Hiding distaste
Have you ever been nice to someone that you don't like, for the simple reason that they might be good for something later?
It just paid off. I'm sitting in the museum right now, next to a stack of empty boxes.
There's a guy here who may actually have a brain, but I've never seen any evidence of it. He's been around the department as long as I have, though he was an undergrad for a big chunk of that time. He sounds like a redneck - the slow drawl, the word choices (he says "reckon" and "share and share alike" without being ironic), and the banality of conversational topics.
He was carrying a stack of empty boxes into his office, past mine, stopped and said, "Boxes." This was the second load of boxes he'd walked past with, and I asked where they were coming from. He said that they're doing clean-up of the lab and added that he's job hunting, and is collecting the boxes in hopes of moving soon. I told him that I really am moving this summer, and a few minutes later, I've got a bunch of boxes in my office.
It's not really that I don't like the guy, rather that I see nothing positive to recommend him, other than being a nice guy, which is not enough of a reason to hang out with someone. He may not actually be stupid, just really slow and simple, but regardless, all of the other students (grad and undergrad) make various offhand cracks about him. I gotta wonder how much special treatment he's gotten, given that his mother works in the department. Not as a professor or anything, just an administrative office job, but she's actually fairly intelligent.
It just paid off. I'm sitting in the museum right now, next to a stack of empty boxes.
There's a guy here who may actually have a brain, but I've never seen any evidence of it. He's been around the department as long as I have, though he was an undergrad for a big chunk of that time. He sounds like a redneck - the slow drawl, the word choices (he says "reckon" and "share and share alike" without being ironic), and the banality of conversational topics.
He was carrying a stack of empty boxes into his office, past mine, stopped and said, "Boxes." This was the second load of boxes he'd walked past with, and I asked where they were coming from. He said that they're doing clean-up of the lab and added that he's job hunting, and is collecting the boxes in hopes of moving soon. I told him that I really am moving this summer, and a few minutes later, I've got a bunch of boxes in my office.
It's not really that I don't like the guy, rather that I see nothing positive to recommend him, other than being a nice guy, which is not enough of a reason to hang out with someone. He may not actually be stupid, just really slow and simple, but regardless, all of the other students (grad and undergrad) make various offhand cracks about him. I gotta wonder how much special treatment he's gotten, given that his mother works in the department. Not as a professor or anything, just an administrative office job, but she's actually fairly intelligent.