Sunday, June 20, 2010

Stupid stuff that people have said to me #3

Back when I used to work for Myers, they would periodically make us go to company HQ for more training and to introduce us to new products that the company had taken on. While on one of these trips I had to room with a sales guy from the Charlotte branch who was a real jack ass. He was, and probably still is, the stereotypical self aggrandizing sales jerk who thinks only of himself and loves to brag about what a great person and salesman he is. If you looked up the word narcissist in the dictionary, his picture would be beside it.

In an effort to make himself seem even greater than he already was in his own mind he decided he needed some self improvement so he told everyone that he was reading this book:
The one thing he had learned that he wanted to share with every was the love was a verb. In his tiny mind that meant that the word 'love' and the word 'verb' were interchangeable and that they meant the same thing. He couldn't grasp that what the author meant was that verbs denote action and that you can't just say you love something, you have to put action behind that word to make it real.

So for the entire three days we were in Akron he would tell anyone who made eye contact with him about the book he was reading and that he really 'verbed' things. He'd take a bite of steak and say, "Man, I really verb this steak." If he saw someone who he hadn't told about the whole love=verb thing then he'd say, "Oh, you probably don't know what I'm talking about do you? See, I'm reading this book about what successful people do and the guy who wrote it says love is a verb. So when I say I 'verb' something, that means I love it. It's what successful people do."

By Saturday night I had had enough of him and his asshole ways. When he came into our hotel room and woke me from a sound sleep to tell me how much he verbed drinking, I told him to shut the hell up so I could go back to sleep. Of course it didn't register that he had pissed me off because he cared only for himself. So he grabbed his cell phone and he made a call to whatever woman with cripplingly low self esteem he was dating that time. I overheard him say to her that he was reading the seven habits book and that he had learned that love was a verb. Then he said that he verbed the poached salmon he had made for her the other night and that he thought he was in verb with her.

I shouted at him to shut the fuck up because he was keeping me up. So of course he began talking louder and telling the wretch he was dating that he did not verb me because I was mean to him.

I calmly got out of bed, put on a pair of shorts and a T shirt, packed my suitcase, and I told him to go fuck himself as I walked out of the room. I went downstairs and checked into another room and I went right to sleep. The next morning I saw one of the Myers executives who was in charge of the arrangements for the weekend and I told him that I had to get a room of my own that last night because the roomie they stuck me with was such an ass. He said I'd have to pay for it myself but then he asked me who I was rooming with. When I told him who it had been he said that the company would pay for the room and that I wouldn't be charged for it. I shook his hand and I said, "Dude, I verb you so much right now it hurts."

6 comments:

McGriddle Pants said...

To this day I hate the word "synergy"

MommyLisa said...

I hope the exec got a laugh...

You? I verb you!

gmb said...

Add interface and utilize (I hate that one a lot).

Who you callin' housewife? said...

I hate people that read these books and then just talk about them. Is there a word for "hate" that I should be using to show I have read an important, life-changing book.

Anonymous said...

Duuuuude. Hilarious and awesome. Just like you!

Nathan said...

I think the first habit of highly successful people is NOT reading these "get successful fast" books.

Who You Callin' Housewife?: Maybe the word for "hate" is "adverb." Or possibly "conjunction"?