December 11th, 2006

Consider this:

"Do you serve root beer?"
"No, but we have Diet Sprite"

-actual conversation endured by Paul Harris at a Burger King

There are moments of complete disconnect in everyone's life, like the example above. You say one thing and the response is so completely off the point that you are left reeling.

Here's another example I once heard in a WAV file:

"XYZ Customer Support, cactus."
"Hello, I'm having a problem with my printer."
"Cactus"
"Um ... my printer on-line light flashes but nothing prints."
"Cactus"
"Hello?"
"Cactus"
"Why do you keep saying-"
"Cactus"
"Let me speak to someone else please!"
"Cactus"
etc....

Can you imagine the weird little sureality of the experience the frustrated caller would be going through? I tried to find that WAV file so that I could link to it, but it appears to be gone now—probably removed by the company that the bored technical support worker formerly worked for.

I mention this because of a memory that has come bubbling up in my mind of a boss I once worked for in the 1990s. He was a sociable, intelligent, friendly, guy whom I came to like working with and whom I respected. (See, it must have been in the 1990s before I concreted my reputation as a grump and opinionated curmudgeon :) ) He and I worked together as co-workers and later I went to work for him. And I liked it, and he liked it, and life between us got along all swimmingly. We had a co-worker who was in a similar situation to me, and after an initial warming-up period, I learned that she was hard-working and honest, accurate and earnest in her work, and soon I got along very well with her (and vice-versa). The three of us worked pretty hard, but we joked and laughed together, we had lunch together sometimes, exchanged Christmas cards, and asked after each others' families and pets.

And we all lived happily ever after.

Hmm ... except then one day my boss, whom I shall hereafter refer to as "Gerbil", cornered me in the hallway. He was breathless, red-faced, wide-eyed, and shaking slightly. He wanted to talk to me about my fellow co-worker:

"Have you seen her work?" he whined.
"Well ... sure, I see it every day."
"SHE'S ... ahem. She's deliberately doing things the way I want, but in the wrong way!"
"Eh ... what?"
"SHE'S SABOTAGING ME!" he positively shrieked liked a grumpy toddler. Then, though calming himself down, he leaned in close so I could smell what he had for lunch and he said, "She wants to do things her way, but because I told her she can't she is doing things my way, but it's deliberately ALL WRONG!"
"Do you mean she's being passive aggressive ... ?"
"YES, THANKS! I KNEW YOU'D GET IT!"

And with that the Gerbil padded off to his newspaper nest to drop a few pellets and lie around in them while contemplating his next trip to the exercise wheel.

And after about a year of working in tight and friendly circles with him and my co-worker, he suddenly showed a completely different side of himself ... a side I hadn't even suspected existed. Surreal. And scary for how my life at that company suddenly got turned on its head. It felt as though the building were starting to shake. I—truthfully—felt as though the floor were vibrating and the walls were quivering for a few moments afterwards, because the behaviour he had just exhibited was either insanity, or betrayed that his true feelings about our fellow worker had been hidden until just that moment.

I stood and contemplated it some more:

Either way, I felt like my days at that job were numbered. Paranoia has no antidote. First she quit, then I was later chumped out and forced to quit. Oh, how I yearn to relate here in public what he did to me so that I was forced to resign; but, by Jesus, the Gerbil is such a petty, small, disgusting, paranoid varmint that even now, years later, he would try to squirt some of his stinky slime at me if he thought he could leave a stain. Suffice to say that paranoid people stoop to any levels, no matter how low and amoral (and illegal!) to feel safe again.

The point being, in all of this, there occasionally come times when the social structure we live in falls apart. And the effects are so strong ... so physiological, that we are left feeling almost as damaged as if the physical structures themselves were the ones that caved in. An intellectual disconnect that large can be as devastating as injury itself.

Read more rants - Top Blogs - Comment on this rant - Email me