So, I took the last 3 days off (used vacation days). Why?

All 3 days have some sort of Holiday Potluck/Gift Exchange/Social Gathering. Well, all 3 days have some type of social gathering/mingling thing. And let me say, I hate that stuff. I would rather code for 4 hours than do 30 minutes of social mingling. I would rather work overtime on Friday night than mingle with people I never talk to or people I’m never going to talk to again. I hate the idea that corporations or departments want everyone to be friends. To force them. I don’t understand why they don’t get that we’re merely co-workers. Any friendship being created should be natural and not forced.

I guess I just hate mingling with people, people that I don’t know, people that I wouldn’t talk to outside of work. I’m paid to develop, not to talk. If I wanted to be social, I would have been….I dunno, but not a developer. Granted, this is a very…extreme point of view of social recluse (me).

I do social things with non-friends (read: coworkers) sometimes. And they’re okay. So these gatherings aren’t the only reason I took these days off.

The other reason is: gift exchanges.

Now, I’m the type of person that….well, remembers when I’ve been wronged. I remember if someone has pissed me off, I rarely forget stuff like that. I’m stubborn and I hold a grudge forever. It’s not mature, it’s not rational, but it’s me.

I remember when I was in art class in elementary school. I had brought in a Mega Man Nintendo Power and was using it for artistic reference. My friend decided to take his exact-o knife and cut a 0.5cm cut on one of the pages. For what reason, I could only fathom. Idiocy comes to mind. But the result was clear: I was furious. You let someone touch your stuff and they’re idiots, they don’t care what happens to it, it’s not their stuff. Common courtesy is something the average person lacks, imo.

When I was in highschool, I had just purchased a brand new Garfield book. This dude spilt a can of Sprite all over the book (I had the book less than 1 hour!) and all the pages got wrinkly and wavey. He didn’t apologize or anything, he just insisted: “It’s alright”. Well, yes, I could still read it…but the pages were all wrinkled and wobbly when they dried. The book, which was new when I got it, was no longer new because of someone’s accident. But y’know accidents happen, it’s the lack of apologizing and admitting that bothers me. What is “alright” to them is not alright to me.

When I was in University, I had accidentally thrown out my credit card in my garbage. My mother, every Wednesday night, collected all the garbage in the house and put it in a big black garbage bag. Being Wednesday, she had done it, and I was unaware my credit card had mixed in with all the garbage. Realizing my mistake later that night, I went to the garbage bag only to see my credit card cut up into slices. Confused, I confronted my mom asking: “Why did you cut up my credit card?!”. She said “Well, you were throwing it away so I thought I should cut it up”. Fair enough. I asked “If you were going to cut it up, couldn’t you have asked me about it before cutting it? Maybe check the date on the card, check that it hadn’t expired yet”. She replied with “I did check the date, the card was expired”. Except….you know what, the card wasn’t expired. She read the date and didn’t do the math or the logic or whatever it is that your brain does to determine if a date is in the past or future. She just…man, she didn’t think. She saw the credit card in the trash and rather than simply ask me
a) Did you mean to throw your credit card out?
or
b) Did you want me to cut this credit card up?
she just did it. So I had to get a new credit card…
Not only that, but why was she going through my trash in the first place?! (again, something my mom did that really pissed me off).

It bothers the fuck out of me when shit happens and affects me, which isn’t my fault, but because people don’t
a) think (because they’re idiots)
b) care (because what’s not theirs doesn’t matter to them)
Whatever retarded karma or whatever that is really bothers me, that someone’s ridiculously avoidable mistake or error in judgement or idiocy could negatively affect my life.

Okay. Relax. I went off track. I will write more on this later (it’s actually a post I’ve had in my drafts for a while now).

Getting back to: I remember when I’m wronged and gift exchanges.

Last year, in my department gift exchange, I got a terrible gift. I mean, there’s alcohol, that’s whatever. There’s tons of that. There’s some other stuff that
a) has a christmas theme
b) is related to food, can be used around the house (a bowl or a sushi set).
Well, last year, I got the most useless gift ever.

A Tire Gauge.

This one:

Definitely the worst gift for a number of reasons:
1. Who the Fuck NEEDS a Tire Gauge?
2. Who the Fuck WANTS a Tire Gauge?
3. IT’S A FUCKING TIRE GAUGE

Needless to say, I got the gift, which nobody wanted to trade me for, and which might possibly be the worst gift I’ve ever gotten in my life ever. What stings is that I also spent $20 to get a gift someone else might have actually wanted. I basically see it that I purchased this WORSE THAN USELESS (because useless would be something that was “meh”…but this is worse than useless because it makes me ANGRY everytime I think about it) gift.

So, given me, the fact that I hold grudges forever and never forget stuff, I’ve sworn off these gift exchange events.

The reason why I don’t let people touch my stuff, books, toys, whatever, the reason why I’m OCD is…I trust people and they disappoint me. And when I get disappointed, I try never let myself feel that again. I learn my lesson quickly, burned once is all it takes, and I take precautions never to be burned again.

/thinks I need to start making a RAGE category…cuz man, I got lots of those.