January 03, 2008
Introducing Kevin
As is true with every place of business in every corner of the earth, we've got one real asshole in this department. Kevin. Luckily, I haven't had much to do with him so far. And yet, in what limited time I've spent with him, I've still been able to reach the following conclusions with little or no effort:
1. He enjoys invading the personal space of young and/or attractive women.
2. He likes to have Smokey and I do things for him that he could have done by himself faster because it makes him feel important.
3. He hasn't called the IT dept. in the 6 months that his computer won't print because he enjoys emailing things to Smokey and I so we can print them for him.
4. He's a thoughtless, arrogant douchebag, greatly lacking in any social skills.
Kevin's latest game is to email Smokey a dozen times in one afternoon, bombarding her with ridiculous, pointless requests for the convention that she was just going to "book a block of rooms for" and is now completely running single-handedly.
(Man, this guy really makes me talk in run-on sentences.)
Requests made of Smokey:
1. Make sure they get a conference room with really big windows.
2. Reserve the hotel shuttle to take them to wherever they decide to have dinner [I'm pretty sure hotel shuttles aren't taxis].
3. Make sure that the pad of paper at everyone's seat is 100% recycled paper.
4. Contact security and fill out a hundred forms because the building closes at 6:00 p.m. and they want to meet until 6:30 p.m.
Today, I received from him an Excel spreadsheet, 13 pages long, single-spaced. However, I received no instructions to go along with said spreadsheet.
No, the instructions were given to my boss, so she could pass them along to me. Because, you see, not only am I too lowly for him to contact me directly without tainting his holy aura, but I am too stupid to read directions in an email and must have them explained to me very... very... slowly. Preferrably with flash cards.
The instructions are to look up every one of the 600+ organization on the spreadsheet in our Big Book of Organizations, find their in-house code number, and enter it into the spreadsheet.
Well, first of all, I'm not flipping through pages when I can get the info online in two clicks. Secondly, what kind of bullshit busywork is this, anyway?! Jesus H. Data-Entering Christ, I'm not a monkey! Go get some college kid home on winter break to do this shit!
So I start the tedious crap, like a good little trained monkey, and I find that, in some sections of the list, the organization names don't match up with the addresses. They're one off, i.e. the correct organization name is in the cell above where it should be.
My boss heard me swearing, so I told her the problem. She's like, "Can you still do the list?" I'm like, "Yeah, I'll just make sure the addresses and names match up and change them where they don't. But it's gonna take me longer."
And she was cool and thanked me and tossed me a Snausage. Later, I overheard her talking on the phone, and I knew she was talking to Kevin because I heard her explaining the one-off problem. She was like, "Okay, I'll switch you over to Wenchie," blatantly ignoring my vigorous head-shaking.
Greeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.
PW: Hi.
K: Hi!
PW: ...
K: So how were your holidays?
PW: Very nice.
K: ...
PW: ... [You wanted to talk to me, dipshit. So talk!]
K: So you're working on that spreadsheet?
PW: Yeah.
K: Do you know how to fix that? Because I can explain it to you.
PW: [Seethe, seethe, seethe.] Well, I would just cut and paste the whole column one cell down, except that it only happens in random sections of the spreadsheet, so they have to be corrected individually as I go.
K: Oh. I think I know how that happened. I deleted some rows that didn't need to be on there. You know how you go into Edit and then Delete?
PW: [Are you kidding me? You open up the Edit drop-down every time you delete something? Don't you know there are at least three quicker ways???] Uh-huh.
K: I must've done something wrong when I was doing that.
PW: [YA THINK!?] Oh. [You don't know how to delete a row without fucking it up, and you wanted to walk me through cutting and pasting, asshole???]
K: ...
PW: So when do you want this done by?
K: Well, I was hoping to have something by next week.
PW: No problem. [And since you didn't specify which of the five days next week you want it, you'll get it on Friday. Fucktard.]
I'm on number 187. I'll be done by Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning, but he doesn't need to know that. I'm almost looking forward to the day when he pushes me from Passive-Aggressive to just plain Aggressive. Because you know that day is coming.
Comments
Is your boss cool with him using you like that because sheesh, that blows. After a few abuses like that I try and turn the project around on them. Mess it up so royally that they never ask you to do anything again. What a tool he is.
Posted by: Hope at January 3, 2008 03:51 PM
I think you should be ever so sweet and call the IT dept. on his behalf. Because, clearly, he doesn't know how to use the phone.
Posted by: Mickey at January 4, 2008 03:51 AM
Please keep me informed. My new workspace is devoid of assholes (so far; I've only been here two half-weeks), and I'm bored for good office gossip!
-Lori
Posted by: Lori at January 4, 2008 12:14 PM