Barbie is a rather charming, attractive female co-worker with an office down the hall. She's good at her job, and is very much a "people person". However, I've noticed that in her interactions with me, she deliberately plays on my ego. Okay, maybe not me specifically, but pretty much any male employee. She's very, very good at getting her way by sprinkling a little bimbo dust.

This isn't meant to condemn her. As I said, I think very highly of her as both a person and a co-worker. Buuuuutttt... I didn't like the game that she had to play the helpless princess, and I the gallant knight, every time she needed me to show her what box to check in Excel. One day, she came up to me, and said "Ummm... if you wouldn't mind... Could you please come take a look at my problem, if you have time?" She did the pouty-lip thing, and her tone implied she'd asked me to give her a kidney, rather than just do my job.

She wasn't in true luser mode, so a full LART wouldn't be called for. Instead, we needed a LART-Lite. Something just to clear the air. In my most cheerful voice, I looked her dead in the eye, and said "You practice those faces in the mirror, don't you?"

Stunned. Absolutely stunned. While I didn't outright hurt her, you could tell I'd really surprised her. She nervously said "Yeah..." And off we went to solve whatever issue was perplexing her. Since then, she's come to me several more times, but never used the Bimbo Dust on me. She learned well that such will not earn my favor.

Instead, however, she has taken to forwarding boxes of Chick-Fil-A to my desk. THAT, on the other hand... *BFEG*

Dweezil is not a starfish in the strictest sense. He actually has a fair amount of computer knowledge. He knows at least enough to be dangerous, and has shown a propensity for locking down company computers for "security"... to the point where they're almost unusable. The problem with this is, he's not part of the IT department, and we really don't appreciate his going rogue on these matters. For various reasons, direct confrontation with Dweezil has been avoided, though we unofficially think there's a future LART with his name on it.

Flash forward to now, when Dweezil decided he wanted to go from "mild annoyance" to "just plain stupid." He works in a very small building that is only staffed by two people. As supervision is at a minimum, the company had concerns that staff could be goofing off, even sleeping on the job. Last week, I added a security camera to Dweezil's office area, to watch for just that. His brilliant solution? Tack a post-it note on the camera lens.

Not content to endanger his job merely by screwing with company equipment, Dweezil made it worse. His co-worker, sharing the shift, took down the post-it note and went out for a bit. when she returned, a damp paper towel had been placed over the lens.

... so let's get this straight. Sabatoging the camera alone is enough to get himself fired, but then he moves from a method that merely blocks the lens, to one that (theoretically) could moisten and damage it (however unlikely that is). Next, ask yourself, how dumb to you have to be to screw with a security camera, which is recording everything you do to it? Beyond that, getting caught doing it by being THE ONLY OTHER PERSON IN THE BUILDING, and eliminating any possibility of reasonable doubt. Now, the kicker... Dweezil is in trouble for messing with a camera THAT WASN'T EVEN TURNED ON! I had to make a return trip to connect the power because the existing hookups didn't allow it. He'd put all that fuss into a dead camera, and he KNEW it was dead, because the monitor in the next room showed it!

On second thought, I don't think I'll LART him. At this rate, he'll LART himself.

I've referred to him in previous posts, but today, let's REALLY talk about Bossman. Bossman was a typical low-level manager for RetailComputerStore... barely half a rung above the front-line employees, but swallowing the company line like it had been given to him on two stone tablets. He was convinced if he did his masters's bidding, he'd be rewarded with a seven-figure-salaried corporate job Tuesday after next. Bossman's favorite management tactic was to put you in a no-win situation, remove all options at your disposal, and then make an example of you when you ended up failing. He liked to push you and encourage you to do something highly unethical, without actually coming out and telling you to do it. His weakness was that he honestly wasn't that bright about how he did it, and he could be caught pretty easily.

Take, for example, the day we put one of our waste-of-plastic laptops on a megasale for $269. We had 10 of them in stock, and each one was being sold at a $120 loss, which we were supposed to mitigate with the sale of accessories. This last point was a key complaint I had toward RCS and their business practices, but allow me to gloss over that, as the digression would detract from the story.

Long story short, we had a job to do: sell those 10 laptops at a minimal level of loss (profit was pretty much out of the question). First thing in the morning, in walk two asian guys. They see the laptop, and each one decides to buy one. It's a limit one per household, so this is legit as long as they're on two separate tickets. They don't want any extras, so I ring them up and they're on their way.

Bossman pulls me aside, ripping me a new one for letting them "take" me. "Those guys aren't buying that for themselves, they're going to try and resell it!"

"Yeah, probably, but there's not much I can do about that."

"Okay, fine. Well, EVERYBODY HUDDLE UP!! *everyone in the department gathers around, waiting for Bossman to impart his wisdom* Look, we just saw what happened. Now, we couldn't help that, but there is NO WAY we can afford to lose $120 on each one of these things, so LISTEN UP! In a case like this, where someone's probably going to buy to resell it, you gotta protect your business. Now, if those two guys come back, you tell them it's a limit of one per household."

I nodded. After all, up until this point, he was correct.

"...And I'll warn you, 'cuz I've seen this happen, they're probably in the car right now, on their cell phones, calling all their family members to come get one too. If they come in, you tell them it's out of stock, got it?"

Everybody but me nods.

"Uh, wait a second, Bossman. Now, I don't know these two guys, and I sure don't know anything about their family members. We don't have any way of knowing who they're related to and who they aren't. So exactly how am I supposed to make this judgment call, unless you're just plain telling us not to sell to anyone who's Asian?"

Bossman's smile said "Oh, my you're a wise lad", while his eyes said "Fuck you, you little ingrate." He started backpedaling faster than his little legs could carry him.

"Oh, well, I'm SO GLAD you brought that up. OF COURSE we could never discriminate like that! It's just... uh... you know... you gotta make sure you tell every customer it's one per houshold, that's all.."