Confessions of a High Maintenance Employee

Overheard at a recent HME Anonymous meeting:

Hi. My name is Matt and I'm a High Maintenance Employee.

"Hi, Matt!!"

It's been... [checks watch]... about 27 hours since the last time I was a pain in the ass at work. Wait, I haven't actually been at work in a couple of days. But I did cause some grief over e-mail on my day off, so... yeah, 27 hours sounds about right.

I don't really mean to keep falling off the wagon the way I do, but... It's awfully hard to break out of lifelong habits, you know?

And it's not like I'm one of those squeakers who wants special treatment all the time. You know, the ones who ask for religious holidays off that no one's ever heard of -

"Hey, I'm sitting right here!"

Sorry, Bob. Anyway, so I'm really only high maintenance in the sense that I piss people off so much and don't really care.

"*Gasp*"

I know, I know. How am I ever going to get better if I don't want to change, right?

"Right, Matt!"

But really, all I'm usually doing at work is standing on principle or taking some unpopular stance, and then before I know it my boss is hearing about it on his Blackberry and getting that tired, amused look on his face again. You could almost say it's the the wienies who jump into Escalation Mode who're the real HMEs here...

"Rationalizer!!"

OK, fine. You're right. So anyway, here are my Coping Strategies I've come up with:

1) Don't go into work every day prepared to quit or expecting to be fired. Maybe only on Mondays. And Thursdays. And days with meetings in them.

"Boooooo!"

Hey, c'mon, these might actually work for me!

2) My boss isn't paid to take shit from me. He does it out of love. That's right: he's a masochist and I'm his S&M mistress. Haha. Just kidding.

3) Some battles aren't worth fighting. I just need to find some of them, instead of the ones I usually get.

4) Stupid people are every bit as entitled to their opinions as everyone else. Apparently even more so.

5) It's only a job. It's only a job. Say it with me, now. It's only a job.

"That's fine, Matt. Why don't you take a seat again? Who'd like to speak next?"