Lately I’ve been trying to understand the nuances of office politics, and man, I’m telling you this is some messed up jojo that can seriously mess with your mojo. I have a supervisor that I’ve talked about before under different names, but for today I’ll refer to him as Sergeant Assfart. Sgt. Assfart has proven himself to be one of, no, scratch that, THE worst supervisor I have ever had. Our section is in shambles now because of his incompetence and laziness, and as a result it got me thinking about what course of action we should all take to at least minimize the damage he’s been causing.

One option would be to simply do nothing, and maybe even scale back on our job performance so our section REALLY implodes. The idea here is that the worse things get, the more likely the powers that be would notice and boot Assfart outta here. In fact this was more or less the approach we adopted, but as our section gradually continued to deteriorate over the months, nobody so much as batted an eye. I shouldn’t have been surprised though, I mean this is the same department that let a man die under their watch while they were all too busy scratching their balls.

But anyway, the second option would be to take the initiative and clean up the section on our own, or more accurately, MY own. The problem with this approach though is that the more work you do, the more they seem to expect of you. It also basically entailed doing the supervisor’s work for him, and worst yet, if things started to improve, guess who’s gonna take credit for it? I have to admit I understood how my coworkers felt. They didn’t want to go that extra mile because they didn’t want to do ANYTHING if it wound up making our supervisor look good. But our current approach wasn’t doing much either, and now our morale has sunk to the lowest it’s ever been since I started working here.

So for today, I finally thought, “Screw this,” and decided to clean up a few things. First up, one of our computer desks had been plagued with mouse droppings that were falling from the ceiling for months now. We kept waiting for FEMA to show up and quarantine the area, but I think our expectations turned out to be a little too high. We kept pleading, asking, begging Assfart and anyone else who’d listen to do something, ANYTHING to clean out the area. Nothing.

I took a look at the desk, went “hmmmm,” then went out and bought some extension cables. Came back and ripped out the phone, PC and monitor, then cleaned up a new desk and placed them all there. Then I hooked up the extended cables and wrapped it around the floor and under the cubicles so they remained out of sight. It took a couple of hours, but in the end I managed to set up a fresh new desk nice and far enough away from where the mouse poo were coming from. Then I printed up a big sign that said “WARNING: MOUSE DROPPINGS ZONE” and taped it on the wall next to the old desk. That might cheese off the Assfartster, but too bad.

I stepped back to inspect my work and sighed happily. This was the first time in a long time that I ever felt a sense of real accomplishment, but there was still plenty more left to be done. Next up, there are literally stacks of old computers taking up space in our section because our esteemed boss can’t be bothered to keep calling ISD (Information Systems Division) so they can pick up this crap. Our area looks like a junkyard for IBM for crying out loud, but incredibly, these old computers have been lying around here for a YEAR now. ????? So, I plan to call ISD, and call, and call, and call, then call them at home and on weekends, and if that doesn’t work, then I show up in person, in my underwear, where I will proceed to stalk them until they get the message.

And once that’s over with, then I’m gonna have a little fun. I’m planning to hit the local gag shop and buy up some seriously nasty items I’ll be using on our beloved supervisor. If he’s gonna stick around, then I might as well have some fun tormenting him till the cows come home.

“We’re getting new computers!” Mick rubbed his hands together, barely able to contain his boyish glee.

“It’s about fricking time,” I said. We had been due for a major revamp of our network for the longest time now. In fact we were still using terminals that were older than me for our work here. The new network though promised to bring us brand spankin’ new computers, consolidate all our antiquated databases, and eliminate at least half of our workload. It was the kind of thing we could have only dreamt about, but it looked like it was finally going to become reality.

Several tech guys showed up with cables, and one of them discussed the new setup with Mick.

“Yeah we’re gonna replace these two terminals here, should happen in a couple of weeks or so.”

“Don’t forget we need an extra computer too. We have five guys here and four computers. That’s just not gonna work.”

The tech guy just ignored me and continued chatting with Mick. I seem to be getting a lot of that lately. Am I dead or something?

The tech guys started removing shingles to wire some cables through in preparation for our upgrade. One of them removed a shingle over the desk behind me….

And a flood of mouse droppings came pouring down.

“Sh–!!!”

It was everywhere. On our fax machine, the computer, court papers, the keyboard… just… everywhere.

We had a problem with this before, and basically nothing had been done about it. But now we were approaching critical mass. I mean seriously, does someone need to drop dead from mice poisoning here before people start to give a flying leap?

What truly depressed me though was the look on my coworkers’ faces. This look of defeatism, the sad reality that nothing they said would ever make a difference. They just stood there, shrugging their shoulders while the sky rained its pellet sized crap on us. Their tired eyes revealed virtually no will to fight.

Screw that. These bastards are gonna get a war from me. Let the poo fly, cuz it… is… ON.