The Tale of Mr. Asshat
I simply had to share with you all the story of There are two companies that work in my office. We all get along and everything, and throw each other business when appropriate. So the CEO of the other company has this friend who needed a new website. That's largely what we do, so he passed this guy - Mr. Asshat on to us. Great. Ha ha. Not great.
A small selection of why he's Mr. Asshat:
He (and his partner) had a tendency of making vague requests of our graphic designer. When the graphic designer would get back to them requesting clarification, they would ignore her. A week later, they'd be all up in arms because nothing had been done. No shit, jackass.
After a string of such incidents, he phones in, and somehow gets the dispatcher for our sister company. He proceeds to go on a lengthy profanity-filled tirade about how he's getting dicked around by our company, and threatening to come down here himself and... oh lord even knows what he figured he'd do when he got here. Bear in mind that the dispatcher who got to listen to all this doesn't even work for us, and therefore had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any of this. Does Mr. Asshat care? Nope. He just wants to scream at the first person he encounters.
Somehow, our CEO manages to calm him down. The next issue arises when our CEO arranges to phone Mr. Asshat's partner to run her through how to do a few things with her new system, provided by us. Strictly speaking, this is actually more my job than his, but he does do training sometimes, so whatever. However, being the CEO of a company, there are occasionally things that crop up that he has to deal with immediately. The time when he was supposed to contact Mr. Asshat's partner happened to be one such occasion. So he asked me to call and help her out instead. I'm perfectly qualified to do this, and the service that would be rendered by me would be pretty much exactly the same as that that would have been rendered by the CEO. So I call.
Mr. Asshat's partner isn't even there, so I leave a message with Mr. Asshat, letting them know that while the CEO has had something come up, he's asked me to take care of them, and I'll be more than happy to do so, at their convenience. Fine. About half an hour later, Mr. Asshat calls back. He goes on another tirade (although lucky me, I got spared most of the profanities) about how the CEO just keeps dicking them around and if he doesn't have time for them, then he's just wasted their time, and so on and so forth. I can't even begin to accurately describe this verbal assault I got from him, mainly because half of it didn't even make much sense.
The point is, he's the one wasting his own bloody time because a) the person who was supposed to be talking to our CEO wasn't even available at the appointed time, and b) if they'd just taken my help, they'd have been taken care of right promptly, with no time wasted whatsoever. But anyway, by this time, our CEO has dealt with whatever he was dealing with, and agrees to take this guy off my hands. The best part of all this? When he does talk to Mr. Asshat's partner, she hasn't even gathered all the required materials, and isn't ready for her little tutorial anyway. But we're the ones wasting their time, obviously.
I, at least, have not heard from him in probably a month at this point, although our CEO told me after that conversation that I never had to talk to them again, so I've been out of the loop. However, today, he shows up. With two buddies, because his tiny tiny little self simply wouldn't have been nearly intimidating enough. (The dispatcher who'd talked to him just about died laughing when he saw this tiny tiny man who'd threatened to come in here and mess him up.)
He's had enough, apparently, and through another profanity-filled rant, goes on and on about how the website doesn't even work, and he's tired of being fucked around and so on and so forth. During all this, our tech guy (who's in charge of making sure the web addresses point to the right places and therefore the right website come up) quietly, in his cubicle, checks the site. It works fine. The guy's problem is that he was typing address.com, instead of www.address.com. It's a 2-second fix that wouldn't have cost him anything more than a quick email requesting that it be done (because it's not something we do automatically). But instead of that, he decides to come in ranting and raving like the jackass he is, and demand his money back, and that the site be transferred immediately to another provider. Oh, and he totally slagged our graphic designer while he was at it, too, so I'm really glad she had the day off today.
Of course, our CEO wasn't actually here at the time, much, I'm sure to his disappointment (and frankly, mine too, because that could have been entertaining), so all this ranting and swearing was actually told to the other company's CEO - the one who's supposedly his friend. Classy.
Anyway, once our CEO got back, he and the other CEO got on a conference call with Mr. Asshat, which I'm sure was delightful, although I didn't get to hear it, and then one of his minions came by to pick up their refund. As for sending his site over to the other provider, well, I suspect he's in for a rude shock there, as the site is not really portable as is. Of course he apparently hates the site anyway, but regardless, I'm not really sure what he expects to get sent over to the new provider. Nor do I care, actually. This guy has been nothing but an obnoxious ass who thinks he's far too special to talk to anyone but the CEO himself, and he needs to get into some kind of horrible fishing accident at his place, and I'm so incredibly not sorry to see him go. Fucker.
A small selection of why he's Mr. Asshat:
He (and his partner) had a tendency of making vague requests of our graphic designer. When the graphic designer would get back to them requesting clarification, they would ignore her. A week later, they'd be all up in arms because nothing had been done. No shit, jackass.
After a string of such incidents, he phones in, and somehow gets the dispatcher for our sister company. He proceeds to go on a lengthy profanity-filled tirade about how he's getting dicked around by our company, and threatening to come down here himself and... oh lord even knows what he figured he'd do when he got here. Bear in mind that the dispatcher who got to listen to all this doesn't even work for us, and therefore had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any of this. Does Mr. Asshat care? Nope. He just wants to scream at the first person he encounters.
Somehow, our CEO manages to calm him down. The next issue arises when our CEO arranges to phone Mr. Asshat's partner to run her through how to do a few things with her new system, provided by us. Strictly speaking, this is actually more my job than his, but he does do training sometimes, so whatever. However, being the CEO of a company, there are occasionally things that crop up that he has to deal with immediately. The time when he was supposed to contact Mr. Asshat's partner happened to be one such occasion. So he asked me to call and help her out instead. I'm perfectly qualified to do this, and the service that would be rendered by me would be pretty much exactly the same as that that would have been rendered by the CEO. So I call.
Mr. Asshat's partner isn't even there, so I leave a message with Mr. Asshat, letting them know that while the CEO has had something come up, he's asked me to take care of them, and I'll be more than happy to do so, at their convenience. Fine. About half an hour later, Mr. Asshat calls back. He goes on another tirade (although lucky me, I got spared most of the profanities) about how the CEO just keeps dicking them around and if he doesn't have time for them, then he's just wasted their time, and so on and so forth. I can't even begin to accurately describe this verbal assault I got from him, mainly because half of it didn't even make much sense.
The point is, he's the one wasting his own bloody time because a) the person who was supposed to be talking to our CEO wasn't even available at the appointed time, and b) if they'd just taken my help, they'd have been taken care of right promptly, with no time wasted whatsoever. But anyway, by this time, our CEO has dealt with whatever he was dealing with, and agrees to take this guy off my hands. The best part of all this? When he does talk to Mr. Asshat's partner, she hasn't even gathered all the required materials, and isn't ready for her little tutorial anyway. But we're the ones wasting their time, obviously.
I, at least, have not heard from him in probably a month at this point, although our CEO told me after that conversation that I never had to talk to them again, so I've been out of the loop. However, today, he shows up. With two buddies, because his tiny tiny little self simply wouldn't have been nearly intimidating enough. (The dispatcher who'd talked to him just about died laughing when he saw this tiny tiny man who'd threatened to come in here and mess him up.)
He's had enough, apparently, and through another profanity-filled rant, goes on and on about how the website doesn't even work, and he's tired of being fucked around and so on and so forth. During all this, our tech guy (who's in charge of making sure the web addresses point to the right places and therefore the right website come up) quietly, in his cubicle, checks the site. It works fine. The guy's problem is that he was typing address.com, instead of www.address.com. It's a 2-second fix that wouldn't have cost him anything more than a quick email requesting that it be done (because it's not something we do automatically). But instead of that, he decides to come in ranting and raving like the jackass he is, and demand his money back, and that the site be transferred immediately to another provider. Oh, and he totally slagged our graphic designer while he was at it, too, so I'm really glad she had the day off today.
Of course, our CEO wasn't actually here at the time, much, I'm sure to his disappointment (and frankly, mine too, because that could have been entertaining), so all this ranting and swearing was actually told to the other company's CEO - the one who's supposedly his friend. Classy.
Anyway, once our CEO got back, he and the other CEO got on a conference call with Mr. Asshat, which I'm sure was delightful, although I didn't get to hear it, and then one of his minions came by to pick up their refund. As for sending his site over to the other provider, well, I suspect he's in for a rude shock there, as the site is not really portable as is. Of course he apparently hates the site anyway, but regardless, I'm not really sure what he expects to get sent over to the new provider. Nor do I care, actually. This guy has been nothing but an obnoxious ass who thinks he's far too special to talk to anyone but the CEO himself, and he needs to get into some kind of horrible fishing accident at his place, and I'm so incredibly not sorry to see him go. Fucker.