siknerd.com - Home of the World Famous iRANT

The Girlfriend bought me a pretty crappy birthday present. It was one of those massaging chair mats that don't work (her logic: I always want a massage and love to sit down). I didn't have the heart to tell her I didn't want it but she broke me. So instead, she decided to get me "The Timeless Art of Seduction."

"Every girl gets her guy that," Twinkie said to me yesterday.

"No, not that," I told him. "She's gonna give me the picture."

"Why would you want pictures when you can see that anytime you want?"

"But she's gonna have it framed and I'll put it on my wall."

"What happens if your parents see it?"

"They'll laugh."

This went on for three or four minutes before we realized we were talking about two different things. Twinkie thought The Girlfriend gave me her body for my birthday and took naked pictures of herself. I was talking about a poster of George Costanza hunched over a couch in his underwear.

I don't understand the mentality of a person who gets hired somewhere and immediately starts making demands. Maybe it's just 'cause I'm an unassuming person and have never asked anybody for anything in my life, but I think that behaviour is very rude.

I see it all the time at my job. We'll hire someone--a management-type--and they'll immediately come in and start asking for stuff. Maybe it's their way of testing how much pull they have--I don't know. What I can tell you is that pretty much anyone who gets hired to run a department has a list of demands that are longer than your average terrorist's.

And it's not like these people are making changes that makes their department better. No, I'm talking about petty, silly stuff--stuff they don't need and makes no sense. It's like they do it because they can. Folks will get hired and immediately decided they don't like their office so we're forced to hire an outside decorator to redo the room. While I understand a happy work environment is a productive work environment, can't you give it a few weeks to make sure you wanna stick with the job? It's just so pretentious.

We hired a gal who immediately requested a $5000 computer. She needed all the bells and whistles. Software, hardware, extended warranties--she insisted she needed a top-notch machine. She justified it by saying in addition to her management duties, she was going to help out with the graphic design department and create promotional material. The IT department gladly got it for her since it would make her a better employee. For three weeks she drove everyone nuts with her various configuration needs and no patience. When she finally got things running, everyone was happy because she was going to work that machine to its limits. Imagine the shock and horror everyone had when it turned out she didn't know how to change the size of fonts. And that wasn't the end of her problems...as it turns out, she completely computer illiterate. Just the other day she had to call the IT department because she couldn't logon to her computer.

"I typed my password correctly and it won't let me on," she insisted. What she didn't realize was that someone else had used the computer before her: she had to type her name in too.

It's stuff like that that makes sick. She demanded and wanted--not because she needed any of it (turns out, she couldn't use any of it). She did it 'just because.' Like she was entitled to it because she was the new gal.

When I got hired, my boss showed me to my tiny office. It's small--I know it (the janitor's mop has a larger room than I do). "If you want to move the copier, you can switch with the copy room," he said to me.

Now the copy room was only slightly larger and didn't seem worth the effort, but that wasn't the point. I was the new guy. Who was I to go around switching things and make changes when people were used to the other way? My life can change for them--I wasn't gonna be the jerk who disrupted everyone else's lifestyle.

I guess that's the difference between management and workers--we're considerate. The brass at A Television Station Not Owned By Rupert Murdoch all seem to perennially have their heads up their asses. They live in a delusional world without any concept of what life is like for anyone else. They give themselves raises repeatedly when everyone else--the ones who need it--are forced to struggle. It's a load of garbage--I don't ever want to be that type. I've never been one to care what other people thought of me, but on the other hand I certainly don't wanna be a jerk. That's probably why I'll always be poor in life.