I was all set to post in the 3rd person about how, just a few minutes ago, the security guard silently sidled up to me at the vending machine and then cornered me for 5 minutes or so with tales of how to reset each individual machine in the event of a power outage and/or dollar bill changer jam. Funny and creepy all at once!

But then I got back to my desk and experienced reason #138,216 why the people here frustrate the living bejeezus out of me.

If you’ve been calling me for years to ask me to write reports, you probabky have a pretty good idea by now which ones are easy and which ones are hard. When you’re calling with a request for the hard ones, especially the hard ones which, because they’re destined for the desk of some executive, need to be started immediately, don’t play the whole “is this going to be too hard? Is this going to take a while? I feel soooo bad!” game with me.

Don’t ask for something ridiculous and then query me over whether or not your request is ridiculous in the first place. It is. You know it is. Even if I tell you that your request is a pain and will inconvenience me and will preclude me from my already existing to-do list, guess what? You’re still going to ask for it anyway. You are not, in any way, going to take it easy on me and we both know it. So stop with the need for validation. Stop with the “I’m surprised you answer the phone, you must think I’m the biiiigest pain”. Yeah, I do. But you’re not joking, you’re not being folksy, you’re not actually concerned about my schedule or workload. You think that I’m annoyed by you, with you, about you.

I am.

You’re looking for me to coddle you, to tell you that it’s all going to be ok. Well, I’m not going to do that. You don’t get to hit me with the hammer and then expect me to tell you that it was ok, that i really needed to be hit.

Just. Stop.