Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Alright for a Monday

Mostly, I work with nice people. The one co-worker I'm going to pick on now is one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet. And I mean that.

BUT, whenever people ask him how he's doing, he responds, "Alright for a Monday!" and laughs. Because it's funny, see, when you say that on any other day of the week. Right?

He's been using this response consistently for the past few MONTHS. How he doesn't comprehend that it loses its appeal (which was dubious to begin with) after a few short, select uses, I don't know. Normally he has an okay sense of humor. But this ... this verbal twitch isn't even slightly related to humor. It's so far away from actually humorous, it's like if humor were to exist in a parallel universe where Tim Burton is considered normal. It's like humor on Opposite Day. It's something David Brent or Michael Scott might say, to give you a better idea of just how terribly unfunny it has become.

(That's what she said.)

I've been thinking lately of how to take my blog entries and turn these ideas into longer essays, suitable for actual (aka paying and with some basic quality standards) publication. It's turning out to be much harder than I imagined. But I think I might be able to get 2,500+ words of a sort of "day in the life" combining all of the annoying habits of my various co-workers into one day.

And then I'll promptly break out a bottle of wine and drink myself into oblivion, to try and forget how much I hate people. Even nice people with irritating habits.

3 comments:

Jonathan Beckett said...

A similar trait that really gets to me is people who's entire sense of humour is based on television.

Every single joke my brother comes out with is either from a movie or a television programme.

Every story he tells you about something that happened to him or "to somebody he knows" is just a badly distorted version of something he saw on the television, or a movie.

It would be quite a good ruse if he didn't pick on things that are popular, and everybody saw.

Nobody pulls him up for it :(

Amy said...

(1)
Is this co-irker or anyone else at your office a nun?

No?

Then I win. (Or lose, as the case may be.)



(2)
Ken Jennings says: "Do you ever talk in movie quotes? Sometimes I wonder if a quarter of what I say isn’t lifted from movies, consciously or not. . . . Novices might imagine that people who quote movies are zany/annoying “office character” types always rattling off punchlines and taglines. 'Houston, we have a problem!'    'Are you talking to me?'    'You can’t handle the truth!'    In my experience, movie-quoters are a lot more idiosyncratic. The dialogue they repeat isn’t famous. But for some reason (repetition? coincidence?) it’s been particularly memorable to them. And it’s useful in a broad array of social situations."

M. Lubbers said...

Jonathan: Sorry about your brother. That does sound annoying. It reminds me of this time that I was working for this terrible boss. His name was David Brent ... (sorry, couldn't resist;)

Amy: You win and lose. Congrats! I saw that Ken Jennings blog post and *almost* considered joining the forums to post some of the obscure movie quotes that we use. Often from Steve Martin's The Jerk.