Saturday, September 13, 2008

Rule of personalities on the workplace

In the interest of saving the Professor's sanity, I am doing the one-time favor (note: one time only) of posting after reading a plea. Moreover, I am posting a related item on sanity and the insane on the workplace. The Professor better appreciate that I am taking time off from knitting coasters to write this up.

After having worked at various companies over a decade (work experience can be rather limited for us dimwits who spent our youth and money too long at school), I have decided that there is not a single company of any size without a token psycho. So, if there is a company with only two persons, without a doubt, one person will suffer from serious behavioral issues and inflict it on the other person. Having worked in companies and departments of various sizes, it is a common variable to all workplaces.

Why does this occur? Even though I have not made an extensive study, I will make a groundbreaking hypothesis which will lay the groundwork for future studies that will earn psychologists and psychiatrists the Nobel Prize if they learn how to utilize the internet to read random rants and raves of the common layperson and thus to propel the study of the insane. My groundbreaking hypothesis of the insane at work has two parts:

1) Individuals often consider the workplace as their small tiny pool of influence and therefore consider the workplace as the world which they shall conquer and therefore become a petty tyrant.

2) As the workplace can be compared to a dysfunctional family (as one old friend pointed out to me, it is the place where we spend the most amount of our waking hours), certain individuals behave as though the workplace is their home. Thus, they become overly comfortable and start acting out as they would towards their family.

These individuals are objects of curiosity and occasional violence. One must treat them with due care, not necessarily with kid gloves but more with the thick gloves that bear tamers use.

Of course, the most notorious of violent behavior on the workplace is the postal office, hence the common term "going postal." Going postal is commonly believed to be a result of too much stamp licking by postal workers. For many years, Americans believed that there was LSD laced with the glue used on stamps that caused postal workers to go...well, postal. This erroneous belief led to the massive Rush on Stamps of 2004. Americans everywhere bought stamps and started licking them, thinking that they would get a cheap rush.

Unfortunately, this led to a shortage of stamps and a new "market will bear" pricing mentality by the United States Post Office, with stamp prices being repriced at $10.25 each. Thankfully, Americans, after much licking without any effect except for sticky tongues and stamps getting stuck to all their clothes, furniture, and their furry pets (the worst incidence of such was the negligent stamp licking owners of Pollyanna parrot who stuck the licked stamps on their Pollyanna's beak, effectively shutting her poor beak and leading to her slow death by starvation while her LSD/stamp obsessed owners didn't even realize that she had not chirped "Pollyanna wants a cracker" in twenty days; as a memorial of the cruelty suffered by American pets everywhere during this period, the US Postal Office erected a Pollyanna parrot statue outside their central DC headquarters with an eternal looping recording of "Pollyanna wants a cracker"), began to realize that LSD was not laced with the glue used on stamps. Instead, they had to arrive at the conclusion that given the incidence of mad people in America, a certain ratio also had to work at the post office. While stamp prices never dropped back down to the 2003 price, we can all now send letters for a reasonable price again.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is too LSD in stamp glue. I don't know where the h;keck you get your factes from, Postillion, but you need to get them staihnt.

xbasket said...

Once they tie the smart chip in driver's licenses to blog URLs, it's going to feel like LSD 24-7. Synthesize that!

Anonymous said...

xbasket, gratuitous combativeness is an earmark of an unresolved workweek. Eat M&M's.

King of Balls said...

I am the King of balls. I work for David Foster Wallace, in the footnote division. Dave is not psycho. I am not psycho. I am the King of balls and I have trashed your theory. I have broken the rule of personalities on the workplace. I am the King of balls.

SJ said...

You people have no appreciation of the high art of my writing. I am as good as Jhumpa Lahiri, even better. Sniff.

Anonymous said...

Oh, go bite yourself, Postillion.

Professor Marvel said...

Postillion, do not bite yourself. Pat yourself on the back. You saved the blog.

Professor Marvel said...

When you have a chance, Postillion, please post the DSM-V criteria for token psycho, workplace type. Or, just overnight the bar napkin they're scribbled on to The Professor, in care of the Workshop.

Or ... that reminds me. Thank you again for agreeing to host the first installment of Professor Marvel's Mobile Workshop next month. The Professor is excited.

Professor Marvel said...

And I know you're excited too.

Anonymous said...

We're all excited!

Anonymous said...

Prepositions are tricky.

Anonymous said...

King of balls, your "not-psycho" employer hanged himself the day before you commented that he was not psycho. I agree that it's not necessarily psycho to kill yourself, but ... goddamn this is sad.

If we can learn the time of his death we can discern whether or not it was him or his ghost who put you in charge of footnotes. There are different implications depending on which of those things are true, but either way, you now have a huge responsibility to DFW and to the world upon your shoulders.

I say this as the only other person, to my knowledge, who has participated in the Workshop from the afterlife.

I hope you understand the seriousness of this, King of Balls. I've seen you develop, intellectually and spiritually, during your brief time at the workshop, but I think it could go any way for you. You are always at risk for just going back and being, like, "I'm the king of balls." While repetition plays an interesting role in fiction, I just don't see that being enough for you to propel the DFW legacy into the future.

The legacy, the responsibility, is in your hands, no matter what I say. Now is the time, King of Balls. Only the King of Balls could do at this moment what it takes to make the death of David Foster Wallace a transformative experience for humanity, instead of simply a tragic and needless loss.

Steady yourself, King of Balls. Get in the ready position. I'll be here for you if you need me, but ultimately, you are on your own.

Peace, love, empathy

Kurt Cobain