20 December 2005

This Friday is my last day of work at my present employer. While I am still annoyed that my managers told me that they could not grant my request for unpaid time off to travel to Tampa for the Outback Bowl, I have decided that I can effectively assuage my feelings of resentment by doing absolutely nothing, and I don't mean "by doing absolutely nothing about the feelings" so much as "by doing absolutely nothing." As a matter of personal habit and pride, I am usually not so unscrupulous; to the contrary, my ethic typically commands an aura of the opposite of ill repute. This week, however, I am further pushed into the world of iniquity because my direct manager has already said her good-bye as of last Thursday. Today, the director of the department and the smarmy "I-used-to-be-part-of-the-team-but-now-I'm-a-manager" manager are leaving for the rest of the week. This leaves the department with only one manager, and she is the biggest pushover/confrontation phobic. I should emphasize "biggest" as well, for this quite corpulent woman has lost one hundred pounds on two separate occasions. Fortunately for the missing pounds, she found them. I fear that someday she might become so bulbous that voice recognition software will be her only hope.

Upon a brief review of what I just wrote, I am aghast at my own meanness. You should all know that I was once much less mean--I was the kid that the teachers would intentionally seat next to the pariahs because I would neither tease nor fight and could have been a positive role model. Perhaps I lost my sense of smell when I was relegated to playing the part of a friend to the persona non grata who was an outcast for lacking any resemblance of personal hygiene. But I digress.

As I was saying, my last day is Friday. I need to remember a box. That's pretty much the point of this message.



12 December 2005

God Bless Us, Every One.

This past Friday, I was out of the office, consequently missing out on the annual company e-card sent to our customers. When I arrived in the office today, I received an email with a list of compiled comments about the e-card, and some of them are priceless. The company message read as follows. "Your friends at [company name] send their best wishes for a relaxing holiday season." Apparently, the O'Reilly crowd hates my company, and for once, albeit for different reasons, I agree with the O'Reilly crowd. Here are a few of the responses.

Thanks and the same to you.........but what happened to Merry Christmas? Merry Christmas to you!

This one is pretty funny, really. Our company's customers are extremely diverse--in any given week, I make phone calls to India, the UK, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and, of course the U.S., and because my company deals with internet techologies, many of our customers are, in fact, Indian. Except for the surreal Christmas decorations and singing Pere Noel in the Indian restaurant at which I dined in Montreal, I'm not familiar with the popularity of Christmas among Indians.


I don't know about you but I don't celebrate a "Holiday" I celebrate Christmas. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Your link does not appear to be working. It hung my machine several times.

I have no idea what "hanging my machine" means.

Thanks a lot. Have a great holyday season every body..
Now, that one could have been vomitous, if I didn't suspect that it was a simple spelling error from someone named Viswanath.


And for my favorite....


Thank you for the Happy Holiday greetings. I in turn wish you a very Merry Christmas! This is the time that Christians around the world celebrate the birth of Jesus. It is his birthday party. For Christians I encourage them to celebrate the "real" reason for the season. For non-Christians I ask you respect this celebration for what it is. It is not my wish to offend those that do not share my belief but at the same time I ask you not to offend me by changing the reason for this season.

I assure you I try to honor your beliefs as I honor your right to have those beliefs. If you are a Christian I encourage not to be swayed into being politically correct to the 20% that do not believe in Jesus at the expense of the 80% that do believe in him.

Merry Christmas! Remember the reason for the season.

Good god, I hate Bill O'Reilly.