Zemblan Grammar

I just had a discussion with a particularly annoying co-worker in which he openly espoused the same worldviews as a Known Nemesis of mine.?

But first, some background: this co-worker is annoying for a wealth of reasons, most of which could be summarized by just stating that he is overbearing with his opinions and desires.??Then again,?when have you known me to be brief about the things that annoy me?? One sterling example of his character is that he spent the week MicroSoft released the Zune running around our offices telling everyone who would listen how the Zune was going to “kick iPod’s ass,” just you wait, and boy oh boy was he eager to see that happen.? I’m sure we can each think of no fewer than fifty things wrong with that scenario, not least of which would be the fact that none of us in the office could fucking care less, and, of course, no one had asked his opinion on the matter.?

So go ahead now, reader, and imagine yourself a teeming nest of annoyances like?this?one, and then hunker down in that teeming nest, all scratchy and festering, and you will have the background lurking behind everyone’s interactions with this dude.? Then, thrown boldly up against that background are his actual work-related behaviors, such as the fact that he is constantly?bungling things and then trying to deflect attention from himself, or to trick other people into rectifying his mistakes.?

Today he tried to convince me to start dissecting all the architect’s orders I receive and creating new spec files doing effectively twice as much work as usual just to create some kind of back-up for the next time he goofs, or, perhaps, to create the illusion that the thing he keeps fucking up is actually my responsibility and not his,?retroactively assuming the blame for his past mistakes.? He turns his own gaffes into an opportunity to come hassle me about whether some unused computer has Illustrator on it and where I would like the hole puncher, and by the way, here are pages 3-6 of some random ten-page document, you know, so I don’t have to print them out myself.

Basically,? I?can not stand this guy.

So when he started asking me today about whether I use the online course management system for my classes (you know, the one I believe we all agreed to call “Chalkboard”), I just knew something horrible?was coming.? Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite sense what it was, and I was unable to deflect the blow.?? It turns out that the annoying co-worker is of the opinion that his professors should all post his grades to?what he calls the “Chalkboard Spreadsheet,” so that he will always know what grade he “has” in the class at any given time (despite the fact that Chalkboard will in no way help him ascertain this; I have?described its mathematical inaccuracies and/or general unhelpfulness?before).? He is incapable of keeping track of his grades himself, see,?even if the professors report his grades to him when assignments are handed back.?

“I just don’t wanna keep track of them,” he whines, sounding exactly like a thirty-five-year-old version of those kids on MTV whose parents throw them hundred-thousand-dollar birthday parties and buy them custom-made “hot couture” gowns [sic], which the kids?then complain are “hideous” and “not hot” and which they then ask if they can take out back and burn, just to escape the multi-thousand-dollar, custom-made, hand-beaded, perfectly-tailored hideousness.? I seem to have digressed a little bit, but while I’m here, let me just say that you should by all means check out this show if you are in any way dissatisfied with your boring, pedestrian, bourgeois life, because these children will make you so, so thankful your parents never bought you a? horrifying, diamond-encrusted watch or a ninety-thousand-dollar car?just to embarrass you.

In that moment, though, when my thirty-five-year-old, ex-military, married, college-educated, reasonably successful co-worker sat there moaning and groaning like a rich brat whose mother had ruined not only her quincea?era but also her entire life, I realized something.? I saw those ridiculous whippersnappers who, with one instance of bad behavior after another after another, become my nemeses, and I saw exactly what is going to become of them.? They are all, every last one, going to be fucking up simple tasks in offices all across America, and trying to trick their colleagues into not only fixing things for them but taking the blame, too.? Keep your eyes open for them, all of you.? Contant vigilance.