You’re a big flaming asshole staring down at everyone.
You’re the asshole, but your brilliance saves you. Your doctor buddy is a saint for putting up with all your whining and drug use. You should pay him more.
So I was minding my own business when my boss rushed up to me and stuffed a recording in my pocket and told me I had to go on a long business trip to deliver the thing myself. What a pain in the ass, but she’s my boss. So she flies me and a coworker on a cheap shoddy flight that crashes in the desert and expects us to hike the whole desert to find this old coot.
My partner is such a whiny, sniveling loser. He takes everything I say as a personal insult. He got all worked up and took off on his own, as if he even has a clue about the assignment.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, I got waylaid by a band of thugs who threw me in the back of their van and hauled me off to forced labor. And my coworker was in there, so now I had to put up with him again.
We finally got dropped off at some farm - in a desert. Who is pathetic enough to try to farm in a desert? The guy keeps me locked up, so I can’t get away. But he’s a bit of a sucker. Maybe I can bribe him with a picture of my boss. She’s kinda hot even if she is a spoiled princess.
Never mind… @Irishman, for some reason, I got the two mixed.
Probably my favorite bit of movie trivia is that, instead of casting professional voice actors for that scene, they sought out and hired the real life married couple who had recorded the curbside announcements used at LAX.
Yes, you ATA. Try being more friendly, less antagonistic to your coworkers, stop treating everyone like you are the chosen one, the only one that knows what is going on.
And fer cripssake, this ain’t no Marx Bros movie. Learn to speak! It’s not that difficult! Arrogant SOB.
I have a Doctorate in Engineering from MIT, specifically in propulsion. But I decided to work on Wall Street because, well, you know, math is math but the Street pays better.
I work in risk management at a very large investment firm when we’ve been going through some hard times. My boss gets laid off and as he’s leaving, he hands me this USB flash drive and tells me he is… well, was… working on something important, effectively asking me to finish his work.
There’s a big round of layoffs that day and I did what people usually do - I put my head down and worked until all the bosses leave. I’m about to leave myself when I see the USB drive and decide to see what my boss… I mean, my ex-boss… was talking about. Can’t be too careful, right? No one’s going to accuse me of slacking.
HOLY SHIT!
I call the head of trading. He calls in his boss, around 11 that night. An hour later, his boss comes in, as well as the very beautiful (if you like ex-models in their 50s beautiful, I mean) head of risk management, and by 2am, the fucking CEO flies in on a helicopter.
The CEO has me give him the run-down on what my findings were, and I have to tell you - this is one ruthless SOB. If this is what it takes to be the head of one of these firms, I’m 99% sure I don’t have what it takes.
Long story, short: My analysis showed that we were sitting on a bunch of useless assets, the sort which history would call “toxic”. However, at that moment, we were the only ones who knew how worthless they were - everybody else thought they were worth what we thought they were worth.
I wasn’t a party to much that later happened that night, but during the meeting with the CEO, it was decided that we were going to dump all this shit on the market the next day, caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. The head of trading was upset at this plan, saying it would damage our reputations (both the firms and the people involved), and that this could cause a market crash which could negatively impact tens of millions of people, if not more.
The CEO didn’t care. His mantra was that to make money on the Street, you had to be first, be smarter, or cheat… so he wanted to be the first out the door (he did not mention the possibility that dumping worthless shit onto unsuspecting buyers could also be considered “cheating”… but then, neither did I. I’m just a junior analyst. Right?)
So… we did what the CEO told us to do: Fire sale, one brought about by my research the night before where we just dumped this crap on anyone who would buy it. We sold… and only sold, no swaps… at the top of the market. By noon our counterparties (buyers) were extremely expensive, by the close of market we were lucky to get 65 cents on the dollar (this one trade was committed at a loss of over $200,000,000, that’s how desperate we were to get this stuff off our books).
The market crashed. Millions of people were evicted from their houses because of what my research uncovered, tens of thousands lost their jobs (including at my firm - most of the traders who sold that day were laid off when the market closed. Don’t feel too bad for them, they each made around $2 milion in bonuses for that day’s work.) Hell, the CEO wanted this to be so hush-hush that they found my boss and offered him over $1 million to just sit in a room for the entire day (away from the media).
And me? All in all, I was at the office from about 6am on Tuesday until 6pm Wednesday, no breaks, little sleep. But, good news: the CEO really appreciated my work. He gave me a promotion, I’m now making more money than I dreamed possible.
So, instead of being a rocket scientist, I became a Wall Street parasite who started the ball rolling on the largest market crash since 1929. I came out of it with a promotion and a six-figure job (and let’s not talk about the bonuses and my new cred with the CEO). Yeah, my buddy got fired, but that wasn’t my fault - it’s not like I personally fired his ass or anything.
(A little overlooked detail: I later found out that the head of trading had just put his dog to sleep prior to receiving the phone call which pulled him into the office for an 11pm-6pm shift (19 hours), meaning the poor dead dog was in his trunk the entire time. I hope his car didn’t stink to shit.)
So… AITA?
Margin Call
Yes. You cinched it at “But I decided to work on Wall Street”.
Hey, at least he had stopped cutting open people’s skulls.
We’re a big, important organization with one single core competency: we transport people and things. Occasionally quite large things. Being even a middle-manager in such a large, advanced logistics operation as the one we run, is extremely taxing. So we don’t mind when our people take a little something to sharpen their minds. In fact we encourage it, and take steps to keep the supply of these little somethings safe.
There is one source of the best little somethings, and it is owned by some very powerful people. Some of these people are us, of course. But a lot of the others are are a bunch of belligerent, back-stabbing sons-of-bitches. Each faction is always jockeying to be the onsite overseers of the harvesting operation.
So recently a new bunch of guys won the right to be overseers. So we helped them move all their stuff and families into the vacated facilities. Don’t know, seemed like fairly decent people, but still they must have had some rather sharp elbows to get this priced plum. What we didn’t tell them was that we already had another contract, for moving a different bunch of people, very well equipped and armed people, close to these same facilities some months later. Two other factions had figured that this was the perfect moment to get a drop on their rival. And it was.
Look, we just wanted to safe keep the only source of something that is very important to us and a lot of other skilled people. We would prefer to live and let live, but other people have other ideals, and dragged us into it.
AWTA?
My father is a sexual pervert - a peeping tom. My mother made sexual advances to me. My uncle is in jail, my friend is involved with terrorists.
The first thing I do when I get to town is trespass on someone’s land and damage their property. I take a kid’s toy and break it. I cause someone to have an embarrassing auto accident (he becomes rich in the future, but that’s a different story). I convince someone in town to threaten another person (that backfired). Then I leave town in the middle of the night.
Not the asshole. Just sort of annoying. Damaging your mentor’s lab is worse. Creating a classic R&R iconic song is good.
And learn ta drive, ya goober.
I went on vacation for Christmas, and when I got home I discovered my house had been burglarized! Not only that, the thieves stuffed a rag down the drain and left the kitchen sink running. I came home to some major water damage to my floor. But the media is just focusing on this kid from next door who apparently had some hand in catching this burglary ring. Hello! He wasn’t the only victim! AITA for thinking maybe they should give a little attention to the other people in the neighborhood who were also robbed?
I understand the situation about neighbors at Christmas. The previous year, my neighbors went overboard again with Christmas decorations. They caused explosions and power to go out in the neighborhood. They even had a SWAT team at their house, They got a lot of attention too. It was like every year or two everyone focused on what happened with the two families.
And worst of all, you turned up late for school… again!
Totally, you’re TA, and a slacker to boot. If my daughter ever has a kid like you, I’ll disown you.
I’m a teacher - and a damn good one. I take mushy-headed students and prepare them for proper thinking. But I’ve got scores of students in every class, every year - AITA for not recognizing one of them after the year is over? After all, I gave him public credit for making a true statement in class (and offered him a little bit of money so he could communicate with his family).
You are certainly a bunch of assholes, because you should have forseen the armed invasion would put your precious somethings in greatest danger and lead to the collapse of your monopoly.
As a home owner I sympathize, and those cases of petty vandalism pissed me off when I watched the documentary . But it was overlong even at 103 minutes. I’m glad I didn’t have to hear about all the details of fixing your water damage.
My husband died. Then I found out he wasn’t being honest with me. He wasn’t who he said he was.
Unbeknownst to me, he left me something valuable, but didn’t tell me what it was.
A bunch of men wanted this thing. One of them came on to me, giving me a fake name and backstory. Later I catch him on his lie. He gives me a different name, and a different backstory, I catch him on this lie and gives yet another fake name, and fake backstory. This happens a few times.
Then I find out what the valuable thing is. The guy finally gives me his real name and backstory and I give the valuable thing to him. Then he asks me to marry him. AITA for agreeing to marry another man who has lied to me about who he is?