Many of my friends have been asking me… who will be your boss after Rob left? Not wanting to keep my friends and readers itching in suspense, I now have 2 new bosses. 1st - work boss, 2nd - administrative boss.

Work boss - the guy who needs to know every fuck I do at work. This includes my job scope and project for quarter/year and also my career development as an engineer.

Administrative boss - the guy who approves my annual leave whenever I don’t feel like working… and the guy who gives a shit about my welfare during working hours.

So, who’s my new boss?
My new work boss is Pete. If you can still remember, he is the same guy who organized the calamitous karaoke farewell for my ex-colleague CK. Pete is an ok guy… although he lacked of the intelligence to even know what exactly am I doing everyday. One thing I like about him is — he actually LISTENS whenever someone speaks. Now, that’s a very rare trait to be found nowadays. Another beautiful thing about Pete is, he’d approve anything that I pass to him, no questions asked.

My administrative boss is - unexpectedly - my colleague Kermit. Kermit is in his late 30’s and is a senior engineer. His pay is a few times higher than mine, so, he can be my boss.

How’s life after Rob left?
I hate to admit this but, it’s getting really boring for me and my colleagues after Rob left. As if we’ve lost a purpose in life… by losing a common object to hate at. We used to be able to vent all our anger and frustration by talking behind his back or laugh at his ass. But now that we’ve lost our dummy, our stress have nowhere to go. Rob is like the Japs in WW II that surrendered and ended the war. When the war ended, we start to become complacent and put on weight. Eventually, we’ll all be too fat to trim our own toe nails.

Same thing here. Rob’s departure made our brain too free from worries and lack of exercise. And eventually, our brains will all turn slow, rusty and infested by fungus. Seriously, I think I need to look for a surrogate for Rob’s position… else we’d risk of bringing down the whole chain of ecosystem…

My department is planning to have a teambuilding at the end of December, and I was nominated as part of the committee member to organize the event.

The arrangements include planning of headcount, balancing the budget, duty segregation amongst the committee members, selection of venue, transport arrangements, etc. A whole long list of them. It wasn’t easy. I never knew that planning for a mindless event can be so much pain in the ass.

My duty in the committee was to work out something that would make people wanting to participate in the event. This pretty much includes activity planning and also the lucky draw event. And while doing that, I kinda realized a lot of things about people in general. Sort of like an eye opener for me.

You see, the purpose of a teambuilding program is to educate people about the importance of working together as a team. Or just simply, it’s a program to make assholes realize that he’s not John Rambo. It’s a good thing. So, why the fuck do we need to give them free stuff or organize lucky draws to get them to do something that’s already good for them in the first place? Are they too stupid to realize that this is suppose to be good for them?

I actually quoted this in the meeting : “We people are really screwed up. We need to bribe them to do something good for themselves? That’s really stupid”. My point is, teambuilding is useless if the participants are not committed in the first place. Bribing them with gifts to get them to attend the event — is one perfect example that those people lacked of the commitment to improve. They will not attend the teambuilding event if there aren’t any free lunch or cool looking caps for them to bring home. They only want those free gifts, not the teambuilding. If that’s the case, what’s the point then, to organize the fucking teambuilding? Why don’t we just give the money away to charity instead? It would have served a better purpose.

Before I was nominated to join this committee, I was well known to be a skipper myself. I have skipped basically almost every teambuilding there ever was. Everyone said that proves that I’m a misanthrope. Well… misanthrope my ass. I told my boss (not Rob, it’s Rob’s boss - SaltyFish) the reason I refused to join any of their teambuilding was because of their bullshits. Their programs suck and they are only suitable for retards like them. That was why I got elected as part of the committee - to organize one that doesn’t sucks and for normal people. Me and my big mouth.

And now, I have to figure this big problem - how to make a bunch of stupid working adults to learn about the importance of teamwork? I proposed to throw them in an isolated island without anything for a week… but my suggestion was rejected. It is too dangerous and not practical - they said. Well, I guess those bunch of sissies prefer to be Rambo after all. They want their teambuilding to be simple like a primary school sports day event with free lunch. Fuck them.

Kinda sad when you think of it doesn’t it? That I have to work with these people every fucking day.

Yesterday, when the time approaches 4pm, the sky suddenly turned gloomy and dark. So dark that I thought there was an eclipse or something. And then all of the sudden, water started to jet down from the heavy sky. It rained cats and dogs. It was so heavy, that I reckoned that one would be stripped naked if exposed long enough under the rain.

At about 4.30pm, Rob came over to my cubicle to bid me farewell. He started by saying “Alright guys… all the best” and he then stretched out his cold skeletal hand for a handshake. Being a gentleman that I am, I replied while shaking his rotten hand “All the best to you too…”, rather insincerely. Deep inside my heart, I wanted this guy to flop bad and eat dirt. But that had to be veiled to preserve my integrity as a civilized person.

He looked particularly jolly at the final few minutes at the office. Everyone else looked happy too. He went around shaking everyone’s hand to say goodbye, like we all are going to miss him. Little did he know that it was quite the opposite. We’re all hoping that he’d get it all over soon and get the fuck out of there already. What a moron.

He finally left after about a good 25 minutes of drama later. And right after he left, I cited a poem out loud to my colleagues - in mandarin. (I know nuts about Mandarin… and has very little talent in poetry).

The air is so fresh [inhale a long deep breath]
The sun is so bright [looking and pointing out at the storm out there]
I feel like a newborn [looking at the office fluorescent light above]

Alright, it didn’t quite sound like a fucking poem. They didn’t rhyme and sounded damn spastic. But it did elevate some morale there… because I could see heads bobbing up from their respective cubes to check out who was citing a stupid poem in the middle of the office. I was greeted with laughters and cheers from them. But I know they weren’t laughing at my absurd poem. They were actually laughing that their nightmare was finally over and a new dawn has come.

At 5.20pm, I walked out from the office building feeling like a new person. On the way out, my friends shook my hand and congratulated me as if I’ve gotten a promotion. It was an unforgettable experience.

Weather - hazy.

Not sure why the weather was so hazy this morning. So bad that I can hardly see beyond 500 meters. Was it due to the massive burning at Indonesia again? Or could some kind of special effect of some spaceships that are going to land on Earth? I don’t know, and I don’t really care either. I only know and cared about one thing today — it was Rob’s last day!

Omg. I have waited for this for so long. That festering undead boss of mine is finally leaving us for good! I will be celebrating this tonight with a grand dinner. Well, the dinner’s not really organized in conjunction of Rob’s departure but… I’d be happy to celebrate for that reason. A celebration of freedom.

So what makes me hate my boss so much? Many reasons, people. I’ll try to summarize them up into a few vital points for you people to understand…

The Look
- He’s an emaciated shit. God he’s so fucking thin that I could break his arms with my bare hands. And yet, he would boast about having a black belt in karate, and being the fittest. Black belt my foot.

- He’s fucking ugly. If it isn’t for the limbs to hint us that he is actually human, one might easily mistaken him for some kind of overgrown mutated parasite that has crept out of a very sick buffalo’s anus. He once tried to pick up our admin girl, asking her out for a date or something… The girl bluntly cut him off and said “You don’t even qualify the smallest fraction of my lowest acceptable requirements”. Like my friend Alvin quoted : “He is a person that only his own biological mother will love.” An eyesore to the public. An organic mistake. A total disaster.

The Brain
- He has an IQ less than 50. Anything less than that, he will not be able to tell the difference between a rock and a dog. There was once he asked me to analyze a piece of cracked LCD display after he deliberately dropped it onto the floor. I had to explain to him the nature of fragile materials vs. gravity — that they will actually break if you drop it from a certain height (eg. drop a wine glass on the floor and it will break). But still, he couldn’t figure it out and kept asking me “Why it broke? Please investigate and give me a report”. I did the report anyway - but it consisted only a couple of short sentences — “LCD panel cracked due to it’s fragile nature. Root cause was due to someone dropping it onto the cold hard floor”. He bought off the report.

- He is slow. Whenever he is in a meeting, he will always ask a lot of incoherent questions. When someone shoots him a sarcastic reply, he will not notice it and nor feel embarrassed about himself. He’s simply, too simple and dumb. A good example would be the mineral water incident. A dimwit he is.

The Demeanor
- He is a sycophant. He likes to jack up his boss’ balls up to the chin and is his pet cocksucker. Shoe polishing is his strongest trait. He doesn’t give a shit if anyone thinks of him lowly… the most important thing for him is to keep his boss happy.

- Rob is a hypocrite. He knows nothing about the thing he does but likes to act as if he’s the smartest person in the company. Example: He once asked me if an oscilloscope could point out the root cause of a product failure (I’ve written about it before). If you do not know how stupid is this, then imagine if a hammer can churn out a suspension bridge. It’s just a tool, you tool.

Alright, I believe that will be enough for anyone to have an inkling on what kind of person Rob is. So I hope this justifies my hatred for him. If you don’t feel the same way like I do already, then it’s too bad for you. You’re probably another asshole like him. A social garbage. A cancer of humanity. A dent on a paint job. A scratch on a CD. Whatever.

On Wednesday, a fellow colleague from Australia (let’s call him Sangeeth) emailed me to request for technical assistance for an issue which he couldn’t solve. But his mail didn’t quite sound like he’s requesting something. It was more like, a command. He wanted me to do it for him. There was a heavy presence of arrogance in it, and it sounded very authoritative. Not wanting to create a fuss out of it, I decided to help anyway, partly because I was professionally obliged to do that (ahem).

Because he was too busy insert his arrogance in his email, he somehow forgot to include the details which I need to be able to help him. Amongst them, photos depicting the problem. I had to send him a reply to request for that. But being somewhat of a dolt, this Sangeeth sent me a mail asking me to provide him an FTP address (File Transfer Protocol) for him to share an oversized video file. Yes, a video file. I was asking for photos, but he wanted to give me a video file. Video file of something static. What the fuck. Following was our actual email communication :

“Michael, do you have an FTP site I can access ? The tech has taken an Mpeg video and sent it to me. It is 3.2MB so I cant email it”

I replied him: “Sangeeth, unfortunately no. Perhaps you can try to share it out from your PC and let us know your domain/computer name… we’ll try to link up from here”

Sangeeth, apparently dissatisfied with the fact that we do not have an FTP site, replied with a one-sentence harsh mail - “We should have an FTP site”.

That was when I snapped. I was fucking pissed. I was trying to help him with his problem, and this guy’s trying to make it like I’m the problem. I decided to send him a retort and this time, with less courtesy:

“Sangeeth, Like I have requested, just snap some pictures. They are of smaller size and should be good enough for us to check it out. I know we should have an FTP. In fact, we should have a lot of other things… like a big car, higher wage and a more comfortable cube as well. But the fact is, we still don’t have them. So why don’t you live with it and go to work?”

My reply aggravated the mental ape and he sent me a nasty flame mail reprimanding me. He criticized me for being too passive and being reluctant in helping him to solve his problems. And he ended his verbose mail with loads of bullshit technical jargons (which I knew more than himself, and was the reason why he was asking for my help)… and still, no photos or useful details.

That was the last straw for me. I decided to give the motherfucker the final blow. I sent him a blunt but succinct email asking him to CUT THE CRAP, PROVIDE THE DETAILS and copied his boss. And I p.s. the mail with a note asking him to improve his command of English to improve his comprehension…

I didn’t give much thought about the testosterone influenced angry reply, and expected it to draw much flak from my superior. But fortunately, Sangeeth’s boss dug my message and personally called my team director to apologize. His boss probably felt the same way I did about Sangeeth - that he is a nincompoop and should probably be hired to do something not so important. Like wiping tables or cleaning toilets. And I never heard from Sangeeth after that round of altercation.

My director later called me up and told me, that Sangeeth almost got fired because of what I wrote in my last email, and I was made to promise to be more diplomatic in my future communications… Bah! Like I care. Serves that bastard right I’d say, for being such an ass.