rant whine 'splain espouse: Is it just me?

Friday, May 21, 2004

Is it just me?

I work with some incomprehinsibly annoying people. But there's one person in particular, who will remain nameless despite my utter willingness to shout her wretched name from the rooftops.

She actually emailed me from the office today, as I worked from home, and asked me where the big banner was.

Now, the idea to hang our 10-foot by 10-foot banner at the upcoming Green Blues concert was indeed a very good idea. I had already thought of it myself, but that's beside the point. I'm glad she had this good idea.

What is completely flabbergasting is that she emailed me -- she's at the office, I'm at home -- to ask me where it is.

Let me point out, for those of you who have no idea how big our office is, that it is approximately 14 feet wide and about 35 feet long. There are no closets. Therefore, there are very few places where a 10-foot by 10-foot banner could hide. Even a rolled up 10-foot by 10-foot banner is rather large.

I was flabbergasted because I was, as I have pointed out, not at the office. I was at home. She was at the office. In fact, she was sitting 3 feet from the first logical place to look (behind the door, where all the other large, unwieldy items are), and could have simply stood up and looked 3 feet to her right.

She was seated all of 15 feet from the next most logical place to look, which was where the banner actually was located.

Have I pointed out that I was not even in the building, and that she emailed me to ask where this banner was?

Ah, but let me not dwell on the sheer laziness of this. Let me not be outraged by the pure absurdity of emailing a guy 3 miles away to ask where something was that was located a mere 15 feet away.

No, let's ignore all that for a moment. But please, dear reader, allow me to point out that what this woman did was to make something an SEP.

An SEP, for those of you who haven't read the greatest trilogy that isn't a trilogy, is a Somebody Else's Problem.

She had a good idea: "We should hang the big banner at the concert!" her quixotic little mind leaped for joy.

"Where is that banner?" her little synapses fired back.

"Hmm. Mark made the banner, he'll know," her little intellect conjectured.

Now, while I am overjoyed to know that I am apparently The One Who Knows All, and that in her mind, if she doesn't know something, well, "Let's ask Mark," the joy I most positively (sarcasm filter=on) gain from this knowledge does not prevent me from feeling a tad consternated that, upon this realization, her first action was to fire off an email to me (not to actually look for the banner herself), thereby taking my time and attention away from my other work (did I mention that I don't work there on Thursdays?), for an incredibly stupid question which, I must calm myself here to not yell it at the top of my lungs, I HAD ANSWERED FOR HER IN PERSON JUST A FEW WEEKS AGO!

I couldn't hold it in. Sorry.

Yes, my dear friend, a few short weeks ago, she asked me, "Hey, Mark, do you know where the banner is?" I thought she was talking about the big banner, and said, "I think it's beside the supply cabinet, over there." She went over, reached in, pulled it away from the wall, and said, "This? Oh, no, I meant the little ones for tabling." The point here is, she held the damn thing in her own hand just recently. We had a discussion about it, albeit a brief one. But this was apparently completely lost to her faulty memory when she got the brilliant idea to bug me with this new little question today, taking up my time by making the problem of "I want to find the banner" into "I'll make Mark find the banner for me."

This is not only the most inconsiderate kind of coworker, this is an intollerable one.

Really. Would a jury convict me?