Ugly as Hell

So today at work I was in a pretty bad mood. It kind of grew out of the situation organically, and it's a case where the multiple running Stray Bullets plot-threads start to intersect and affect each other. To properly tell the tale, however, I need to back up to yesterday.

Yesterday there was a reoccurance of the continuing Cooter vs. Jim feud, wherein Cooter thinks Jim is an arrogant jackass, and Jim thinks Cooter is a worthless slug. There's some truth in both of those views, but I tend to be more sympathetic towards Jim because he's hilarious when he's giving people shit, and I can take a joke and Cooter cannot. It started because Brad was out, therefore causing us to shift around to cover the cell with fewer people. I ended up on bolt-fit, since it's my default position now. Cooter took over gas-block. And Jim took over bolt-lock, which follows me. Not covered was slide-fitting, which comes between gas-block and bolt-fit. And the predictable occured.

Cooter only gas-blocked, which is to say he piled up a bunch on me and didn't do any slides. Bolt-fit, even though I'm really good at it, isn't easy and it can take me a little longer to bolt-fit a troublesome gun than it takes anyone to put a gas-block on. So I had to do my own slides. Now this is a situation where I'm usually the one to jump on Cooter and tell him he's being a lazy, selfish asshole by burying me and not helping out, but since that usually just leads to him freaking out, I didn't get into it ... then.

Despite having to do my own slides, and bolt-fitting alone, I still pulled out the numbers each hour. Sometimes it was by the skin of my teeth, but I did it. Earlier in the day Cooter had already pissed Jim off. Barney asked Jim some question about some stocks, and Cooter being the buttinsky that he is, jumped in and stuck his nose into the situation, and that always drives Jim berserk. Jim has very little Cooter tolerance to start with, so it doesn't take much to push him over that edge. So he was holding off doing any slides because Cooter should be, and Cooter just didn't do any thinking Jim should do some. Meanwhile, I'm getting really pissy. Notice this is never a problem when Brad is gas-blocking; he and I share the slide-fitting based on who's available and such. Cooter, though, is a selfish prick.

By first break I was starting to boil over. Around then Jim started making anti-Cooter snarks to me when I'd bring him a gun. In truth, I kind of instigated that by casting a disgusted eye at the nine or ten gas-blocked guns Cooter had piled up over there, all without slides. So I added some snark to Jim's snarks. Then Cooter came over to me bitching about Jim and his comments, like he always does, and while I usually don't give a shit, that day I cared even less. "Kind of busy here, and also I DON'T CARE." Cooter did start to get the hint that I was in a ripe mood, if not why. But it wasn't until I chewed him out -- "Yeah. I'm over here busting my ass trying to get the numbers, doing two jobs, so you can fucking bury me with guns, just because the two of you can't get along. AWESOME." Shortly after that Cooter did cave in and do some slides. By that point, however, I was determined to remain pissy.

Last night I had a two hour conversation with Dan on a wide-ranging variety of subjects. During my time at My Current Place of Employment, Cooter has sort of been my best friend there by default, even though he annoys the living shit out of me on a regular basis. Having Dan back in circulation has really illustrated to me, though, how much of a punk-ass Cooter really is. Compare the two and Cooter definitely suffers. I think some of those thoughts held over to today because my own tolerance for Cooter was at an all-time low. And I was mean and snippy towards him to a degree unprecedented in my work history -- even Krysten would agree that she got off pretty easy from me in comparison. He could do nothing, absolutely nothing, today that was going to make me happy in the least. He would come over, ask me one of his trademark stupid questions, and I would deconstruct the question to it's anatomic level to the point where he'd throw up his hands and walk away.

Him: "How are the slides going? Are they going ok? I might do some."

Me: "What's the difference? Straighten one and see if it works. What? If I say they aren't going well you're going to not do some slides? Is that why you're asking?" (he starts to get aggravated) "I'm just trying to figure out the point of the question. There must be some point to it, right?" (even more aggravated) "That was why you wanted to know, right? So I could give you an excuse not to slide-fit? Wasn't that the point?" (He walks away)

It was ten hours of that.

It was glorious.