Rant for Today

One of the characters played by Rick Fulcher in the relatively obscure 2006 BBC series Snuff Box was a bowler-hatted, umbrella wielding city gent type who only ever uttered one word: "Fuck".  This past week or so, I've increasingly found myself wanting to follow his example.  Various events over the past few days have just gone to confirm that at 90% of the people I'm forced by life to deal with are complete arseholes.  I'm tired of their rudeness.  I'm tired of being talked over, at, through, everything except being talked to.  I'm tired of them not liking the answers I give them and getting huffy about it - if you don't like the answer, don't ask the question, I mean, you were the one who brought up the subject in the first place, not me!  I'm tired of always being the 'bad guy' in office interactions, no matter how many times I'm clearly in the right.  Actually, that's something that really irks me - the fact that, in any given environment, there is always someone who will always be regarded as a saint, regardless of how many times they foul up and other people have to sort out their mess, whilst there are some of us who will always be sinners.  It doesn't matter how many times you resolve difficult situations, no matter how well you've met your targets, somehow the 'saint' will get to take credit for it all.  Obviously, if you say anything against the 'saint', or refuse to help them evade their responsibilities whilst still appearing virtuous, you'll be the devil incarnate.  Fuck.

I'm also tired of people randomly accosting me in the pub to tell me their latest cracked conspiracy theory about what happened to Flight MH370.  Guess what?  I don't care!  (About their theories, obviously - the loss of the people on the flight is clearly a tragedy).  Mind you, worse was to come in this particular encounter.  As if it wasn't bad enough that said individual thought it was OK to regale me with their lunacy simply because they live a few doors down from me, they then did many of non-conversational things I railed about earlier.  Namely that, on the pretext of wanting to engage in conversation, they talked over, at and through me, ignoring any attempt I made at actually conversing.  So I just stopped trying and switched off whilst they prattled on and did their best to ruin my evening.  I woke up when they started telling me something that revealed them as a spectacular hypocrite.  Now, we're all hypocrites to one degree or another, (I frequently rage about the evils of Google yet still host this blog on the Blogger platform which they own, for instance), but generally it concerns pretty trivial things.  However, in this case, it was personal.  To explain why, we have to rewind a couple of years, when I was on strike and standing on a picket line.  This particular individual, who, you will recall, is one of my neighbours, walked past, but didn't have the nerve to say anything but, hours later, accosted me in the street, denouncing myself and my colleagues for damaging the economy and all the usual reactionary bollocks.  Anyway, in between conspiracy theories in the pub the other day, he proudly told me of how he had managed to get a sick note from his doctor, which he was going to use to pull a 'sickie' and go off on holiday!  So, going on strike to try and protect jobs and pay, (for which I lost a days pay) is bad, but defrauding your employer of sick pay to go on holiday is OK, it seems.  Fuck!