I went to breakfast with MomDonna today, because: Mother’s Day, you buncha idiots.
I mentioned when she asked what I’ve been up to – after the initial flashback panic to when she’d ask me that as a kid, knowing full well that I’d been up to being a little shit – that I’d been mostly staying home, since it was a Dry Week. Which basically means I’d watched a lot of movies, including A Man Called Otto.
Me: I was actually kind of surprised that I liked it. It didn’t seem to get good word of mouth during its release.
Mom: You know, we watched that, too. But it was so sad, with all the suicides –
Me: Gotta love a movie with a warning label!
Mom: – that we had to watch another movie right afterward. Something fluffy. What was it honey? Something about taking a gigolo to a wedding.
Me: <blinks>
Mom: Who was the girl in that?
Me: Debra Messing.
Mom: I think that’s the only movie I remember her doing. Of course, your father thought it was Amy Adams, but I knew that wasn’t right. And who was that boy?
Me: Dermot Mulroney. Also, you’re kidding. Wedding Date? I watched it right afterward, too!
Which just led to an entire side conversation about why dad would watch that movie – or care that they did. Short answer: young Amy Adams. When mom heard that, something snapped into place with her and I could see the realization that she’d been outfoxed by dad’s inner Bill Clinton, which he usually keeps well hidden.
Of course, I knew the next maternally owned synapse that fired started a list of ways in which dad would slowly pay for low key tricking my mother and enjoying a movie he normally wouldn’t for reasons she would think he totally shouldn’t.
Marriage, amirite?
All of this was a welcome distraction from the potential conversation that I am Otto.
And I admit it.
Not because people are idiots – which, they totally are. Here’s how I know people are idiots: they don’t know it.
But, rather, because I never read the source material for the movie. That would be a book called A Man Called Öve.
Maybe a bunch of my gentle readers already knew that. Probably so, since I don’t just give away the honor of being excluded from the population I commonly refer to as Stupid Americans. That has to be earned by demonstrating intelligence or good taste or critical thinking skills. All things that following my blog would certainly indicate.
However, the reason I’m sure many people did not know what the source material is is because the movie originally took the book’s title, but it didn’t test well, so they changed it. Likely, said testing likely occurred with the aforementioned Stupid Americans.
We’re fighting a culture battle in this country that is not at all figuratively a battle of wits. Remember: never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
So, that’s how we end up with the movie’s name.
But that’s not the point. Or the full point, anyway.
The point is that I never read the book.
I had thought it looked like one I’d appreciate, but never deigned to find out. You see, I was working at the airport at the time. My business was running five news/gift shops, so I definitely saw the book. Not just daily when I made rounds to my stores, but dozens of times on the concourses being carried conspicuously by the unwashed masses that also looked like they hadn’t a clue what they were doing or where they were going. Or how that book ended up in their hand.
There they were, just careening – or more likely, moseying – down the concourses while I moved about with a determined gait and obvious focus as I navigated around them. More often than not, a close call would cause me to mutter some iteration of Otto’s frequent pejorative: idiots.
That is what struck me about Otto: his and my own righteous grumpopatomus tendencies.
Certainly, his were kinder, having limited himself to the sole label of “idiot”. Also certain, in real life those labels were likely cleaned up to allow book and ticket buyers the deniability of being included as targets of Öve/Otto’s ire.
Can’t bite the hand of the idiots that feed you, after all.
As an example of that phenomenon, here’s a few examples of how this manifests in my day to day. Most of the time, it’s fairly gentle – unless you’re the target.
If the perceived offense is particularly WTF, they’ll earn something closer to this.
But I try to reserve that for my friends and closer acquaintances. They get me enough to not be offended. Or when I’m alone in my car, which happens often. The expletive, not the alone in my car part – which should be assumed. Nowadays when I’m in my car it’s usually to take some lazy idiot his chicken nuggies.
For the rest of those fucking idiots, I keep it in my head. I know them well enough to know they’d rather go to the trouble of retaliating for my correct assessment versus accepting the feedback and working toward a better version of themselves. It’s easier to just be a problem for everyone else.
It still surprises me that none of my friends made the connection. To me, at any rate. Who knows, it’s entirely possible they saw my personality in that character but just didn’t mention it. I mean, the day after this Portlandia sketch aired I woke up to several texts and emails calling me out…but I’d missed it because the show was on too late and I was already in bed!
I went to breakfast with MomDonna today, because: Mother’s Day, you buncha idiots.
I mentioned when she asked what I’ve been up to – after the initial flashback panic to when she’d ask me that as a kid, knowing full well that I’d been up to being a little shit – that I’d been mostly staying home, since it was a Dry Week. Which basically means I’d watched a lot of movies, including A Man Called Otto.
Me: I was actually kind of surprised that I liked it. It didn’t seem to get good word of mouth during its release.
Mom: You know, we watched that, too. But it was so sad, with all the suicides –
Me: Gotta love a movie with a warning label!
Mom: – that we had to watch another movie right afterward. Something fluffy. What was it honey? Something about taking a gigolo to a wedding.
Me: <blinks>
Mom: Who was the girl in that?
Me: Debra Messing.
Mom: I think that’s the only movie I remember her doing. Of course, your father thought it was Amy Adams, but I knew that wasn’t right. And who was that boy?
Me: Dermot Mulroney. Also, you’re kidding. Wedding Date? I watched it right afterward, too!
Which just led to an entire side conversation about why dad would watch that movie – or care that they did. Short answer: young Amy Adams. When mom heard that, something snapped into place with her and I could see the realization that she’d been outfoxed by dad’s inner Bill Clinton, which he usually keeps well hidden.
Of course, I knew the next maternally owned synapse that fired started a list of ways in which dad would slowly pay for low key tricking my mother and enjoying a movie he normally wouldn’t for reasons she would think he totally shouldn’t.
Marriage, amirite?
All of this was a welcome distraction from the potential conversation that I am Otto.
And I admit it.
Not because people are idiots – which, they totally are. Here’s how I know people are idiots: they don’t know it.
But, rather, because I never read the source material for the movie. That would be a book called A Man Called Öve.
Maybe a bunch of my gentle readers already knew that. Probably so, since I don’t just give away the honor of being excluded from the population I commonly refer to as Stupid Americans. That has to be earned by demonstrating intelligence or good taste or critical thinking skills. All things that following my blog would certainly indicate.
However, the reason I’m sure many people did not know what the source material is is because the movie originally took the book’s title, but it didn’t test well, so they changed it. Likely, said testing likely occurred with the aforementioned Stupid Americans.
We’re fighting a culture battle in this country that is not at all figuratively a battle of wits. Remember: never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
So, that’s how we end up with the movie’s name.
But that’s not the point. Or the full point, anyway.
The point is that I never read the book.
I had thought it looked like one I’d appreciate, but never deigned to find out. You see, I was working at the airport at the time. My business was running five news/gift shops, so I definitely saw the book. Not just daily when I made rounds to my stores, but dozens of times on the concourses being carried conspicuously by the unwashed masses that also looked like they hadn’t a clue what they were doing or where they were going. Or how that book ended up in their hand.
There they were, just careening – or more likely, moseying – down the concourses while I moved about with a determined gait and obvious focus as I navigated around them. More often than not, a close call would cause me to mutter some iteration of Otto’s frequent pejorative: idiots.
That is what struck me about Otto: his and my own righteous grumpopatomus tendencies.
Certainly, his were kinder, having limited himself to the sole label of “idiot”. Also certain, in real life those labels were likely cleaned up to allow book and ticket buyers the deniability of being included as targets of Öve/Otto’s ire.
Can’t bite the hand of the idiots that feed you, after all.
As an example of that phenomenon, here’s a few examples of how this manifests in my day to day. Most of the time, it’s fairly gentle – unless you’re the target.
If the perceived offense is particularly WTF, they’ll earn something closer to this.
But I try to reserve that for my friends and closer acquaintances. They get me enough to not be offended. Or when I’m alone in my car, which happens often. The expletive, not the alone in my car part – which should be assumed. Nowadays when I’m in my car it’s usually to take some lazy idiot his chicken nuggies.
For the rest of those fucking idiots, I keep it in my head. I know them well enough to know they’d rather go to the trouble of retaliating for my correct assessment versus accepting the feedback and working toward a better version of themselves. It’s easier to just be a problem for everyone else.
It still surprises me that none of my friends made the connection. To me, at any rate. Who knows, it’s entirely possible they saw my personality in that character but just didn’t mention it. I mean, the day after this Portlandia sketch aired I woke up to several texts and emails calling me out…but I’d missed it because the show was on too late and I was already in bed!
Don’t get me wrong, even as a singleton, I enjoy a nice, leisurely any Sunday morning waking up. Laying in bed, catching up on news, emails, social media, all the whatnots of life in 21st century America with the secure feeling one’s cozy nest provides.
Now, if only I could train this lil monster to get coffee refills.
Alas.
At least I have the environmental comfort of KINK’s Sunday morning programming – a program called Sunday Brunch – to deliver audible gems like Johnny Cash covering Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus – to offset the assault on intelligence our weekly rag delivered in its daily news brief this morning.
The aforementioned assault on our collective intelligence is linked at the top of this post. To recap for those of you savvy enough to not click on embedded links of a possibly insane distant blogger’s posts, Willamette Week does a video feature called Hot Mic where they send a local film student out to ask people on the streets a question to get a pulse on civic engagement. It can be anything from the Valentine’s Day question about Oregon’s birthday – which I bet my readers could guess using the meager context cues in this very sentence – to who is Oregon’s Governor, which yielded slightly terrifying results.
In an even worse demonstration of the illiteracy of our voting populace, our intrepid student on the streets took off to find out if Portlanders knew who the Oregon Secretary of State was is.
Ok, was.
You see, Willamette Week has a history of taking down politicians with its investigative reporting. Not just state level, either. City, county…school board. Doesn’t matter, it’s the story – and it’s what voters need to know. Not just about the candidates and politicians, either. It’s what they need to understand about the system itself.
In this case, last month, maybe late February, WW began reporting on a local weed company’s unpaid debts. The stakes were <ahem> high in this revelation, too, since they weren’t just stiffing plumbers or electricians, in an impressive display of Trumpian privilege. They were, of course. But they were also stiffing their vendors.
The most egregious offenses – and what initiated the reporting – was the taxes they weren’t paying: state business and weed taxes, federal income taxes, payroll taxes. The owners of the business had accumulated an impressive ~30 liens against them totaling around $7 million in debt.
All while also donating around $200k to political races and candidates during our last election cycle. Including holding two fundraisers for our newly elected and even more recently resigned Secretary of State.
As SOS, the job is to audit state and local agencies, including the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission – which was another, less terrifying Hot Mic demonstration of the general population’s ignorance, failing to define the agency’s acronym. However, ours had recused herself in February from the audit of the OLCC – there’s that acronym – because of the impropriety of a SOS who’d taken donations from the owners of the second largest weed business in the state overseeing that audit.
Seems legit, right? Like, the audit needs to be done, but farm it out to ensure it’s impartial.
Here’s the rub, though, she recused herself a week after the audit was completed. It was a year-long audit. We only found out about the recusal a month later when it was released.
Then we found out – thanks to WW – that the SOS had put the donors in touch with the auditors and had helped define the scope of the audit.
A hot minute later, we found out that WW had received an anonymous tip – gotta love those! – that the SOS had also taken a freelance job for one of this company’s affiliate businesses for a base of $10k/month. That’s more than the monthly SOS salary…not to mention the $30k bonus for additional licenses this business received thanks to the efforts of the SOS.
72 hours after that disclosure, our Secretary of State had orphaned us by resigning.
Crazy shit.
I imagine the story likely earned national coverage – and will probably earn the paper another Pulitzer for investigative journalism – to the point where even someone in Appalachia country could name our Secretary of State. Even if that person might also call one of their cousins “pa”.
She’s Shemia Fagan.
Ok, I overstated their mission earlier. They just sent this film student out to see if people could pronounce her damn name. Surprised, they were, to find out people couldn’t name her at all.
Like I said at the top…idiots.
And they vote.
At least I can take comfort in my assumption that all Stupid Americans are created equal when it comes to elections. At least our ignorant liberal voters are casting their ballots with a sense of social responsibility closer to what Jesus would counsel than their (at best) equally ignorant conservative counterparts in the party of the Religious Right, Christian Nationalists, Proud Boys, Promise Keepers, etc, etc, ad nauseum.
And…with that, I should probably complete my unrelated special election ballot now.
Crotch Goblins. This is how a friend of mine referred to the children of one of her friends. Now that I think about it, I think she told me that’s what her friend calls her very own kids.
Regardless, I can’t unhear it or unthink it now.
Crotch Goblins. How delightfully graphic. It’s also malleable enough to be mistaken for an affectionate nickname. Entirely unlike the nick that I’ve used for kids for decades: STDs.
Whatever you call them, I’d just like to share what is apparently uncommon knowledge with parents everywhere: leave them in the suburbs, will you? I live in the city so I generally only have to deal with people’s progeny once they’ve at least reached a legal drinking age. I still have no use for them at that point, but at least I can drink around them (to make them more tolerable) without feeling like I’m ginfluencing them.
I’m tired of coming across these entire families where none should be. I accept the fact that because of our current houseless problems in Portland, I have to engage in the mental exercise of judging whether the sidewalk excrement I encounter is the result of a lazy human or a homeless human. That’s really all the concession I care to make regarding my urban life extras.
When people bring their children into this environment, it’s unnecessarily taxing to grumpy old Xtopher. First, I have to weigh whether the parents are selfishly dragging their kids along on an urban adventure they wanted to indulge in but we’re too cheap to pay a sitter for or if they are simply bad parents all-around. Bright side: I would never know or even think about it if they’d just left the kids in the subs. Y’know? This is hard to have a “one rule fits all” point of view on since the Oregon Zoo is walkable from my home downtown, same with OMSI (the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry), which is a frequent field trip destination for the area schools.
Fun Fact, if you’ve ever seen this film:
Then you’ve seen one of OMSI’s main attractions:
But I’ve drifted slightly off topic, I’m just showing you that I know that the People’s Republic of Portland has some built in “fun for the whole family” allure.
However, that does not extend to my breakfasts with the parents. I am the appropriate age child for parents to bring to town. When my mother shushed my cursing at breakfast this morning and reminded me of the destination for the plate of waffles – a child accompanied by three adults at the table behind me – that prompted me to say “That meal is an open invitation for fucking diabetes!”, well…that was too much.
With the exact amount of contrition the situation warranted, I pivoted to “Fine, ducking diabetes! But if they are so concerned for the well being of their Crotch Goblin, maybe don’t bring them to a dive restaurant that is literally alongside the railroad tracks down by the river.”
Am I being unreasonable here? I mean, the guy at the other table behind me finished a beer as I was walking in, ordered another as I sat down and a couple sips later, executed an admirable three-point turn on his scooter so he could go out and smoke a couple ciggies before his breakfast came. This is where top-tier parents choose to bring their precious child?
Then, when they left, the foursome completely blocked off the aisle between tables while they failed at putting their jackets on, completely trapping a server who had gone to drop off food at the next table over. What should have been a 20-second task turned into something like trapping an opossum in a cat carrier. The look of panic and deceleration in this poor server’s eyes. The mother was completely unaware of how her “nurturing” was negatively affecting those around her or how it would likely impact people for years and decades to come because she’d just taught her kid that the world can wait for her to get her shit together. I’ve never hoped that someone end up in a “put your own air mask on first” scenario, but now I can check that off my never have I ever list. But you know this family would fail that simple set of instructions.
Sorry, I might care more about the well-being of your offspring than you do, but I will only demonstrate it at the ballot box. If you bring them within my verbal splash zone, don’t expect the water to be filtered.
Likewise, if you bring your family of four into town, you need to manage that situation. People walking their dogs in an urban environment have to leash their fur babies. I’m not suggesting you leash children, but in the last week I’ve had to navigate a sidewalk with one too many family hazards – the correct amount is zero – twice and I’m kind of done with it.
The aforementioned dog owners? Fine – and they usually have their dogs trained to walk beside them, or at least are present enough to their dog’s behaviors to be able to follow their fur baby to whichever side of the sidewalk their nose drags them. I rarely see a dog sniffing out the latest pupdates on a tree or light post on one side of a sidewalk while their owner stands oblivious on the other side of the sidewalk waiting with the leash cordoning off the throughway.
Honestly, with dogs on s sidewalk, the biggest hazard are the people who have to stop and pet them and ask them “who’s a good boy?”. Why? Because their hit of unconditional love costs everyone around them free access to a sidewalk. Can you be needy elsewhere, please?
Speaking of a group usually referred to as “needy”, then there’s “the least among us”. Those poor – usually drug addled – folks who reside on the city streets. The Urban Campers. They’re a blight and a reason to exercise gratitude simultaneously because it could happen to any of us. For them, I will tolerate the oblivion that makes their existence tolerable to them. They don’t literally bother me – aside from the mental game I mentioned earlier – so I forgive their disruptive presence.
But these fucking families navigating sidewalks and crosswalks? Pass.
At their best they can manage an organized excursion, albeit at a glacial pace. I’ve seen it, but it’s truly rare. Usually, the best I can hope for is a chaotic form of forward progress. The entire family scattered across the sidewalk traveling at different velocities and, to the casual observer, completely unaware of one another.
This would never have flown in my family. My mother did not just develop an interest in how her child’s behavior affected those around her this morning. No, I was raised with that same consideration. My parents kept me on one side of the sidewalk so we weren’t in the way of other pedestrians. There was certainly none of this laissez-faire parenting that results in enough distance between family members on a sidewalk to mistake them for strangers.
Mind you, now I’m an adult, so I can decide on my own whether some Stupid American warrants my consideration or not. A not-shocking amount of those people do not. That’s a fair middle ground, too, when dealing with me: overt disregard. When it comes to managing my own behaviors, if I’m changing them for a setting, the last thing you likely want is me sharing my opinion on your presence. Maybe you brought your Crotch Goblins into town to learn about life, get some culture. You probably aren’t expecting or open to my hot take about your parenting style or whether you are fit for the job in my estimation.
I told you that my overt disregard of your family was a good result. But, seriously, do everyone a favor and leave the kids at home if they can’t behave as well as a dog on a city sidewalk. Easy-peasy.
If you’ve followed along on these misadventures for any length of time, you know I’m a fan of that jaywalking life. But I’ve recently begun to notice that it’s not for everyone.
It’s more of a skill than I’d realized.
Definitely not a privilege.
Jaywalking is a scofflaw life.
A crime of opportunity – although, I admit to some off guard moments of necessity where I wanted to be home quite urgently. If you get my drift…
The short of it is, if the coast is clear, you go. That italicized verb was referring to the stride of Sir Jay, not the thinly veiled bathroom reference that preceded it.
Key words: clear and go.
Here’s my bitch, people are fucking up this shockingly simple transgression. They’ll dart out into the street without so much as a cursory glance in the direction of traffic. Better yet, they’ll just stand at the edge of the street or on the traffic side of a row of parked cars and wait.
And people stop and let them cross! Classic Portland. Also, classic Wrong of Way.
If I stop for those idiots, it’s gonna be to tell them that they’re doing it wrong. I’ll suggest their attempt to save a few steps is wasting their time.
Not that they’ll listen.
Seriously, though…what’s the thought process there? They aren’t making it across quicker if they have to wait. If they’d walk to the corner, they inherit a right of way, especially if there’s a traffic control. But all they’re showing me with their technique is laziness or stupidity.
Stupid Americans.
But the folks that really get me going? Two different groups, but similar imagery. Think: Beatles album covers. Here, I’ll make it easy for you:
The first group that raises my ire is the group of people who are clearly together, but can’t get together – no, wait, if I’m gonna cite Beatles references, it’s got to be come together! – to cross the street as a group. There’s the de facto leader, simply by virtue of being the only one focusing on the task at hand. There’s invariably someone struggling with a load of shopping or an over or underaged person that needs extra care to cross and then trailing the toddler or infirm entry in this parade is the person with their phace in their fone.
Abbey Road, they are not.
Even worse than this group is the group of strangers recreating the pic at a 90-degree angle, so there’s just this line of failed jaywalkers lining the side of a street. They may get an F for their misguided misdemeanor efforts, but they pass social distancing with flying colors. Inadvertently, I’m sure.
And as I pass them, I mentally mow them all down. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Except any of them that went to a corner, mind you.
Is there a Nobel non-Peace Prize? Fine, I’ll start my own.
It’s a dating app for single parents. Touting benefits like scheduling your free time so you can coordinate with other single parents.
Sounds great, right? It’s got done thought behind it, which maybe sets it apart from other dating apps.
And then…it immediately reverts to the usual dating app dumb-fuckery.
Your kids go to bed at 8, but you don’t have to.
What the…?!?
Am I supposed to infer layers of planning and responsibility here? Because what I’m getting is, “Your kids are asleep, why don’t you head out for a little slap and tickle? You know, the hush, the bad? Go on, you’ve been a parent most of the day, minus the 8+ hours you worked, but let your hair down and get yours, now!”
Of course, the next ad set featured an ad for Upward, a Christian dating site. Oddly, I respected it more than this Stir ad. It literally said nothing offensive – just put itself out there as a resource for finding like-minded people with a built in foundation of common values.
What was Stir’s version of that? Instead of “Are you a person of faith?” it has “Are you a neglectful parent?”
Not for nothing, but I’m thinking of joining Upward and making my profile headline some sort of riff on questioning when exactly God was going to start blessing America, as the song commands – because we seem to pretty much be embracing the fucked-up-ness of our situation anymore.
Hoorah…at least people won’t be lonely or undersexed as the careen toward eternal damnation. Whatever that looks like for them.
For me, I think I’m there – and my Hell is mass market advertising geared toward separating as-hard-as-they-have-to-work-to-justify-being-overcompensated stupid Americans from their hard not-earned cash.
I don’t want to get into the election in general, but over the past few weeks the ads have really become annoying.
Since I voted and was done with this election as of 10/25.
Still, the radio ads.
TV spots.
Political mailers – in my own and the Silver Fox’s mailboxes, so I get a double-whammy.
And the text messages!
But one ad bothers me in particular: Measure 114.
It’s a gun reform measure and the fear mongering from the opposition is strong. And obviously false.
Good lord, I cannot get a break, even when I’m therapeutically bitching about these pesky things!
The worst part is that they use the word “literally” by its new definition. Y’know, the one that’s a result of Stupid Americans breaking the dictionary? That result being that we literally have no word that means “literally” now, since it’s definition has been changed to include the misused meaning, ie: figuratively.
The spot that sticks in my craw is from a sheriff who does a good job of detailing the measure’s goals –
But then careens off to the right by saying that the law will stop you from owning a firearm literally forever because of the permitting and training requirements.
And you know the <ahem> target audience will eat that hyperbole up without giving the credibility that the language gives away a second amendment thought.
Give us strength. The Right is probably gonna win on this issue and take control of the House. Then America is going to devolve over the next two years into some sort of Dukes of Hazard demigoggery scenario with you-know-who playing Boss Hogg.
All because the GOP had the foresight to gaslight the Religious Wrong into following them into some sort of Stockholm Syndrome relationship while also underfunding public schools for generations until we’ve turned out enough idiots without the critical thinking skills to hear something and be able to say, “Nope, that sounds like bullshit”.
We’re probably all screwed. Thank gourd I watched Ted Lasso so I know how to properly express me feelings on this issue…
I don’t want to get into the election in general, but over the past few weeks the ads have really become annoying.
Since I voted and was done with this election as of 10/25.
Still, the radio ads.
TV spots.
Political mailers – in my own and the Silver Fox’s mailboxes, so I get a double-whammy.
And the text messages!
But one ad bothers me in particular: Measure 114.
It’s a gun reform measure and the fear mongering from the opposition is strong. And obviously false.
Good lord, I cannot get a break, even when I’m therapeutically bitching about these pesky things!
The worst part is that they use the word “literally” by its new definition. Y’know, the one that’s a result of Stupid Americans breaking the dictionary? That result being that we literally have no word that means “literally” now, since it’s definition has been changed to include the misused meaning, ie: figuratively.
The spot that sticks in my craw is from a sheriff who does a good job of detailing the measure’s goals –
But then careens off to the right by saying that the law will stop you from owning a firearm “literally forever” because of the permitting and training requirements.
And you know the <ahem> target audience will eat that hyperbole up without giving the credibility that the language gives away a second amendment thought.
Give us strength. The Right is probably gonna win on this issue and take control of the House. Then America is going to devolve over the next two years into some sort of Dukes of Hazard demigoggery scenario with you-know-who playing Boss Hogg.
All because the GOP had the foresight to gaslight the Religious Wrong into following them into some sort of Stockholm Syndrome relationship while also underfunding public schools for generations until we’ve turned out enough idiots without the critical thinking skills to hear something and be able to say, “Nope, that sounds like bullshit”.
We’re probably all screwed. Thank gourd I watched Ted Lasso so I know how to properly express my feelings on this issue…
I spent a lot of time last week trying to decide if the burden of being right was truly the pain in the ass that it was seeming or just the cost of living in this self-service gaslighting state of affairs that is America today.
That did provide me some solace in the form of nostalgic thoughts I had from back when being right was fun and exciting. Knowledge was a pursuit, a validation…an overall positive attribute.
<sigh> The good, old days.
The issue?
My final pay from the temp agency I’ve worked with for off and on the past four years fucked up my final paycheck. Having nicknamed them based on the quality of my engagements with them –
– I can’t say that I was surprised. But I should admit that I was also impressed by the commitment they showed to delivering poor quality work with this particular fuck up.
I mean, honestly, it had to have simply been an epic string of comfortably employed idiots crossing my path because no truly stupid American could coordinate such fuck-uppery. Still, mad props to the recruiting team that assembled this melange of morons.
Quick (that’s a lie) backstory:
There was an app update about two months ago now. It was kind of a big deal, since for temps, all work is remote from your “employer”, regardless of whether you’re in an office setting or working from home. All of my timekeeping was done in the app.
The big change in this update was the prompt to indicate whether you worked onsite for their client or from your home. But it was easy, just record your time each day, then when you review at the end of each week, you’re given a slider for each day to toggle to remote or on-site.
Now, when I was offered this role, it was with the understanding that it would be about a 40/60 split. I was prepared to work Tuesdays and Wednesdays on-site and the rest of the days from home. However, COVID had other ideas and since Washington state – where the offices were located – was under an indoor N95 mask mandate, so the company was letting anyone who could work remotely do so.
When that mandate was lifted, my division’s (Finance) leadership decided to try a one day on-site return to office. As the COVID exposure communications became more than weekly, we were told to only come in if necessary. For me, that’s nearly never, so I’ve been working from downtown Portland, Oregon for most of my history on this assignment…I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been to the office in six months now.
And that’s exactly what I told the industrious stranger from Robert Half-Ass that emailed out of the blue about six weeks ago asking about my remote indicators from my recent timesheets. Well, not the six month part, it was just four-plus back then. This person I’d never heard of before said she appreciated my response and it was just some internal stuff for reporting and such.
Anyway, smash-cut to the not too distant past when the conversation about converting me to a Core employee was happening with the company I was assigned to. The timing was setting up to occur the same week I’d planned to be working from the high desert during the week of my family’s annual trip. I’d committed to the arrangement thinking I’d burn some of my Sick Pay that I’d accrued with Robert Half-Ass by taking a few days off before I transitioned to Core status with the old/new company.
Except…
When I submitted my timesheet for what was my final week of work with Robert Half-Ass, I received an error message from the app that I didn’t have enough Sick Pay to cover the two days I had requested.
<checks app>
I mean, I’m no MIT grad, but I still knew that 8+8 equaled 16 – and that 16 was less than 18, so I was confused. Mind you, I never understood Common Core and wrote it off as nonsense, but was open to the idea that it was valid and the people who tried explaining it to me were all idiot, no savant.
But I digress.
My timesheet was telling me I only had 6 hours of Sick Pay available despite what the app that timesheet lived in was telling me. I checked my last paystub and it said I only had 6 hours, so there was a disconnect somewhere. Then I noticed it said “OR Sick Pay”. That prompted me to say “Fucking Robert Half-Ass!” to my empty home, since I immediately knew that the question I had helpfully answered a few weeks prior had fucked me over. More to the point, the Robert Half-Ass go-getter had done so after making whatever internal updates that she thought necessary. Clearly, I was going to need some help resolving that on Monday, which is a bummer since when I submit my timesheet on Friday, I usually get paid on Tuesday. Wednesday at the latest.
But Monday had other plans for me and my job ate my life that day. Tuesday morning, I got an email from yet another Robert Half-Ass employee I’d never heard of sending me an Urgent Reminder to submit my timesheet. I reply back with the backstory and she tells me she’ll look into it. She gets back to me a little later telling me to call the I9 team so they can figure out if I should be accruing Sick Time based on Oregon or Washington law.
I mean…A) you do it. And, B) as I understand it, I9s are the forms used to record proof of employment eligibility in the United States, not any particular state and therefore shouldn’t have anything to do with what state I work in or whose employment laws I should be following.
But, ok. I call and they say it’ll take 24 hours to get a response. Oh, and also that Sick Pay isn’t portable, so when I move, I lose it. They’ve never heard of merging accrued time from different policies. They remain unimpressed and utterly unconcerned when I stress that I didn’t move, one of their cohorts toggled a switch and changed my work location.
Again, my assignment was to a WA-based company and it was known that the majority of work would be from my home in Oregon when the assignment started. If something needed to be changed, it was because someone set me up wrong from the get-go. All I did was accept an assignment and show up every day.
Definitely, fuck me for that.
Wednesday I get a “Second Urgent Reminder” from the same nitwit, despite my telling her it would be 24 hours before I got an answer from the people she directed me to. When I remind her of this – after the 24 hour window has closed with no follow up – she suggests I delete the Sick Time from my timesheet and she’ll submit a manual timesheet for my Sick Time. She also asks if I’ve called customer service, which provides me with a good stretch for my eyes as they simultaneously bulge out of and roll back in their sockets as I read this.
I tell her I’m not editing my timesheet, because then I have no record of my original document. Plus, I’d be submitting an inaccurate document and attesting that it was accurate by doing so. I tell her that my trust in her outfit is nowhere near strong enough for that level of faith. I can literally see them using my timesheet against me as justification to drop the whole matter.
The customer service people get back to me and are empathetic to my situation and promise to get me some help…as they tell me “No”.
The next day, I’m told again to submit a false document. “Hell, no” is still my answer, but they force my worked hours through the system without client approval so I can get those hours paid before the weekend. Over the next couple of days, I get three more responses from the same customer service mailbox, all from different people. The first is a solid, although phoned in affirmation of the “No” I’d received earlier and the other two are “Super-duper sorry for the delayed response, but it looks like someone else helped you!”
Did they? I seem to have missed the part where someone did something helpful.
I tell the original Urgent Reminder lady that if my Sick Pay isn’t paid or set to be paid on Monday, which would be two weeks late, I’m filing a Wage Claim with the Bureau of Labor and Industry.
Of course, it isn’t resolved and of course Monday also has different plans for me, again. But on Tuesday I am still on radio silence, so I fill out a Wage Claim on the BOLI website and submit screen shots of the different Sick Pay balances and the email thread asking about my work location.
I also forward the BOLI claim confirmation email to the Urgent Reminder lady, the Industrious Half-Asser that changed my work location without telling me and the customer service mailbox.
Feeling petty, I start off with “As promised” and then take the opportunity to remind them of the germane factors in their fuck up. Then I close with something like…well, I’ll throw in a screen shot because I won’t do it justice from memory. Hold please.
I particularly enjoyed the “maybe this will help you find your wallet” part. Like I’m a cartoon mafioso holding someone up by their ankles and shaking change out of their pockets.
Three days pass, nothing. I briefly debated following up with a message pointing out that not even apologizing for the position their internal dumb-fuckery put me in and continuing to carefully avoid admitting any wrong doing whatsoever demonstrates what low-caliber individuals these people are. Successfully, I resist. I know I’d also end up putting something in there about how misguided it is to choose loyalty to an organization that openly demonstrates how little loyalty it had to the mules whose efforts fill its corporate coffers.
Idiots. Remember, American culture is self-service gaslighting…the hell with right or wrong, what can one get away with?
Friday is the day I get a call featured in the picture above. She’s using her “Look how friendly and helpful I’m being!” voice, which I repeatedly remind her I’m not buying.
She promises me that she can get me paid.
…if I will only go in and edit my Sick Pay out of my timesheet.
I flat out ask her why everyone has such a hard-on about my timesheet. Her response is a series of unimpressive sputters and assurances I cannot take to the bank. But if I’ll just do it, she can get a deposit for my Sick Pay set up by the end of the day. She even promises to put it in an email for my records.
I acquiesce, telling her I’ll take her email but I’m also taking screenshots of the before and after on each of the days on my timesheet I’m being made to edit before they will pay me. That oughta partner up nicely with my and her phone logs to give me the comfort to edit the timesheet I’m not ever submitting. The worked hours have already been paid without me submitting the damn thing, but Robert Half-Ass simply cannot pay the Sick Pay unless it’s not recorded on my timesheet.
Fine. Gotta love that logic.
It’s done and our call ends after I implore her to dig deeper into who else this has happened to, because there’s no way I’m the only temp assigned across state lines in a border city like Portland. If it hasn’t happened to someone else yet, it’s just that…it hasn’t happened yet. By the time it comes up, perhaps the employee will have accrued enough time in their new policy to cover a sick day – I’d nearly gotten there, only two weeks away since in either state we accrue 1 hour of Sick Pay for every 30 hours worked.
She told me that was above her pay grade but she’d send it up the ladder. Oh, that inspired confidence. So I reminded her that they weren’t paying me my earned time off without BOLI holding a figurative gun to their head, so I had zero doubts she’d pass anything on to anyone without a figurative gun to her head nor would they do anything about it unless they were forced to.
Sure enough, a few hours later, she sent me that email. You know what she started it with?
“As promised”. The very words I started my email to them with when I confirmed my Wage Claim submission with them. Isn’t that pettiness cute? She quoted me back to me.
In a show of appreciation of that shitty attitude, I’m leaving my Wage Claim open and pursuing penalty pay – which is capped at a cool 100% of the unpaid wages. It won’t hurt them, but it’s the principle.
Someone really should have showed a little professional mortification over this whole shitshow.
Certainly a chat I don’t want brands I value to seek to be involved in, either.
But this is America. We ruin everything.
And as hard as we fight to not beinclusive, except when it comes to money, there are exceptions. Companies in America gotta get everyone’s money – so they’re gonna at least act inclusive.
One of my favorite examples of this is corporate rainbow-washing every June for Pride month. And then the month ends…
It amuses me – this observation, but it doesn’t bother me. Not because I think The Gays, collectively, have become unworthy of anyone’s support or pride (which is true) but because it’s also such an stupid American cultural reality. It’s the End of Christmas Morning Phenomenon: “Is this all I got?”
So, yeah. Complain, please…that you got a spotlight for a full month, you ninnies.
Anyway, then there’s BMW entering into a courtship with what is arguably America’s largest and most diverse subculture. Actually, it might be the unacknowledged dominant culture.
Idiots.
The “sub”culture, not BMW. They might be geniuses.
What are they doing?
Pandering to the group of Americans who ignore the squiggly red line under words they type…because spell-check is wrong, not them.
Those idiots.
How? Just how does a multinational – global, even – manufacturing company target an audience like this?
Believe it or not, it likely didn’t involve anything as spectacular as running head-first at full speed into a wall or ripping whip-its before sitting down to develop content. Very likely, I’d imagine it was rather organic.
Picture it. The setting: HR. Aaand…scene!
That’s it. Can you picture HR without the mental image of the employee it conjures being a ubiquitous Karen?
That’s all it takes. Someone who embraced the rampant misuse of the word “literally” so long that a dictionary gave the fuck up and rewrote its definition to align with the misuse.
You think they’re gonna hire people who would demand a high level of detail from themselves in their work? I’m talking in any department, too, not just in advertising.
I just don’t want you walking away from this post laughing at stupid creatives in stupid corporate America. I want you horrified, chagrined and slightly frightened of how pervasive the problem is.
Oh, you want to actually know what got me going on this? Not that the pic at the top of the post didn’t bury the lede, but…check it:
The caption says “Your BMW Has Our Undivided Attention” – italics are my addition, for emphasis…in case you’re one of them and don’t know it.
Call me crazy, but to me, undivided implies focus. Presumably, that guy is wrist deep in my BMW.
His hands are inside my car.
Where are his eyes?
Where?!? What are his eyes focused on?!?
Not watching what the fuck his hands are doing, that’s where.
So the collateral that BMW sends me to earn my business by demonstrating their attention to the service they provide is a picture of them not providing a commensurate level of attention to the service they provide.
Got it. Yeah.
Don’t mind me. I’m just over here observing shit.
What really bugs me is that I got this in the mail on a Saturday. My day off. Well, the one that overlaps with USPS service.
My day off from running payroll for a laser manufacturing outfit.
That’s five days of me seeing people that manufacture lasers but can’t manage to remember to punch back in from lunch. So I spend a good deal of time each week being surprised lasers work as intended, given the poor performance our employees have at such an entry level job expectation: making sure they get paid accurately for their time by punching a damn time card.
But, hey…if our lasers work on potentially nothing more than dumb luck, maybe that BMW tech will manage to not fuck up my car while giving it what passes for undivided attention while working on it?
Or I’ll pop the hood on Angela one day and find a windshield wiper where there should be a dipstick. Which scenario seems more likely?
Figuratively more likely, by the way. I know a windshield wiper would never literally fit where a dipstick belongs.
atleastihaveafrigginglass 