The Deep Six: The Most Annoying Traits In Your Co-Workers, Part Two #30 – #25

EDITOR’S NOTE:  The Unknown Blogger has made several appearances here at Dubsism, and this won’t be the last.  He has finally agreed to be a regular contributor here even though he left the world of professional sports journalism a few years back vowing never to return. 

It’s OK because this blog is anything but professional. 

This is a six-part installment of “The Deep Six” because the The Unknown Blogger has been in the American workforce long enough to have plenty of opinions (36 of them to be exact) on the people you find in it.  You can see the other installments here:

• Part One
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Part Five
• Part Six

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Most of us have jobs, which means unless you are the re-incarnation of Mahatma Fucking Gandhi, we all have at least one co-worker we’d like to drown in a toilet stall. If you’re like me, you might just have more than one.  The reasons why we don’t like them are as numerous as those annoying-ass people themselves.  Let’s be honest. common decency and civility got euthanized in this country decades ago.  Maybe I shouldn’t use that term.  “Euthanize” sounds like there was a gentleness in it’s death; what we collectively did to common decency and civility made the St. Valentine’s Massacre look like it was preceded by a candlelight dinner with wine and roses.

Having said that, I’m here to break down the various types of co-workers we can all agree need to be lined up against a wall in front of a belt-fed machine gun, but to offer the age old test…if you look through this list and don’t see one of the types mentioned, consider the possibility it may very be you.

30) The “Planet-Saver“

Every office has at least one of these dipshits.  This is the person who gives you the “death-stare” if you toss a soda can the trash. They usually smell like piss because they use those worthless “natural” laundry detergents.  They love to chastise you for owning a car which is actually practical and enjoyable to drive, all while completely ignoring the fact the battery-pack in their electric-hybrid hippie-fag-mobile has enough heavy metals in it to kill every fish in Lake Michigan.

29) The “Topper“

Younger folks call this the “Cool Story Bro” guy.  No matter what you do, this person always plays the “one-up” game. No matter the topic, you can goddamn guarantee “The Topper” can top it…and they’ll be more than happy to tell you about it. If you say you increased sales by 30%, “The Topper” will say they had a 40% jump last quarter.  “Toppers” are almost always monuments to insecurity, which is why they will lie to “top” anything.  More often than not, the only thing they lead anybody in is the number of dudes sweating up the sheets with their wife.

28) The “Underminer“

Underminers are almost always women, because women by nature pull that “passive-aggressive” shit, which is the signature of the classic “underminer.” You women getting pissed at this accusation know exactly what I’m talking about. You women love to feign friendship only to stab somebody in the back the minute they are out of the room. If I hear a story about somebody who stole an idea from a co-worker and presented it as their own, 2 times out of 3 it was a woman who did it. The upside is “Underminers” are always paranoid, even if you aren’t out to get them.  That makes them exceptionally easy to fuck with.

27) The Oppressed Minority

NOTE: I deferred to J-Dub on this one since he’s black, which means he can get way with saying shit like this.

Rip down all the statues you want, people.  All you’re doing is a bunch of symbolic bullshit that won’t change anything. Neither will changing the face on a box or pancake mix. Believe me, that old saw about “it’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand” is not only total bullshit, it actually hides the key to getting your message across. Telling white people to “just listen” is a waste of time because they’ve fucking been listening for fifty years. There’s some things in play that your “white people don’t understand” mentality needs to get a grip on.

First, know your audience because the first rule of effective communication is understanding that it isn’t about what you say, it’s about what your target hears. If you want to get something across  to white people, now is EXACTLY the fucking time, because aren’t ever going to be any more willing to listen.  But you have to have something to say…it works like this.  What you’re broadcasting now is the same stuff you’ve been spouting for fifty-plus years.  The fact you’ve been sending the same message for that long and aren’t happy with the results should tell you something.

Second, understand that you can’t force people to listen to you, and trying to do so has the exact opposite effect.  Again, the iron isn’t going get any hotter for you to strike than it is right fucking now. But you’re wasting the opportunity because you’re sticking to a message which is not getting across. Instead of examining the message of the method of transmission, you’re simply blaming the audience.  That’s a recipe for failure.

Blaming the target of the message is a bad strategy because not only of what I just said, but because it’s already a proven loser. I tried warning you all four years ago that Trump was going win the election because the American middle class is tired of getting blamed for a bunch of stuff they didn’t have anything to do with.  All you’re doing now is doubling down on that strategy, and it will be a loser again. The reason is two-fold.

First, understand there is nobody alive today who was causally effected by or morally responsible for slavery. So, by centering the discussion on something which was banned in this country over 150 years ago means people hear you continuing to yell about a problem which no longer exists.  Bracing that with sloganeering like “systemic racism” and “white supremacy” in also ineffective, because those terms have no specific definition; therefore no specific actions can be taken to solve them.

Right now, you’re asking what the fuck does this socio-political treatise on the current American condition have to do with annoying people in your office?  Because to get your message across to the middle-class American office worker, you have to present things to them in terms they see everyday and can understand.  In other words, if you can see things from perspectives other than your own…the exact crippling limitation in the “it’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand” mentality…you win.

It’s “super-power” kind of stuff…here’s a “leg up” on getting it. You can’t really blame white people for some of the perceptions they have of us because we’ve both tolerated “The Oppressed Minority” for far too long. There’s no better example of than the American office space.

White people will never understand this, because they’ve never been in this position.  There’s nothing worse than being the “other black people” in an office.  If there are more than three black people in your office where there’s at least 50 total people, one of those blacks will be “The Oppressed Minority.”

Don’t even act like you don’t know who I’m talking about.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, this is the person who cries “racism” for EVERYTHING. It’s one thing to be the only black person at your job.  It’s something else to be that black person when you are very light-skinned.

But it’s an entirely different thing to be the light-skinned “other” black person when there’s an “oppressed minority.” That’s because white people can’t figure out those of us who are racially-ambiguous.

See, it was easy with President Obama; despite being bi-racial, he looks black.  But he grew up around white people, so he got to straddle the fence until he had to made a political decision. If you move the slider toward the darker end of the spectrum, you get “Ice Cube,” who was clearly black.

The Cube was a founding father of “gangsta rap,” and is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Disney, which is about as white as you can get. Move the slider the other way, and you get “Ice-T,” who pioneered the fusion between “gangsta-rap” and “metal” with 1992’s “Cop Killa” by Body Count.  Ice-T is lighter-skinned than almost every white person in Florida, but he acted “black” enough to eliminate any confusion.

No matter which way you slide the bar, the common theme here is decisions. “Ice Cube” chose to go from N.W.A. to Disney. “Ice Cube” chose to go from “Cop Killa” to playing a detective on a network TV franchise. I chose a career in management and to wear $150 Ralph Lauren dress shirts…and “The Oppressed Minority” chose to be an embarrassing pain-in-the-ass.

Here’s why that matters now more than ever. As previously mentioned, “The Oppressed Minority” (“TOM”) specializes in pointing the finger at “Whitey” for EVERYTHING.  That does two things. Not only does that create a “boy who cried wolf” problem, but it creates a “de-sensitization” issue.  “TOM” conflates any perceived slight automatically into a “black/white” issue, even the ones which clearly have nothing to do with race.  “TOM,” you create your own credibility problem when you tell everybody you got called into the HR office purely because you’re black when everybody knows you were a hour late getting to work three times last week.  Nobody buys that your boss dropped the “N-Bomb” on you when he asked why your report was two days late; doing so is one of the quickest ways to get fired in corporate America.

Here’s a tip for you, “TOM”. Go check out a “recipe” page on Pinterest.  Notice how a recipe is formatted.  It has a clearly-defined topic, definitive step-by-step instructions, and specific ingredients in quantified amounts.  The overwhelming number of Pinterest users are white, which means large numbers of white people are pre-conditioned to follow instructions to achieve a desired outcome.  When it comes to race relations in America, you’re never going to a better time for white people wanting to “fix” things.  But you’re blowing the “goldenest” of golden opportunities because you’re sticking to what has been proven to be losing strategy.

Here’s the bottom line,”TOM.” I’m not saying there aren’t problems we as a nation need to address. But what you’re doing isn’t working. It hasn’t worked in the past fifty years, and it isn’t going to to work in the next fifty.  So try a new approach and stop being such an asshole at work.  Otherwise, you won’t be working either.

REMINDER: That’s was purely J-Dub’s opinion, so make sure your hate-mail is addressed properly.  Besides, I don’t believe in racism…I hate everybody. 

26)”Born-Again”

Contrary to popular belief, not all Christians are racist, but there’s nothing worse than the “Born-Again” types. All you need to know about “Born-Again” Christians is they firmly believe the answer to everything in the Bible, despite the fact we live in the information age and the Bible has like 200 different versions, some of which directly contradict each other.

No…wait. This applies to all religions. They’re all fucked in the head.  It doesn’t matter what they are; the more devout the more “humor-impaired” they are. None of them can take a fucking joke.  I know many people who will give some high-minded load of shit about how their faith fills a “hole in their soul,” but that hole must exist where their senses of humor were ripped out of them.

This is why we need a religion whose sacred book is like the wrappers on Laffy Taffy…”Why wasn’t Jesus very good at hockey? Because he was always getting nailed into the boards.”  Maybe if these asswipes could laugh at something once in while, they wouldn’t always have K-GOD on the radio in their cubicle.

25) “Karōshi”

Leave it to the fucking Japanese to have a word which literally means “working yourself to death.” What else would you expect from the same people who brought you the kamikaze pilot, disemboweling yourself for unpaid parking tickets, and a weird version of prostitution which is really a combination of dinner theater and sex with women made up to look like Gene Simmons’ mother.

As you would expect, the usual “karōshi” deaths in America are usually heart attacks and strokes because nobody ever intended you to work 275 hours a week. As hard as it may be to believe, “Mr. Karōshi” is even more annoying that the lump who doesn’t give a fuck because after a while, your boss starts wondering why all of you can’t be more like “Mr. Karōshi.”

These are the people who volunteer for projects and were the same fucking people who did “extra-credit” shit in high school. They work so hard most people get exhausted just watching them.  The problem is that in terms of accomplishment, they never seem to get anywhere.  Sure, they get a lot of “busy-work” done, but they never get promoted. That’s because for all the bullshit your boss gives you to be more like “Mr. Karōshi,”, he’s never going to move him up the food-chain because the last thing he wants is his boss doing the same thing to him.  So while “Mr. Karōshi”runs himself to death on the corporate hamster-wheel, he’s always going to be around for your boss to hold against you.

Oh, and don’t get too happy when this fuckface finally dies; there’s a never-ending supply…and I’m convinced some of them are re-incarnated as the “Born Again” assholes.

As the “Countdown King” Casey Kasem would tell you, only 24 to go to get to #1…stay tuned.

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