Just had a team meeting. Lots of upheaval with the merger and all, and there have been changes with the management structure, so we weren’t really surprised when our boss told us that he had given his two weeks notice.
Dammit, best boss I’ve ever had. So, I’m pissed off about that. Then, the resident loudmouth starts making tacky remarks that he probably thinks are funny. “They fired you, didn’t they?” sort of stuff.
Resident Loudmouth is not well liked to begin with. He’s a bad tech, he has no sense of tact, and he makes a lot of work for the rest of us, following up on cases he’s screwed up or neglected to document. So when he said “I guess I’ll put in my application for your spot. I’m sure they’ll take me.”, I replied, “Danny, the day they make you supervisor is the day I open my wrists up over my trashcan.”
You could have heard crickets chirp.
And then Nathan added, “yeah, and she’ll use a butter knife.”
“The handle end,” Mike said.
“And then we’ll all leave and take her body with us,” Fran said.
And our boss was standing there very carefully covering his smile and not saying anything.
So, I’m partly impressed that I actually managed a quip as timely as that, but I’m also embarrassed that I let my hostility show. Not exactly professional, ya know?
Yeah, but the echoes in support of your ‘quip’ speak volumes for the unanimity of your position.
Once, while in the boss’s office, I was getting some guidance on how we were going to respond to some minor crisis. With the div head hanging around the doorway, I replied incredulously, “That’s dumber’n dirt!”
Found out later, it was the div head’s idea.
Sigh. Gettin’ pretty used to middle management.
You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who can do nothing for them or to them. – Malcolm Forbes
You know it needed to be said, phouka. Be glad you said it before they actually made him the supervisor.
Whenever I’ve tried to be the “good team player” when I knew something was very wrong I’ve regretted it. OTOH, whenever I’ve had the nerve to use my outloud voice to declaim against something stupid, I’ve been gratified to discover I was only saying what everyone else was thinking. It usually didn’t keep the stupidity from happening, unfortunately, but it made it easier to deal with it when it did.
No, you were’nt unprofessional. You were professional at a higher level than is usually demanded.
well well said the royal desiccation my political opponents back home always maintained
that i would wind up in hell and it seems they had the right dope
Don Marquis archy interviews a pharaoh
Having a low tolerance for silly bullshit and make-work, I used my ‘outloud voice’ frequently while on active duty.
The roller-coaster eval scores reflect this, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way; at least I can look myself in the eye in the mirror!
VB
I could never eat a mouse raw…their little feet are probably real cold going down. :rolleyes:
Before I tell this on myself, I’d like to explain that my son had terrible colic at the time and was getting up every 2 hours to nurse. It still doesn’t make this one acceptable though:
I’m out at the JCPenney’s outlet store with my 3 month old son, who is a rather large baby. (He was 22 inches long and 11 lb 6 oz at birth…) A very large woman comes up to me, and says, “What a cute baby! How old is he?”. I tell her, and she replies, “Oh my! What a round little fattie!”. Before I can stifle it, I reply, “No, he’s a perfectly healthy breastfed infant. YOU, on the other hand, are a lardass!”. :o
I got out of there fast! I can’t believe I’d say something so horrid (out loud), even if provoked.
Prairie Rose
If you’re not part of the solution you’re just scumming up the bottom of the beaker.
I don’t know if it was politic or not, phouka, but I like it.
I was in a similar situation, once, though not with the whole staff. I didn’t come up with something funny to say, but I did start giggling. It started spreading, and the idiot-in-question started, too. Several of us then started laughing hysterically because the fool didn’t realize we were laughing at him.
Phouka, that sounds like something my mom would say. Allow me to share one of her finest moments. . .
Three years ago mom was working in the accounting department at a resort hotel. The food and beverage director at this hotel happened to be from Croatia, and he didn’t know anything about running a kitchen. Worse, his bookkeeping methods were pretty unorthodox, which caused accounting a lot of problems.
This director also had a habit of starting long tirades with “Back in the old country. . .” According to him, no one in Croatia ever made any mistakes, the service was perfect, blah blah blah.
Unfortunately, he decided to start one of these tirades when mom was in the room. Right after he started with “Back in the old country. . .” mom cut in.
“Back in the old country,” she said, “you still don’t know shit.”
Makes me wish I could think that fast.
She’s taught me a few things, though. Like if someone threatens to “have your job”, the correct response is “you sure as hell can!” or something like that. There’s always another job.
I don’t have any work related stories yet, but I have a great one from the hallowed halls of my high school (even that was 8 years ago)
It so happened that, at my high school, the industrial arts classes were typically populated with the students who weren’t on the college plan, for what ever reason. Some truely liked it, others honestly didn’t have a chance in the other classes. I, however, was in a Plastics class only because I had made a last minute change in my schedule and there was nothing left for me to take.
Anyway, during the course of one class’ ‘work time’, I asked my teacher if I could get a drink. He just looked at me and said “you don’t look thirsty.” Without even thinking, I looked at another guy in the class and said “He doesn’t look stupid.”
Allow me to share one of her finest moments. . .