If You Really Loved Me You'd Let Me Eat Your Brain

Please visit the new home of Manual Override.  I'm done with this place.

Has no one in corporate America learned anything from the past decade of e-mail fueled scandals and lawsuits?

 This showed up in my inbox at work today, along with an attached résumé.  The names have been changed to protect the stupid.

Lord Vader;

I received this resume as a candidate for our open Death Star Technician III position.  He had indicated he worked at DeathComm and had designed the HN5X1-88 Gravitic Purifiers for them.

Unofficially, would your team recommend I bring this person in to help me with:
1) Ongoing Blowing-Stuff-Up support.
2) Assistance with the Klown Reverser project.

If you prefer, I’m OK with just a verbal response.  This will go no farther then between you and I.

Thank you

Moron J. Assclown
Head Bee Watcher
Lap Pinkies'R'Us

Unofficially...a verbal response...this will go no farther...  Yikes.  he should have just entered "Blink twice if he's a J-O-O" for the message subject.

The really funny thing is that the message was forwarded to me by a co-worker.  He didn't even have the guile or brains to remove the incriminating portions of the original e-mail!

It looks like The Reverend's employer is being acquired by a Fortune 500 company for $175 million in cash.  With 820 employees that makes me worth $210,336.54.  I've been reduced to a number.  How dare they!?  On second thought I really have no problem with that.  But I would like more of that $210,336.54 to come my way, because I sure as hell don't earn that much.  Looks like time to ask for a raise.

They say nothing will change with regards to the culture or management already in place here, but don't they always?

Too bad I'm not working for a bloated relic of the manufacturing age, because I could probably squeeze $140,000 out of them to get me to quit.  I love it when employers pay people to go away.  Nothing says sound fiscal management like paying your employees to leave because you've promised them too much and pissed away all your money building things people don't want.  Creative destruction rocks.

I watched a news program on ABC last night about mean girls and how technology makes them extra mean.  One segment was about girls posting sexually suggestive photos on their MySpace accounts.  My wife put her hand over my eyes at that point.

The funniest segment was when a group of college researchers divided a dozen 14- or 15-year-old girls into three groups and put them in separate rooms with cell phones and computers.  The girls were only able to communicate with the other groups of girls in the experiment.  Things got very nasty very quickly.  The funniest insult I saw in the IMs flying back and forth was Fruitty McGay Gay.  Hearing Diane Sawyer ask the girls in a very serious voice what "Fruitty McGay Gay" meant made my wife and I laugh until our abs hurt.

I hereby declare Fruitty McGay Gay to be the preferred insult between now and 12:01 AM local time on September 18, 2006.  Take it to the street, Fruitty.

Be sure to stop by 2 Minute Sidebar and wish Dr. Fruitty McGay Gay a happy birthday.

Today the programmers where I'm working found out they're getting a new boss next week. Their response? Take a stuffed bear, write the name of the boss on a Post-It note, and hang the bear from a three foot long noose attached to the ceiling. Every once in a while I'd hear someone punch the bear hard enough to make it smack into the ceiling. "Take that, Larry!" They don't actually know the name of their boss-to-be, so they called him Larry.

And they wonder why they have to hire high-priced consultants to get anything done.

Sometimes it can be fun to sit back and let people talk.  One game I play is to see how long someone can talk without completing a sentence or expressing a complete thought.  It would be impolite to stare at my watch while playing so I don't have scientific measurements.  I think the record belongs to the president of the company that spawned Unemployo the Klown.  He had to have rambling on for about three minutes before I interrupted him.  Moron.

Another variant is to listen to someone talk for a long time and, when it's my turn, summarize their point in as few words as possible.  The polite speaker will confirm that the message has been received and is understood by all.  The motor-mouth will launch into another rambling steam of consciousness, the length of which is inversely proportional to the length of my summarization.

The least fun variation is listening for an overused word, phrase, verbal tic, or filler sound.  That's a game I play only when I'm in the very best of moods, because it tests my patience.  Last week on NPR, home of the elliptical, multi-branching thoughts and points which are to be gotten back to later (but never are), I counted over thirty "aaahs" in one dude's jet of verbal diarrhea before I hit the flush lever.

So today…much was spoken, little was said, and I got to play with some very nerdy aspects of SQL Server.  And I didn't have to use my AK.

I have returned from my long wanderings in the wilderness.  My sabbatical is over.

NOW THE COMPLAINING WILL BEGIN.

You want to know what pisses me off? The fact that USA Today, the nation's coloring book, has some kind of deal with the hospitality industry to foist copies of their publication, with its color-coded sections and bite-sized story-ettes, on unsuspecting travelers and charge them for it!

Whenever I stay at a hotel I make it a point to carefully read whatever paperwork they've given me during check-in. Some hotels give the papers away for free, some charge you and let you decline receipt of the paper, and others give you a paper, charge you for it, and never tell you. When I see the box telling me I can decline to receive Newspapers for Dummies, I check it, and with gusto. If I don't see any wording about newspapers I tell them I don't want any, even if they're free, but if they aren't free, I'm not paying for them, so don't bother giving me any. I think my intentions are crystal clear. No goddamn newspapers.

And yet every morning, like clockwork, I step out of my room for the continental breakfast and risk breaking my neck by stepping onto a slippery copy of the very newspaper I hate with every fiber of my being! Despite my stated preference for no paper I still get one. It lays there outside my door, bark-shouting its monosyllabic headline in the trademark 36 point Moronique font like a lobotomized idiot man-child with a grape juice moustache.

I let them pile up. I never touch them. I ignore them. I'm very good at ignoring. Sometimes when I come back from my work or leisure for the day the paper will be gone; I can only assume someone stole "my" copy that day, though I can't fathom why. Not my problem. I didn't ask for it, and I'm not paying for it so it isn't my property to miss.

Time marches on and eventually my check out date arrives, and with it the bill. I like the trend towards no-human-contact checkout. I love it when it works and there are no discrepancies on my bill. This is usually not the case when I'm dealing with a USA Today-aligned hotelier. No matter how many gallons of pigs blood I use to write "All work and no USA Today makes Tom a happy boy" all over the lobby they just don't seem to get it, the way I'll never get it about feminism because I was born sans Mysterious Cave of Yaga, From Which All Knowledge Flows.

Marching down to the desk for a service industry deathmatch is not my idea of a good start to the day, but principle is principle. As a tautological rapper once observed, "A (person)'s gotta do what a (person)'s gotta do," and I do, so I do.

Sometimes the desk clerk is aware that guests can refuse paying for newspapers they thought were free, and this makes the bill adjustment quick and pleasant. I once had a clerk look up my check-in paperwork and tell me she'd never heard of someone refusing the USA Today. I felt like Kramer trying to opt out of the postal system. Then I get the clerks who haven't had the proper training or experience to know that 75 cents isn't just 75 cents, it's 75 cents and freedom, democracy, the right to own property, and the pursuit of happiness. They're the ones who have to summon a manager for me to have a bossfight with.

In the end they all relent and give me back my 75 cents per day. Well, not my 75 cents, but the 75 cents of whatever client I'm working for.

What I'd really like to see is an admission from the hospitality industry that they've been forcing unsuspecting customers to pay for crappy newspapers for decades. I'd like a thorough accounting of how much money they’ve made off this little racket. If the sums are big enough, maybe I can charter a class action lawsuit! Tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of dollars are at stake here. I'm sure some bottom-feeding class action lawyer could be persuaded to fight the good fight for a few million.

And when the dust settles, we'll all get coupons for $23.72 off our next stay. And a complimentary copy of USA Today.