You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better. ~ Anne Lamott
Every once in a while, I receive an email at The Office that makes me laugh so hard, I start making sounds only animals can hear and pee I in my pants a little bit too.
I was having one of those days where you swear its a Monday after a long weekend but it is really a Tuesday and you feel like you should be awarded a medal if everyone leaves at 5, alive and head still attached to their body. To go along with that mania, the office crazy pants was on her millionth day in a row where she talks like a four year old girl, turns every conversation into a conversation about her mess of a life, and made the grandiose statement at the weekly department meeting, "I can shower in 14 days." Yes, that happened. My eye roll was equally grandiose and I thought my baby blues were going to roll into my head, carve out a space in my lower brain, and hibernate there for the rest of the winter.
So as I sat on the cube farm, driving my desk, listening to crazy pants cackle like a witch who lost her broom, this gem hit my inbox:
I have the best fucking friends.
Now, make me fucking care.
Am back. On Facebook. Ugh. I feel like I just handed over every shred of decency I have to Mark Zuckerberg and he is doing unspeakable things to it. This better work better than it did last time girls!
Yes, I remember what I said about Facebook and all its co-conspirators last year. I still stand by that. I have even more arguments against it (planking, homicide due to wall posts and Farmville) now and, quite frankly speaking, cannot wait until the next thing comes along. Oh sit down Justin "I just bought MySpace" Timberlake. Best you will do is piss YouTube off. This business of you trying to be an actor and trying to relive your Social Network days makes you look silly, cheesy, and deficient. I digress...
Are we fighting yet, Amy?
As a precaution, I have created an account that is part my name, part not. So if you want to add me as a friend, and if I think you will not stalk my life and irritate the fuck out of me with your narcissistic wannabe bullshit are worthy, I will add you. You can email me privately for further information.
If I do not respond to your email or add request, I want you to give some really deep thought as to why I have not before you blast me about it and start calling me all the bitches under the sun in your news feed, status box, etc. I mean really really deep thought. And then choose my answer(s) from the following list that best apply to you (and they do):
a] I am not interested in your drama.
b] I am not interested in you stalking my life.
c] I really just tolerate you because I find myself in socialized situations where I am required to or I may loose my job.
d] You are a friendwhore, we are not now nor will we ever be friends, and I would not be caught dead on your friends list.
e] Your "join this club" invitations and all the other spam you posted on my wall last time I was on Facebook created so much spam I had to abandon a much loved email address. Fuck off with the invites, I can join myself.
f] We may be related but that does not mean I like you or would consider you a "friend".
g] You bore me with your feeble and pathetic attempts to look cool. If you really were as cool as you want me to think you are, if your life was as cool as you attempt to project onto me, you would understand that cool never ever tries. Cool just is.
I started university as an English major.
I know what you are thinking.
Behave yourself.
I am the first to admit that I am not Shakespeare. I am well aware that what I produce here is not some sweeping prose that should be bound in novel form, sold at all the major retailers, and nominated for all sorts of elitist awards. No, that stuff is downstairs in a filing cabinet waiting for my undivided attention.
What I am doing here is an experiment in free thinking and free form writing; I had a professor in a third year creative writing course accuse me of not being able to do such a thing. He also said some stuff about fear of being judged, fear of success, blah blah blah.
And Cassie dared me. Double dirty dog dared me. I really did not have a choice in the matter, did I?
While my writing here may suck like a hoover, I have written emails that should be framed and passed down through the generations. My "snot-a-grams" are legendary. I can peel paint with them, but I do try to be diplomatic about the issue at hand. I am not always a total bitch from hell who desperately needs Ritalin a demanding cow but the lack of common sense I am inundated with before 9:00 am frustrates me.
(And just so there is no confusion, if I send an email to you and I call you or someone you know a paragon of incompetence, feel free to loosely translates that to I cannot believe you got to work today without a road map and a tour guide. Seriously. More often than I care to admit, I wonder that about some people. I understand this is not at all diplomatic. I am not proud of that nor am I happy about thinking that way about people, but there it is.)
So, when composing emails, I do my best to make sure they are grammatically correct before I click on the send button. I have spell check and grammar check automatically do their thing before an email leaves my outbox because I my brain leaks and I cannot be trusted to always remember to do this myself. Lastly, the punctuation in the emails I write is carefully pondered before the email is sent out into the inky blackness of the Internet. I work at a corporate level for The Company. People expect me to at least spell right and use fairly good grammar and punctuation. And let's be honest, people appreciate spacing between sentences. It makes your stuff readable.
What is my point? Why have I grumbled on for so long?
I recently received an email at work that crawled up my ass and rolled around while simultaneously causing my brain to implode and then explode. I am probably going to get in copious amounts of crap for posting the gem below but after I read it and my brain splatter was wiped off my cube walls, I decided it had to be shared. It is just too good to not be out there with all the other bad emails from management types who think they are doing us a favour by gracing us with their presence.
Oh yeah, this was written by a manager. Who is older than 19. Way older but equally arrogant and hypocritical.
Enjoy. Christmas came early this year!
"Subject: Clean Up
Hello All
As we are all aware, we have our Customer Appreciation day on Thursday.Could you please speak with the folks in your area's and make sure that all area's are clean , and work space i.e.: desk's etc are as clean as can be.We all want to show our client's our best.Appreciate your effort's , and remember , the Customer's will be the judge's for the Decoration Contest.Let's make it a tough call for them
Thanks Again" (period left out because it was never in the original email)
Some days are awesome, non?
Go back and read it again.
You are so welcome.
It is like a gift that keeps giving. Every time I read it, I find something new.
All this from a man who held a seminar on how to use the in/out board. Because, for all the years prior to his arrival that we have been using the in/out board, we have not been inning and outing properly, efficiently, or effectively. True story.
I know how to use a in/out board, Sir Dicksmack.
Another thing you halfwit dunderhead ninny, I know how to use an apostrophe. Oh, and you should know, the Grammar Police called on behalf of the Capitalization Nation. They respectively want their commas and nouns back.
I have said it before.. I am not creative enough to make this stuff up. I am a magnet for crazy. At work, I just sit back and it lands in my inbox. Or in my cube. It is part of the reason I keep going back for the punishment. I get paid to be a part of the world's best yet unknown soap opera/unscripted reality TV show, I get fuel to drive this blog and I get to smugly and quietly know I am better at something than someone else.
Yes, I am like that.
PS: For the wonderful smart asses in my life, do not privately email this entry with the errors in grammar and spelling noted and fixed, punctuation amended. Do not email me with suggestions for a letter grade if I was still in university. Or intimate I should go back to the U of A and demand a refund on my tuition. I will hold your Christmas gift hostage. Oh, I so would. Cos I am like that too.
Bathe regularly. I know there is an article floating around on Yahoo about only showering three to four times a week but they are wrong. Bathe daily. When you smell like ass, we do not think it is cool.
~~~~~
If you are willing to lie about where you are from or how old you are, there is a good chance you will lie about anything. That makes me not trust you. Do not get all pissy when I call you out on it either. Grow a set and have the fortitude to stand in the middle of who you are and be that person.
~~~~~
Having gas at work is a challenge. Silent but violent does not always wait for you to get to the warehouse.
~~~~~
When the I.T. department at your place of employment does not know how to work the email system your entire company is using, you are fucked. So is your I.T. department.
~~~~~
When you suddenly leave a job after thirty years, it makes me think you did something really sketchy. I am not the only one who thinks this.
~~~~~
I love the smell of permanent markers. And not those skinny ones either. No. The big ones with the wedge tip. Ahhhh.
~~~~~
I have arrived in the blog sphere. I finally received my first bit of hate mail.
FINALLY!
Oh ya, jumpy claps everyone!
99.9999% of you have been kind and gracious in the emails you have sent. OK, a few of you have criticized the grammar but here's the thing about that... this isn't Shakespeare nor have I ever claimed it is. Its a one-sided conversation (unless you email me) and certainly not the syntax or grammar I use in the other two projects I'm working on.
That other fraction of a percentage, the haterade percentage, solely belongs to "Julia Taylor" of Digeus, Inc. fame. I'm pretty sure Julia is actually a Julius. A sweaty, bearded Julius who's fingers are orange from eating Cheetos. I'll bet Julius' breath smells of Dr. Pepper and cigars. But not the cool Cuban cigars. No, no. Nay, nay. I'm talking those girly raspberry flavoured cigarillos.
I could be wrong. It happens.
The following is what transgressed between "Julia Taylor" and I. "She" still hasn't got back to me on arranging a play date. Am. Crushed. (Click to enlarge. When the picture appears, click again to enlarge, read, giggle, enjoy!)
By the way, the sketchy handwriting is mine. I couldn't help being a smart ass. It is my nature.
