Smart-assery... undetected.

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Ya know how sometimes in life you have to deal with idiots?  Well, I try not to purposely have this happen to me, because idiots annoy me, piss me off, and generally can invigorate such a rage in me that I fear having to speak to them because of things I might say.  Unlucky for me, pretty sure that most people that I have to work with (not necessarily face to face, or officer vs enlisted, etc etc) are idiots.

Granted, there are times that I'm an idiot too.  I'll ask stupid questions or read something incorrectly, and I'm sure the other person is thinking "what a fucking moron."  So I mean, its fair to call someone else(s) an idiot if you recognize that you can also be an idiot.  Right?  Right.

Part of my job here is to monitor chat rooms.  Technology is an amazing thing.  Pretty sure Admiral Fox was briefing NAVCENT from one of the carriers the other day.  Our shop couldn't figure out what the BOOMING voice was that we kept hearing, so we peered into neighboring room and plastered across the VTC screens (which took up most of a wall and there were smaller screens around the room) was Adm. Fox, who was hanging out in a conference room with some other (probable) big wigs talkin to us from a boat.  Magical.

Chat is tricky.  Because there isn't a special sarcastic font.  And often, you don't actually know, know the person you're chatting with.  You don't know that they think anything that could be misconstrued as perverted breaks them out into a case of the giggles (that's me) or if they have a super dry sense of humor and they are attempting to be funny, because they've asked you to do a task that they could do themselves, but they're too lazy, and you both know it.

When I get a chat that pisses me off, it usually ensures either 2 things for my coworkers.  Worrying or entertainment.  Worrying that I might fly off the handle and just start pounding (louder than normal, because apparently I'm a speedy typer) on the keyboard and say something out of line or extremely unprofessional to mirror what I'm actually saying outloud.. or that I'll just say those things outloud and NOT type them in the chat box which is just entertaining..  Pretty sure there have been sighs of relief after my outbursts when there was a significant pause in angry keyboard pounding.

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On the other hand.  I try to often compose my text in ways to include hints of "you are an idiot" with "here is the information you need" with smart-assery.  What makes me sad is that often the "you are an idiot" part doesn't come across as well as I intended.  I've reread chats that I've had with someone (lower ranking) that was tasking me with something that had been done, and that could be redone by their own imagery shop, but they didn't want to deal with their own guys, so they were telling me, NOT asking me, to do it over.  My rage wasn't quite getting through.  I was disappointed.  I hope that asshole enjoys all the spam mails he gets from our shop because I insisted on adding him to our distro so he wouldn't have to bother ANYONE ELSE in our shop, since he'd caught several of us already.

Yesterday, someone was reading my chat with someone who had made me yell, and they said, "You say things in your chat that are just lost on anyone not hearing you say them."  I was VERY disappointed.  Crushed actually.  I guess what this really means is that I either have a very angry way of typing that is only experienced IRL (in real life) (which is true) or I have an extremely emotional voice when I say things (which is also true).

"We aren't currently on that type of mission, so we aren't using that website right now," isn't nearly as "you are an idiot" in text as it was in speech.  Which went something like: Wtf are they asking about that for?  Will you check the calendar and see if there's a mission going on right now?  No, then wtf are they talking about?  What a fucking idiot.  I have better things to do with my time than deal with retards.  *commence having to chat with idiot with angry typing while still maintaining professionalism.

I'm sure its a good thing my rage doesn't come out in chat.  Although, I am sure that I often appear as stubborn and a pain in the ass.  Which kinda works out in my favor because that means that people don't like coming to me for stupid shit.

Important person: I never received an image from blah blah blah, can you send it to me?
Me: Sir/Ma'am, do you receive our reports?
IP: Yes.
Me: All our products are in our reports.
IP: OHHH, well, I didn't know that.
Me, muttering quietly: they never do.
Then, they magically pull up the report that contains the graphic they are asking for... Whodathunk?  I usually walk away feeling validated for calling someone an idiot in my head.

Buttttt.. sometimes, I'm the asshole.  That's not nearly as often, because I try to do my job and do it well, but... sometimes people with good intentions piss me off too.  For instance, the girl who came to tell us that someone was trying to find us in chat about 45 minutes after they'd posted it in our public chat room for everyone else to see that IIII wasn't responding to them (who cares that there are other people that work with me that have similar names to represent we all work in the same place)...  I had returned to my desk to see my chat window blinking that idiot warning sign at me and I had ignored it... and responded.. and was greeted back with 100% pure idiot.  When the girl that came to tell us, she got most of my "you're an idiot" directed at her semi-accidentally.  Sometimes the cup just runneth splash-ith over.

(a new great site for super old photos I found)