Skyespace

Tards At The Water Cooler...
Note: I must stress that this entry in no way depicts the behavior of any actual retards. That would be demeaning, degrading and downright uncouth. However, from time to time I may have need to refer to the those women and men with limited social skills and unfortunate sense of style who seem to permeate the general public...or at least this office. These are the people that I have informally and for lack of a better term, named "tards."

There are a lot of tards in my office. For some reason, this place is lousy with them. Tards in the conference room. Tards at the water cooler. Tards coming and going to and from my cubicle. Sometimes they slouch. Sometimes they smell bad. Sometimes they trap me in to conversations which seems to have no end. Sometimes they talk about the weather. Sometimes they talk about their cats. Sometimes they talk about how their cats like the weather. Always they are trying and difficult to deal with.

So imagine my frustration if you will as I had this exchange with a tard this very morning:

Tard "I gotta question for ya!"

Me (feigning interest) "OK"

Tard "I was looking at this printout and I saw the total at the bottom and I noticed that ... see, if you look right here, there's a number that you can barely see and then it looks like someone wrote over it.."

Me "Yeah..."

Tard "Well, I was wondering and I just want to be sure I'm thinking right here, I was wondering if I am supposed to be looking at the number on top or...????"

Me "Yes, it looks like someone erased something and wrote over it."

Tard "I know so what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to go by the new number or should I add all of this up and see if it's the right total or what?"

Me "No, I think someone just erased an error and wrote over it. "

Tard - blank expression

Me "So that means that they wrote over the old number and the new one is correct."

Tard "Oh OK, you want me to ignore the one they wrote first? Because I can still kinda see it..."

Me (exasperated) "Yes. They erased it because it was wrong. I'd assume that the new number is correct."

Tard "Oh, OK, I just wanted to make sure."

Me "Yes, when someone erases something, please go ahead and assume that they meant to do it."

Tard "Yeah, well like I said, I wanted to make sure they did that on purpose because I could still kinda see the old number..."

Me (through clenched teeth and fake smile) "Well good for you for paying attention!"

Tard (walking away) "I just wanted to MAKE SURE!"

Me "SLLLAAPPP!"

(that's the sound my head makes when I slap it with a box of hanging files).