feeling when you make contact. If I get lucky you’ll snap your wrist on it. If you think I won’t spend all night outside in the cold lurking in the shadows to find out who you are, well, then you’ve seriously underestimated your opponent. You shouldn’t be surprised if your car accidentally ends up sitting on the street somewhere in Camden, NJ.

Regards,

Jeff

A Sunday Driver…

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Good morning, Mr. Minivan Driver. I know what you were thinking this morning just before you heard my breaks lock up and screech as I swerved to avoid plowing into the left rear quarter of your lovely late model suburban nightmare: “Oh my goodness… We’re going to be late for church so I’d better cut across three lanes of traffic to get into the turn lane.” I don’t want to bring up the fact that you were turning from a side street when your signal was red, so you would have had plenty of time to observe my distance to the intersection you wanted to cross closing rapidly. And still, you, Mr. I’m proud of my Cub Scout, bravely dismissed onrushing traffic as not even an inconvenience to your plans. Apparently, there is no connection between being proud of a Cub Scout and having a clue how to drive the family truckster. That’s too bad, really. You could obviously use as much luck as you can find.

I don’t know if you noticed, but I honked and waived at you when I passed. I’m pretty sure your wife noticed, though I’m not sure if she was annoyed with me or you. Probably it was me, because I’m sure you don’t do anything wrong, what with your hurrying to get the family to church and all. Just so you know, I usually wave with my whole hand, but I made an exception for you and the kids this morning. One finger seemed sufficient to express this particular greeting.

I know it’s probably unseemly to pray for yourself… kind of like telling friends what to get you for your birthday… but maybe while you’re communing with the Almighty, you could slip in a small request from me that he send you a some small semblance of a clue. Asshat.

A rant revisited…

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I’ve covered this ground once before, but feel compelled to go across it (at least) one more time. Let me begin by stating, for the record, that Phoenix is grad school for slackers. I recognized that when I started the process and each class serves as a reminder of the fact. Theoretically, however, I also recognize that everyone who is taking these classes has an undergraduate degree and has at least three years in a “professional” workplace. I am consistently amazed at the inability of these, theoretically, educated individuals to string five hundred words into a coherent thought or argument. Need to meet a deadline? Forgedaboudit.

We all have things we would rather be doing after work than tapping out a well-reasoned argument for why human resource management sucks in most organizations, but goddamn it already. Suck it up and get it done, already. I really don’t think I have abnormally high expectations of people and never expect anything from anyone that I wouldn’t be willing to do myself.

I’m tired of hearing that your boss made you work late (I put in an hour and a half on OT this afternoon). I don’t care that tonight is your wife’s birthday (Nothing like a little forward planning, huh, ace?). And I don’t care that little Suzie had the sniffles last night and you’re tired (When did your personal life become my problem?). I’m interested in results and you asshats are making me look bad. There ought to be a law that keeps these kind of fucktards from drawing down the resources of the productive members of society.

Better to burn out…

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I didn’t think it was possible, but I may have awarded the Asshat of the Week trophy too early in the week. As I was motoring towards my apartment following the two hour afternoon commute from hell, I noticed a plume of black smoke ascending from the end of the exit ramp. Coasting to a stop behind a gathering line of traffic at the top of the ramp, I has a beautiful view of one of our local gas stations. Sitting in the edge of the parking lot, about 15-20 feet from the pumps, was a car that had obviously pulled off the road. There was fire. A lot of fire.

Now, I understanding the engine compartment catching on fire while driving your vehicle is bound to be a traumatic experience. I also understand that you instinct will be to pull off and run like hell away from said potential fire ball. Instinct, however, should also warn you not to pull into a gas station and abandon you flaming fireball of a vehicle.

The sign at the pump clearly illustrates not to smoke and not to use your cell phone. It even spells out how to make sure that you ground yourself prior to using the pumps. It does not, however, stop to explain the danger of parking a flaming car in close proximity to a dozen gas pumps. I guess there should have been a sign.

I’m not even going to mention the half dozen upstanding citizens who were standing there pumping gas into their own cars, oblivious to the potential blaze of glory in which they were about to be vaporized. I think one of them was even talking on her cell phone. Tisk Tisk. She must have missed the sign, too.

A Fine Commute…

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I’d like to personally extend a heart-felt fuck you to the Asshat Construction Company that somehow managed to find a way to keep the Beltway closed until 6:30 on a Monday morning. What project manager decided that was a good idea? Did you somehow miss the eight goddamn miles of traffic that backed up while you were still on site? Did you think the massed phalanxes of headlights were a glowing tribute to your job well done?

Now, I understand the Wilson Bridge is a choke point on 495 at the very best of times. On weekends and during rush hour it has a tendency to become something of a slowly rolling parking lot. Oh, there was a detour; a detour in the form of shunting southbound traffic from a four-lane highway onto an exit ramp and then back onto the highway via the accompanying entrance ramp. Someone apparently forgot to go to class the day they were teaching traffic planning at engineer school.

I understand the company will be fined $50 per minute for the delay, for a whopping total of $4500. I could have a little more respect for this kind of punishment if the fine were even $500/minute. To a firm of that size, a $4500 fine is something akin to keeping $1 from junior’s allowance this week. Sure, he’ll notice at the time, but a week from now he’ll have forgotten about whatever it was that he had gotten in trouble for in the first place.

For those of my readers living in Western Maryland, I want you to imagine taking a drive from Hancock to Frostburg with the heaviest traffic you have every seen… I mean literally bumper to bumper, moving a few feet per minute with the occasional breakout to 5 miles per hour. Imagine this backup started at Rocky Gap. Now imagine that the cross-town bridge was closed and every bit of traffic from 68 was being diverted through downtown Cumberland and the Narrows into LaVale. Now imagine the total drive took you three hours. That should roughly approximate my morning.

Mr. Project Manager, congratulations! You’ve won the first ever Asshat of the Week Award. I’ll see you in hell.