Don't Send... Yet

What do you do when a co-worker has been grating on your nerves as delicately as grinding the gears heavily while shifting in that brand new ride? Maybe your jobs mesh with each other like jellyfish tentacles drifting in the ocean, occasionally making contact with each other, touching base, a neighbourly ''how d'ya do'', barely a relationship. But when there is contact, there is a need. From one to another, and you try to acquiesce. If only so to push off and enjoy the freedom of swirling about in your own little dance again. What can I say, some jellyfish are nicer than others. I can't explain the jellyfish analogy, it just seems like something I need to talk about. Perhaps the toxicity of something so innocuous looking might play a part in this account. Maybe not. Who really cares?

So it could be the hormones, although I have been told that being knocked up has made me much more mellow than usual and I tend to agree. Just last week the cashier rang my bread up 30 cents more than what the posted price was and I let it go, just didn't bother to correct her beeping machine's mistake. Any other time and I would've pointed it out and then manage to wrangle an extra 30 cents off my total bill just because it's the principle. Then call out the store manager, make him cry and then do a jig of principle in his puddle of sorrow. Then walk out with a voucher for free groceries for a year. I'm a tough customer like that. All for 30 cents.

Back to the point. I'm finding that there are certain people who raise my blood pressure effortlessly either through their stupidity, ignorance, laziness or condescending nature. OK, I concede that they piss me off on any regular day of the week but lately, I'm approaching the point where I may turn green and bulgy, lose my verbal skills and then grow all gigantic-like which causes my clothes to disintegrate all over the place except for the articles required to cover up the no-no bits. Say hello to maternity underwear!

This may never end, remember my problems with the attention span thing? So let's get back to the co-worker du jour who is the focus of my anger. She sent an email today scolding me for work undone. For her, mind you. It's not for my lack of work ethic, I've just got a ton of crap to shovel and for a goodly stretch of time (haha, goodly..) there was just me to do the work of several people. I'm not really complaining about that in itself because it's a common situation for many people and I accept that, as dumb as it may sound. But hey, there is only so much one person can do in a day, so my job is invariably about putting out the fires followed by trying to catch up and maybe chip away at the steadily leaning tower where my in-box and any available desk space should be located. Which means, I've got to prioritize. And mind you, if I'm going to entertain the idea of maternity leave in a couple of months, somehow I've got to shove my hand up my ass, pull out a magic wand and make those piles disappear. Even as they grow. Think Tetris. I've never beat that game so what the hell am I to do here?

So we've reached my point. Finally. Without burning bridges, raising shit, getting petty, throwing a tantrum and getting fired, here's how to respond to a not so subliminally condescending email from a person who already sits on the list of people you'd like ______ (ad lib time!). You hit the reply button and write an angry missive detailing exactly what you want to say to them. Curse words and insults need not be filtered, be as stupid, immature and irrational as you want to be while conveying the message of why you haven't gotten back to them yet. Bring up the fact that she's dumb and smells like poo and her momma's so______ that ______ (again, ad lib time!), and maybe you want to make mention of that nasty mess in her mouth they usually apply modern dentistry to, if only for the sake of everyone else around with working eyes. Perhaps you want to rub her face in an emu's butt and make her smell the emu's fart and then call her names like Emu Buttface and Emu Fartbreath. You get the point, childish as it is.

Then you don't send.

After you deal with some real and urgent stuff, you come back to it and edit yourself a little. But you don't send. After you go pee for the third time in an hour because the baby's head, which has been down since 6.5 months enjoys juicing momma's bladder constantly, you edit some more. Everytime you get up to do something, complete another task and let the minutes and your anger tick away you return back to that email and whittle it down until it becomes just another workplace reply; a bland, emotionless and dishonest auto-response that bears no resemblance to your original rant.

Hi Co-worker,

I've got a lot on my plate at the moment but rest assured your request has not been forgotten and I will get to it as soon as possible.

Thank you,
Stinky T

But at least this way you applied some self-therapy (that sounds kind of dirty!) as well as getting to keep your job for another day... so that you can write more angry emails that never get sent to the people you cherish at work.