I've not complained for a while about people I work with, as I have been removed from the general loop o' idiocy and dumbassery for the most part. However, we have a new god to add to the pantheon this morning... this one's been a while in the making so the "ARGH" goes on and on…so I'll try to put it in parts as to not raise your (read: my) blood pressure too much at a time.
I give you Captain Compensation. His ass is scrunched up so tight that his voice changes. He is 5'4" about 115 pounds, early 60s. Misogynistic, and is doubly irritated by women in power positions at work (exacerbated by the fact that all his bosses are women): his boss (Queen Bee…who can't stand him), in this particular project, me (who can't stand him), and High Goddess (who also can't stand him)…see a pattern? Additionally, he is the most change averse person I've ever seen in my life. …and to top it all off, during the non-working hours, he and his wife ride Harleys. Can you get the visual?
A growth-stunted asshat on a bike. SUH-WEET.
I guess I should call him Dr. Cap'n, since he has a PhD., but nah. No one around here calls him doctor anything. He doesn't deserve it. That REALLY gets under his skin. Maybe he really doesn't have a problem with women in general…maybe it's just women that don't kneel in respect for his greater intellectual gifts. Hmm…thought for another day.
Most of my gentle readers (all two of you) know that I do graphic design and publication layout. Usually it's a pretty glam job since I get to do a bunch of stuff that around 100K people read all the time, and when that's done, I get to do nifty new graphic designs for existing documents, which is what I really like to do, but the flip side of the coin is that the rest of my time is taken up by crap…such as certificates, covers, etc. The stuff that is notoriously easy to lay out, but the editor (who is another post altogether) goes ape over.
Last month, Cap'n and I had a run-in that escalated into a skirmish, then into an all-out passive-aggressive war. The whole thing started because Cap'n is lazy. He will go to any extent to not have to actually do work while attending work. Queen Bee has on several occasions overridden his negative commentary about conferences, etc. that should be his sole domain (He has no underlings either…not even a secretary, so he considers himself overworked and refuses to do ANYTHING new), including a particularly heinous brochure about graduation requirements that he has had published since Christ was born but never changed the way it looked.
Well, over the years there have been more and more requirements to cram onto a legal-size piece of paper. This year, many laws changed, so I told him that (a) we were going to make it more user friendly to all the audiences that use it, not just the school administrators and (b) the first step to that would be to change it to 11x17 size and make it in color. He adamantly refused (walked out of the meeting in my office…) until I took it to his boss the way he wanted it:
After putting all the new requirements in it, on a legal-size piece of paper, the text was in a 5 point size font. (Yes, you did read that right. 5.) Cap'n saw no problem with this (could he see it at all?!?), so I took the new 11 x 17 version (with 11 point font J) to Queen Bee with a note on the small one that if we cut the point size to 4.5, we would have enough room in the corner to put in a LensCrafters coupon for a magnifying glass.She was amused, and agreed with me that it was getting beyond ridiculous.
About this point, Cap'n began to closely resemble a fish.
Clarinazi, 1
Captain Compensation, 0
…to be continued
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