Wanna know why I’m your least favorite blogger? Because I’m around. ALLLL the time. I’m clogging up valuable space on the internet that you could be using for trees, or pictures of your kids, or YouTube. All day on YouTube and the video would move so much faster, if it wasn’t for this guy that has been writing posts and posting gifs for almost 3 years. With almost 6000 followers (I don’t count Facebook and Twitter because I know those people), their readers and emails are being flooded with a new post about every other day. And if last year(2014 for those of you who are just joining us via time machine) was any indication, according to WordPress, I posted on every single Friday, except the day after Christmas (I’m so not sorry about it either). Point being (do I ever have one?) that I am scarily consistent with some things.
In my bitter career, I’ve learned almost nothing, except for this. Bitterness builds a strong fortress around you. It keeps away those sunny dispositioners. It keeps away those curiositers, and the ne’er do wells, and the try to pass their work to me’s. It keeps the gossipers, the wanna be comedians, and the only wanna talk about the weather’ers away from me. Most of all, it keeps the sick people away from me. This has provided a strong, deep down protection not only from having to be social, but protection to my immunity system. If you ever did meet one of my co-workers, they could spend a month telling you of the misery associated with having to work near me, but universally they would tell you one thing. “That dude never gets sick. Well, he might be sick in many ways, including a cold, or a flu or nausea, but he will never call in sick.” That may be an opinion, but it is also an indisputable fact as well. In the 13 years I’ve worked for the place I do, I’ve called in sick twice, and one time I showed up and left early only because I was puking when I got there. When I told my boss I had to leave, she thought I was joking and told me to get back to work. That is a fact.
Many people would look at that fact and tell me it’s a positive trait that I’m never sick. They might tell me that I should thank the lucky stars that I have such Bittermunity. They may think that I am Superman disguised as a lowly bitter person in this office only so I can go fight crime during the day. That the only reason I was puking that one time was because someone wore a Kryptonite necklace that day. They may think that it must be a joy to never be sick. But you know what? It is the opposite of what you are thinking. Never being sick is a curse.
Did you see the twisted crying wolf situation above? Never being sick has almost the same bad effect as someone who calls in sick ALL. THE. TIME. My boss didn’t believe that I was sick, because I had so few times called in sick. They are more apt to believe that constant crying wolf in our office is sick than me. That is how much this thing has backfired on me.
How about the sick hours? Guess how many I have built up in 13 years? Over 600 hours, or in terms of days I could call in sick, in a row without losing all my hours, 75 days. If you factor in that I don’t work weekends, that is 15 weeks. That means I could be sick for almost 4 months, without penalty. Except I would have to come up with a lot of “dog ate my homework” scenarios that I’m not very good at inventing. And I’m sure a doctor would have to write me quite a note for me missing that much time for a “cold”.
And guess what happens when it snows around here? “Hey, let’s make that guy that grew up in South Dakota where it snowed everyday of the summer come in. We can all ‘pretend’ we are working from home by logging in and telling him all the things we can’t do from home (which is everything) so we can pretend we are helping, when all we are doing is watching TV and playing Sudoku.” Then when mistakes pop up in the next few weeks, we can blame that guy, because he didn’t handle all 250 calls and 100 orders that day. Oh, and we’ll make sure he works Christmas Eve late so we can go home early, because you know, he’s dependable.
Sometimes, I wish my Bittermunity would spread so everyone else would have the misery of always being able to go to work everyday. I wish I was born with hayfever or an ability to spin a good tale of why I was sick all the time. Then, I could always have an excuse to be sick like everyone else.
ARRRRGGGHHHHH
Bitter Munity Ben
I’ll bet you and irtfyblog take naps on the job and eat disgusting, smelly snacks at your desk too. You probably email dirty jokes and text on company time. Gee I miss working with guys like you.
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Oh you better believe I do my best to take snoozers whenever I get the chance. Meetings, when talking to my boss, listening to customers. And if you think pizza is disgusting then yes. I eat disgusting food all the time at my desk.
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Who would have every thought pizza would have those kinds of antioxidant properties. I mean wow, you’ve blown through every known disease, fought off colds, flu’s, stomach bugs. It’s gotta be the pizza. We’ve gotta put you in a study ASAP. Pepperoni, meat lovers, or Hawaiian? Please let us in on this, lol.
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I better get out there and do some more testing on pizza, because that is our last hope for survival.
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Most important of all, you need to fix your hair and your 500 mile stare.
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I could use a haircut. I keep running into electric wires and getting shocked. As far as the 500 mile stare, can’t be helped. The only thing about me that travels farther than my couch is my 500 mile stare.
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We have a friend who never took his vacation days for almost 20 years. When he got laid off, they had to keep paying his salary for 7 straight months.
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I wish that were the case here, but as soon as I leave, the sick days go poof!
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You want I should come sneeze on you?
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That would be great, but I’m sure my Bittermunity would just block it. Something stronger please!
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Okay I’m building a bitter germ machine
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I’m sure you will make millions, making people sick. I’ve made thousands of followers making people sick.
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Yes there seems to be a demand for it.
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I guess people just like feeling nauseus. People sure feel that way after reading this.
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Well then they barf and they feel bitter better again.
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And who doesn’t want to feel bitter soon?
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I know right. Just hold out your hand to catch their barf and you’ll be even more bitter yourself. It’s a win win!
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I’ve had kids long enough to get my share of barf and poop. And whatever other diseases they carry.
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Lucky you
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So lucky. Can’t imagine how lucky.
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I might be able to given I was a nanny for 8 years. 😉 Then a care aid so it was adults..
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Wow, that sounds like a job you could be really bitter about. Perhaps writing a bitter blog about.
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I know. I sure have some stories.
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Are they short stories? Like you (are short)?
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Ha! They could be, I don’t like writing long blog posts. Probably because I can’t focus long enough to read long blog posts..
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That’s why you don’t read a lot of mine then. I do try to keep most of them to about 4-5 paragraphs, but every once in a while I go a little longer. Sorry about your “short” attention span.
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I think I read most of yours and that’s a compliment since I don’t do well with long..a squirrel
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It’s amazing that you hang in so long. It must be really hard to have the attention span of my son.
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Ahahah, well it does make one bitter, but that’s a bitter thing right?!
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That is definitely a bitter thing.
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That’s bitterly perfect then
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I love it!! 🙂 You are funny and I’m glad you pop up all the time 🙂
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I do my best to mess up people’s reader feed. Now onto Twitter and Facebook!
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If you had a baby you could take some days off?
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If I had a baby, I’m sure the news would be all over the place about the first dude to ever have a baby. Even if I tried to call in sick, I would be on the Today show and they would find out I wasn’t sick, but just pregnant.
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Bitter Ben – If you have difficulty coming up with “my dog ate my homework” scenarios, here are 3 very convincing diseases you could contract sometime in the next week:
1. Occupationitis – being sick of work
2. Homosapianitis – being sick of people
3. Healthiphosis – being sick of not being sick
ARRRRGHHH
Acerbic Aurora
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I have all those diseases. I should probably see a doctor and not go to work for the next few weeks.
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It is like free man. You can have some of my space as I am now busy doing nothing but generating empty platitudes. Who the hell is in the picture? Looks like a bitter guy.
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That’s Lionel Richie. Famous singer from the 80’s.
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Well that is the price of being constantly bitter! You can wallow in your bitttermunity. knowing that you can’t have any days off sick like ‘normal’ people, then become even MORE bitter because of that. You have started your journey on the ‘bitter-go-round’ and when it makes you puke, no-one even believes you! 🙂
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I hate this stupid Bittermunity I have. It’s definitely a curse for being bitter all the time. The bitter go round of not using this sick time is making me sick.
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Hold on. Don’t get ahead of yourself. there’s still hope. You could get sick yet. I mean, like in the next minute or maybe tomorrow. Look, I hadn’t been sick, not as much as a sniffle in 9 years, and last week I got a cold, a really bad cold that I think is the flu and I’m not even a little bit over it yet. It’s too bad I have no job to stay home from, because that would be awesome. Anyway, feel free to lick this comment because I just sneezed on it. No, really, I want you to. I think it’s the only way I’m going to get better. I think these germs don’t ever die. They just jump onto someone else. I mean I don’t know that for a fact, maybe it’s got something to do with quantum physics or……something.
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I’m definitely going to let your comment sneeze all over me so I can get comment sick, then claim I have to stay out for sickness because my comment isn’t feeling well.
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I may have a similar immunity. My whole family goes down with something virulent and I put Florence Nightengale to shame with my tender ministrations. I fantasize about MY special time on the couch wrapped in blankies and carefully sipping ginger ale while my family hovers around me nervously trying to help. Ha ha. They would actually use my corpse as a coffee table and eventually put me in the burn pile next to the last 5 years Christmas trees. Therefore I NEVER get sick…I’m afraid.
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Sadly, I fantasize about having to get some sort of surgery that will keep me out for 6-8 weeks so I will be forced to take it all, but alas my stupid Bittermunity only gives me scrapes and bruises and short illnesses that last over holidays and vacations.
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It’s important to have goals – break a leg!
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I’m thinking if I broke a leg I would still have to work. I heard a thing on the news today where some people insisted that people stay home for three weeks because they weren’t immunized for the measles. How about that?
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so your saying I can stay home for NOT getting a measles shot? Can I choose when or does it have to be during a pandemic outbreak? What about if I “work” from home – can I get compensation. This is the most exciting news I’ve heard all day…
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Yeah, I couldn’t believe it. I don’t get the flu shot every year because the first time I got it, I got flu like 4 times the winter. Never again. And believe it or not, I haven’t been sick much since.
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Doesn’t your company let you cash that sick leave in? Stupid HR policies…anyway, if they do, cash it out and then take a bitteroliday to crappy places like active volcanic craters, garbage dumps of Brazil, or the frozen wasteland of Antarctica.
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Of course they don’t. We just do well pay where they give us half of the accrued hours for the year, then claim it is as our “Christmas bonus”. Yeah, I pretty much am stuck now, not being able to take days because they count on me not being sick.
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Although I love the couch fort, shame on you for not taking your sick days. Why are you working 15 weeks for free for an employer who will erase your name the second you cease to put-out for them? Have you discussed this with your significant other? I DARE you, double dog dare you, to play hooky one day and go antiquing in the countryside. Are you bold enough, BitterBen?
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I shall be bold enough, but I won’t take your dare to go antiquing in the countryside. If I take off the day, it will be to meld into the couch and play video games.
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And what kind of timetable do you want to take on yourself?
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Probably what I should do is pay someone to take a bitter hit out on me. Hire someone to cough all over me all day.
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Thank you for observing my birthday by not blogging. All those with shitty holiday birthdays thank you for your support.
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I would have done one on your birthday if I wasn’t so bitter about having to be there yesterday. I love that my kids get these holidays like a couple weeks after they got two weeks off for Christmas and New Years.
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Ah, if only we could make bitterness a disease…or bottle bitter and make it a cure. (Bottled Bitter, has a nice ring to it. Perhaps if it doesn’t work out as a medicine it could be a really foul smelling cologne.)
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If bitterness was a disease and it was infectious, I would be spreading it all over the place, then selling the cure in a bottle to all the unlucky ones around me.
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Cure? What would you know about curing the disease of bitterness?
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I don’t know anything about a cure. I’m just selling people some stuff that seems like a cure and they will think that just because they had a positive day, that they are cured of bitterness.
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Positive day?? I do not understand this concept. Please explain.
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It what they bitter opposing weirdo’s have all the time. Like even when everything sucks like normal, they pretend that things are okay.
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Silly humans.
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Not so smart humans anyways.
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This touches on a few more pathetic areaa of my workplace that I plan on writing about, the “sickly crowd of coworkers” and the slackers who bought a four-wheel drive vehicle and can’t seem to drive in to work in one in of snow. Like you, I don’t call in sick. Even when I’m on my deathbed, I plan to make it in to work, and I’m always the one to make it to work on time the morning after the snow flies. So, I understand your bitterness and I feel your pain.
People are just pathetic!
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I have someone in my group that takes days off because of her sick dog. Others that take “revenge” days off. Like whenever someone else takes a day off and makes her work, she will take the next day off to get back at them. Then others that take two weeks off not when they have a baby, but when their daughter has a baby. So bitter!
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ugh…it sounds like you and I share the same pathetic coworkers.
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It’s amazing how they are all idiots and I do nothing wrong. How did I get stuck with these people that I have to spend more time with than my family.
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