My past experience in customer service has introduced me to a variety of people–from pleasant to drunken fool to downright ignoramus.  But Mr. W’s former employer takes the cake when it comes to bottom of the barrel humanity.  I never mentioned him when Mr. W worked for him, but now that he doesn’t [thankyou!thankyou!thankyou!] it is open season.

I had the fine pleasure of sharing a 45-minute car ride with the man once.  He talked the entire time and it pretty much went like this:

Bossman: “My opinions are superior to your own.  I hate black people.  Black people are stupid.  I am so smart and so proud of how smart I am.  Let me tell you about the time a black person… [cut short for brevity].  Look at that Shaniqua [all black women are referred to as Shaniqua] over there!  Her boobs are huge.  I like to sit and watch black people because they are so stupid and this is funny to me.  Let me ask you a question I don’t really care about the answer to–it’s just my lead-in to share my own fantastic opinion.  Black people, black people, black people.”

Oh, except replace “black people” with the n-word.  And then repeat that little dialogue over and over for 45 minutes.  [I know that I can exaggerate from time to time, but I assure you that if I am doing anything here, it is understating.]  He is, hands down, the smallest-minded bigot I have ever met.  In addition to bigotry, he has terrible management skills.

Mr. W: “We need to do something for this client or something bad could happen.”
Bossman: “I will handle that because I am smarter than you and more capable.  I hate black people.”
[Days pass.  The "something" doesn't get done and things break and now the client is angry.]
Bossman: “Mr. W, how could you let this happen?  You are so incompetent!”
Mr. W: “You said you were going to handle it.”
Bossman: [sticks fingers in his ears] “Lalalala-I can’t hear you-lalalala!  I hate black people!”

Joke’s on Bossman, however, because now that Mr. W has left Bossman will have to do actual work.  It’s been a while, and I’m not sure he remembers how to do this.  Work for him has basically consisted on the following:

1. Give employees crap
2. Hire new employees as others leave
3. Repeat

Sometimes I hate receptionists.  Part of my job is to identify what advisors are associated with what rep codes.  The only real way to do this is to call the branch and ask the receptionist, who keeps of list of that sort of information.

Usually it’s like this:
Me: “Hi, I’m calling from [company] and have the rep code 123.  I’m just looking for the name of that advisor.”
Receptionist: “Sure, that’s [advisor name].”

See how easy that is?  But sometimes I get a receptionist who, instead of making things easy, transfers me to the advisor without telling me their name.  That goes a little something like this:

Me: “Hi, I’m calling from [company] and have the rep code 123.  I’m just looking for the name of that advisor.”
Advisor: “That’s me.  Why do you need to know this?”
Me: “A trade came through our system and we didn’t have that rep code associated with anyone.”
Advisor: “Who are you again?”
Me: “I’m Teri, with [company].”
Advisor: “I didn’t do any trades with [company].”
[Insert five exasperating minutes wherein I explain that yes he did the business with us and GOOD LORD JUST TELL ME WHAT YOUR NAME IS!!!!]

Stupid receptionist.  How dare you not make my life easier.

I think that should be everyone’s goal–to make my life easier.  I see no inherent problems with that plan.  I would, however, settle for a clone.  Clone me could just do all the things that I don’t care for–cooking, errands, and doctor’s appointments being the big three.  I would need some way to ensure that the clone didn’t make a clone, because I’ve seen Multiplicity and do not need any retarded clones running around, mucking things up, and asking for pizza all of the time.

In non-clone news, I read The Hunger Games series last week and thought it was really good.  I’ll be honest, I was expecting another Twilighty young adult series of melodrama, but was pleasantly surprised.  There is a love dynamic, but it’s amidst political upheaval and a revolution.  I would definitely recommend the series.  Now back to Anna Karenina.  It’s taking me forever to read that book, mainly because I really don’t like the titular character.  It’s clear that Tolstoy is trying to garner sympathy for her–poor her! her life is so hard!–but I keep thinking, “yeah and it wouldn’t be if she stopped only wanting things she can’t have.  it’s her own damn fault she’s miserable.”  Oh well.  800 pages in…not going to stop now.

I was at the grocery store with Mr. W last night and, as I stood in the check-out line, became absolutely disgusted with all the magazines.  All the fashion, celebrity gossip, and home decor crap.  “529 Hot Spring Looks!” and “What’s Beautiful Now!” and “Two Khardashian Weddings!”  It’s drivel.  But magazines only come out with this shit because it sells their magazines.  Which means: people like drivel.  People, why do you like drivel?  I assume that you discovered cloning technology and your clones made clones who are then buying these magazines.  That’s forgivable, as the cloned clones aren’t too bright, but what isn’t forgiveable is that no one has given me my own clone yet.

Get on that.

I’ve been sitting on this soap box for a long time, not wanting to offend.  Enough is enough.

We need a little less protecting people from themselves and a little more survival of the fittest.  Natural selection is a beautiful thing, people, and should be embraced lest the human race become an idiotic waste of space.

I am against laws that protect people from their own stupidity.  I am for, however, laws that protect people from other’s stupidity.  Example: Drunk driving.  Drunk drivers rarely hurt themselves, hurting/killing innocent people instead.  Drunk driving = illegal.  Texting while crossing the street, however, should not be.  You are endangering yourself and therefore, deserve whatever consequences you get.  Same with seat belt laws.  If you choose not to wear them, that should be your prerogative.

We should abolish welfare, Section 8, and Social Security.  By coddling the less fortunate we are not only encouraging them to be lazy and unproductive members of society, we are enabling them to breed future lazy and unproductive members of society.  End result: over time our nation will be weaker, lazier, stupider, and greedier.  We need to get back to a mindset where a person must work for what they have–it is one of the great things about this country: that a person can, through hard work and perseverance, make a better life for themselves.

I read an article today about how McDonald’s is being sued because by including a toy in their kid’s meals, they are marketing to children.  The article made this awesome statement: “Gardner [CSPI director of litigation, Stephen Gardner] also referred to the argument that parents should be responsible for their children’s eating as being tantamount to ‘a drunk driver that hits your kid saying they shouldn’t have been out of the street.’”

According to this statement, parents should not be held accountable for what their children eat.  Are you f*&$%ing serious?  For a second I had to double-check to make sure that I wasn’t reading an article from The Onion.  Parents are THE ONLY ONES responsible for what a small child eats.  A child isn’t capable of preparing or purchasing food on their own–it is given to them BY THEIR PARENTS.  McDonald’s isn’t responsible if a parent is so lazy that they would rather acquiesce to their childrens’ demands of Happy Meals than feed them something more nutritionally sound.

It’s about PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!  It is no one’s fault but your own if you are fat, poor, or unhealthy.  The government [or any other governing body or legal system] should not be made to take up the slack for you.  It pisses me off when people expect the government or some lawsuit to make their lives better.  It’s not the government’s job.  It’s not lawyers’ job.  It’s not McDonald’s job.  It is YOUR job! So either do it, or go sit quietly in the corner while the rest of us do ours.

I think I may be a horrible person.  Can you know that you’re a horrible person or does it work like sanity–the truly crazy insist they are sane, while the sane question their sanity?  Perhaps it’s just mini-manifestations of some sort of inner anarchist.

It’s such a small thing, but I get really annoyed when someone pushes an already-lit elevator call button.  This morning I was waiting for the elevator [having pushed the button just the one time], when another man came up and pushed it also.  And not just once–he pushed it three or four times in quick succession.  I’ll be honest, I wanted to smack him.

He can only be doing this for one of two reasons:

1.) He is so impatient and/or stupid that he thinks the speed of the elevator is directly proportional to the amount of times the elevator button is hit.  If so, his barrage of button pushes would have jolted all current passengers as the elevator began its deathly plunge toward the lobby.

2.) He thinks I’m an idiot.  As if I don’t know the purpose of a call button and just wait there until an elevator randomly opens before I am able to get on.  It makes me want to say, "Well lookey there!  The BUTTON makes this here magical box work?!"

In more unearthly news, Paige and I are meeting up with Liz at the hotel tonight and are going to have another go at the ghost hunting.  I chalk this up to the inordinate amount of online Ghosthunters episodes that we have been watching lately.  We’re going to take some sound equipment to catch some EVPs [electronic voice phenomenon, for you non-professionals out there] and some digital cameras.  And probably some playing cards, but that’s more for our entertainment than for the ghost hunting.  I shall post all about our adventures, which may or may not be based on reality.