Profile of an Ass Clown

Project A is the "other" project in this location. It is staffed almost completely with emotional defectives. One of them, we'll call him Derek, may be one of the most pathetic individuals I've ever met. He's the one in all of the conversations you've read on here that is super-psyched about things, feels we're a family, is over-complimentary to his co-workers, and does any number of other things that annoy the shit out of normal people.

My favorite thing he does is whine about how bad he's feeling. Just ask how he's doing and you'll get the long, overdramatic sigh followed by the, "Oh...I'm hanging in there." You poor little bitch. Does our pussy hurt today? You may also get a, "I'm doing okay. I wish I was doing better, but I'm not." Or you'll get a short story about how his friends are dying or he has chest pains or whatever. Talking to him is draining and depressing. It sucks the life out of you.

The other programmer on this project spent the better part of a year listening to this shit. As such, he's developed a strong allergic reaction to it. I think it may cause him physical pain to hear it. Ever the team player, I thought it'd be nice to let him know that he too should "hang in there" much like Derek. That's when I started a little contest with myself to see how many syrupy feel-good bullshit wallpapers I could send him.

It started a simple picture and an email subject line of, "You hang in there, buddy":


Followed by the more complete:


I think I sent him three or four more cat pictures over the next week. I'm not sure what it is about cat owners that make them want to torture their pets, but I'm sure glad they do. After that I petered out a bit and had one last hurrah with a non-cat picture:


Last week I got to thinking that it's a shame that all this beautiful Derek content can only be included as background information in most of the posts. Maybe I'll start doing a weekly top 5 list of the generally idiotic and annoying things he's allowed to spew forth from his mouth.