Social Blunder

When I arrived at work this morning, I was immediately assaulted by a particularly vile smell. It was reminiscent of garlic, but exponentially more noxious. It was pretty hideous... especially first thing in the morning.

One of the yard workers came into the office to do something, immediately wrinkled his nose, looked at me accusingly, and asked, "Did you fart??!"

As it turns out.. I did not.

The smell was getting worse, and I could tell that the customers were being affected by it as well, judging by the looks on their faces, and the green around their gills.

Finally, unable to take it any longer, I propped the front door open to let some fresh air in.

After about two minutes, the old man walked up front from his desk, started raising hell about the door being open, and closed it. (He is incessently cold, even though the rest of us will be sweating our asses off... he insists that the doors and windows stay closed and the the heat stay on high.. we try to oblige him as much as possible, but, there are times when it is difficult. Today, in particular, it was literally unbearable... so, after a little while, I opened the door again...)

At some point, the old man walked past me, and I realized that the smell was emanating from him! (Apparently, this smell was the reek of his breath. I have no idea what he ate, but he was killing us with the smell. I can deal with garlic breath, onion breath, garden variety halitosis, kimchi breath, and what have you... but this smell could have knocked a vulture off of a gut-wagon at 20 meters.)

When the old man realized that we had opened the door again, he started ranting and raving and cornered The Nose, demanding that we close the door and put the heat on. The Nose, not being the world's foremost repository of moral courage, acquiesed immediately and ordered us to close the door and turn the heat back on. He then grabbed his car keys and fled, ostensibly to avoid further discussion of the matter with any of us....

This sort of pissed me off... though I'm not sure why. Most not-shit issues roll off my back, but I was somewhat irked by being forced to smell somebody's nasty-ass breath, and to not have any recourse at all.

The old man, realizing that he had won the point, decided to come up to where we were working and gloat. Loudly, and verbally.

He began by calling us jackasses and morons, went through the entire litany of insults, from our lineage to our intellect, and on to our individual appearance and physical characteristics, our work habits, our moral fortitude (or lack thereof) and our sexual proclivities... this was met with general silence, as we simply ignored him and continuted to work.

Apparently, not deriving the level of satisfaction that he had hoped to glean from this verbal assault, he decided to raise the level of aggression a wee bit and thought that leaning very close to me and screaming into my face might just do the trick. The experience was somewhere along the lines of smelling a hyena's fart or dunking one's head into a rotting cesspool. I was less than thrilled.

Not wanting to be overly confrontational, I asked him to take a step back and let me get on with my work.

He leaned forward and yelled "Why?! You fucking JACKASS... WHY??! DOES THIS BOTHER YOU??? SO!! THE ZEN MONK CAN BE BOTHERED!! What's the MATTER, Can't take a little Ribbing???"

I turned my face away, trying to avoid the nauseating miasma of his breath, and said, quietly, "That's not the problem, just do me a favor and take a step back, okay??"

He became affronted by this, and demanded to know what the problem was. For my part, I was starting to get my back up and should have known better than to continue the conversation. It would have been smarter for me to have left, and gone elsewhere for a wee bit until he went back to his desk on his own... but, I'm a stubborn prick at times, and this was a time, I suppose.....

I asked him, "Do you really want to know??" (Folks, when I ask you if you 'really want to know' the answer to a question, I am most likely setting you up for a bomb. Pretty much, if the answer wasn't a volatile one to my mind, I would just blurt it out. When I am asking somebody to reiterate to me that, yes, they really want to know, I am basically covering my ass so that I can later say something like, "Hey... you demanded to know!". Basically, things are going south... and quickly.)

He asserted that "Yeah Asshole!! I wanna know!!" in a loud, arrogant, and thunderous voice. He made sure that he had everyone's attention, and, more or less, he did.

He said he wanted to know...... so I told him.

"Bro, I'm asking you to take a step back, because your mouthwash ain't makin' it. Your friggin' breath smells like a hobo's asshole, and you're making me nauseous. So take a fuckin' step back, and get your stanky ass out of my face. Don't make me ask you again, alright?"

Everyone started to crack up, and he.... well. I had heard of coniption fits, but had never actually seen one. He absolutely came unglued. The man lost his fucking mind! He was trying to go in eighteen directions at once, sputtering and spitting and absolutely purple with rage and indignation. Finally, in a frustrated attempt to express his fury, he literally threw a book at my head! I caught it, and placed it on the counter, and turned back to my work.

Part of me feels bad about it, and part of me feels that it was well-deserved. I say this because he is forever dishing it out to everyone, with no regard to their feelings, or whether what he is saying is acceptable or not. He attacks FatCat about his being overweight, which FatCat laughs off on the surface, but which I imagine must sting to some degree... he calls all of the workers of hispanic descent 'wetbacks' which really burns my ass. They work their asses off, are always cheerful and cooperative, and never show any anger or displeasure to anyone. They don't deserve to be called names at all, nevermind ethnic slurs. He likes to bully people and everyone has to just swallow it, and that's all well and good. But, apparently, he doesn't like to get it back in return.

Needless to say, it was a little bit awkward for the rest of the day. Just about everyone made it a point to swing by and tell me that "it was about time", or "he had it coming" or words to that effect. So I suppose that the general view is more or less on a par with mine.

I still feel like I made a bit of a foul, though...

Well, be that as it may, I am sticking to it. Sometimes, the only thing that some people respect is strength. Be it physical strength, or strength of will. He decided to test my mettle today, not me.