Work Story I

Well, I told a co-worker of mine to fuck himself on Friday. Skippy and I have sat next to each other for over a year, and despite.....no, probably because of our common Iowa upbringing I find myself trying to overcome a visceral dislike of the guy.

Skippy volunteers as an assistant coach at one of the suburban high schools. He has season tickets for the Iowa Hawkeye games as well as the Bears games. The joke around the office is that his kids were sired by the mailman. His interests begin and end at sports.

We deal with a number of foreign clients, especially from the far East. Language can be an issue, but we're paid to deal the investing public and I have to remind myself that every foreigner I speak with has mastered an intellectual challenge that has so far eluded me: fluency in a second language.

Skippy, on the other hand, insists that foreigners are all dumb and all crooks. He wants the wall built on the border ASAP. George Bush is a great president and if we don't support the war then we're stabbing the troops in the back. Homosexuality shocks him. His world-view seems to extend no further than the Des Moines suburbs.

And, he has a mean streak. He tends to needle people around him and most of the people in his former department can't stand him. In all of these qualities, he reminds me of my monosyllabic 7th grade gym teacher. The monosyllabicism included.

Friday, I asked him for assistance on something I was dealing with that is usually his domain, and he responded with haughty arrogance. I turned to face him and said,

"Skippy, go fuck yourself."

Everyone turned around and one or two people started chuckling. My boss tried to diffuse the situation by saying,

"Calm down. Nobody's going to fuck himself here."

"Don't worry," I told him, "I don't think it's anatomically possible for Skippy to fuck himself, anyway."

What I feel bad about is that I let my anger through. My weapon in dealing with people is mockery. If I had asked Skippy if he had stopped taking his ritalin, or informed him that I had a phone message for him to the effect that his Dale Carnegie class had been canceled, that would have been funny and everyone would have laughed at his expense. Instead, I turned around and told him to fuck himself. It was direct and it subdued him for the rest of the day but anger is not my weapon of choice. In resorting to it, I let the terrorists win.