Some people I know like to build Legos. Or rebuild engines. Or fix computers. Or put together furniture. Or mend relationships. For some reason, when they do these things, they think it brings some sort of order to the universe. It doesn’t. What they don’t know is that it brings something evil screaming into the world like Loki brought the Chitauri into the portal on earth. The unholy and evil Owner’s Manual. These wretched spawns are supposed to be a step by step process of how to build, fix or repair something. Some of them are just a list, some are pictures and some are lists and pictures. But the one thing that is universally included in all Owner’s Manual’s is something that will make even the smartest, sanest person alive as destructive as Wreck-It Ralph. Missing steps. In the Owner’s Manual program in colleges, they teach this as a necessary step. There is no owner’s manual to becoming bitter, but I do have a list of a few things that will help along those lines (and there are also some missing steps, per the traditional owner’s manual).
Fail to plan, so you can plan to fail – Everyone thinks it take so much dedication and planning to become bitter like this, but it doesn’t. It takes a lot of things, but planning isn’t one of them. Bad manners maybe. Unrealistic expectation, certainly, but planning never. Do you think I sit around writing steps on how to avoid work at work all day? No. It’s just a spontaneous thing. Will I read other blogs? Will it be ESPN that day, or IGN.com, or will I take long breaks in the break room. You can’t plan these things. Things come up all the time that can get in the way of your “plan”. You just have to be ready for anything when it comes to avoiding work.
Focus on your Failures – A lot of good things can happen during the day. You might get a raise, a promotion, or your boss might be gone for the day or week or month. Some people might find those things to be really great and that is just not something that will help you be bitter. You must learn to find the bitter in things. For instance, you got a raise? Awesome, now you have to pay more taxes, more people are going to want money from you, and now you will have to buy a Lamborghini that is even less fuel efficient than your current stupid car. And that will make it so you get to work earlier. Who wants that? And a promotion? Why would I want to do more work again?
Don’t Finish Things – If you have an owner’s manual, this might cause you to finish something. How is that good? If someone knows you are good at finishing things, then they will depend on you. Then more work comes your way and something way worse. Trust. And the only thing that comes with trust, is pressure to always be there for someone in their times of need. That means less time on the couch, sharing your pizza, and “listening to someone’s feelings”. Seriously don’t have time for any of those things.
When you are in the zone, take a break – You know what it’s like to be in the zone right? Ideas are flowing, brush strokes are flying, the video game controllers is practically molded directly into your hands, all your dreams are coming true(you better wake up, you’re late for work). And you think that the “zone” will last forever, so you take a break. I don’t need to write those ideas down. I’ll just put the paint brush down for a little. I’ll just push pause on the game to “listen to family members” talking about something. I’ll just wake up and completely remember the codes to the bank vault. And when you come back the zone will completely come back right?
Take shortcuts. They key to unsuccessfulness in bitterness, is to take shortcuts. Walk on people’s grass instead of their sidewalks. While driving, don’t come to a complete stop, roll on through. At a long red light, cut through that gas station to get to the other side. At work, cut out of meetings for “an appointment” or “you have to go to the bathroom”. When buying clothes, claim there is tiny hole and get a discount. When learning how to fly, you don’t need an airplane, just a really good catapult and a set of something that kind of looks like wings. When becoming a basketball player, just be really good at sitting on a bench, fake clapping encouragement, and work on your towel waving ability.
Buy Expensive things that have fatal flaws. – Buy super nice computers that just have bad motherboards. Buy expensive refrigerators that have ice makers that fail instantly. Buy an expensive car that has automatic everything that is controlled by a computer run by Windows. Buy a smart phone that has a dumb battery and that allows phone calls. Buy a blog domain that includes the name bensbitterblog.
Passive Aggressiveness – Passive aggressiveness is good for no one. But just because it isn’t good for anyone, doesn’t mean it isn’t my standard operating procedure. Sarcasm is my favorite use of passive aggressiveness. I use it to tell someone how much I can’t stand them, and the idiots that I use it with, don’t understand sarcasm, so it accomplishes nothing. I won’t ever stop using it on them, and they won’t ever learn that I am totally tearing them down. Bitterness personified.
See how useless owner’s manuals are? See how useless my advice to you is? See how much time both you and I have wasted going through this whole process? I will never get the 20 minutes back that it took to write this and you will never get the 5 seconds back that you wasted looking at the title of this blog and moving on very quickly. It was a waste for all and a cause for bitterness.
ARRRRRRRGGGGHHHH
Bitter Owner’s Manual Ben
Reblogged this on experitokimazi and commented:
Good day
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I was going to comment but I lost my owners manual, or my ambition, or…huh?
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And even if you could find it, you wouldn’t want to read that crap.
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Five seconds? Five seconds?!?! I read the whole thing and reread a couple of the paragraphs. Plus I laughed. Which added time. Now who’s bitter, bub?!
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I’m really sorry that you had to spend so much time on the worthless set of instructions I came up with that I swore my life to fighting against. Talk about bitter. I’m glad you became bitter for reading it too!
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Oh how I love passive aggressiveness… Just kidding. No I don’t. 😉
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I am expertly trained in the art and skill of passive aggressiveness. I love to drive people crazy, with ability to use sarcasm as a weapon against people that don’t get it. Plus passive aggressive notes are the funniest.
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Yes I do my best not to be dependable. I never ever have a manual on my person, plus as a fail-safe, I have never learned how to be a handyman. But keep that under your hat Ben … its a trade secret.
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I always have set my expectations low, so people never expect anything of me. If they did that would be a lot of work that I’m not willing to do.
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I think we both have a lazy mind set, works for us!
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Yep, getting up this morning was work enough. Time for laying down and watching TV.
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Relaxing away our bitterness.
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Sleeping it off too.
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LOL This is just too funny! If I ever take the plunge and cross over to the dark side (the bitter side) I will def consider these steps, however it really just seems hypocritical to plan on being bitter and following a manual, if you know what I mean 😉 Great Post! 🙂
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Well, I hope you never have to come to the dark, bitter side. But if you are forced by some crappy thing that happens to you, you will always have this to fall back on.
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Did someone mention pizza and sharing?
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I mentioned pizza and not sharing yes.
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I don’t like the not sharing part.
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All kind of depends on the perspective. I believe that the sharing is pretty good from my perspective.
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It does and since it’s your pizza sharing is good.
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Since it is my pizza, it’s going to remain my pizza.
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Well pft
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#1. I was on the longest_conference_call EVER, so was VERY happy to see you’d posted and I could ignore the people talking (seemingly non-stop) and READ YOUR POST.
#2. This is especially hilarious for me, given that I just wrote an entire rant on my blog about reading the dishwasher manual AND b/c I’m a technical writer. But, that is what Makes The World Go Round: the balance between bitter and adorable.
#3. I have no more to say; I just like to work in threes.
Thanks!
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I can’t even imagine how boring that would have been. I hate meetings more than anything in this world but when you add a conference call to that, you might as well strangle me with a microphone cord. I zone out so much in meetings that I actually wrote a post about how much I hate meetings once and it was one of my mom’s favorites. I don’t envy you at all. I’m so sorry that you work as a manual writer. I think besides my deplorable job as a customer service rep, I think that would be one of my least favorite things to do. At least in the writing arena. You are a brave person for doing that.
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I bet your mom is awesome.
Here’s the dirty little secret about tech writing: you write about how things are supposed to work in a perfect world. It is somewhat dreamy. Customer support? That’s when things are NOT working. I get pissed off every time a customer asks me a question. Trust me: you’re the brave one here.
thanks again for the conference call respite.
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My mom is a little quirky like me, yeah. She has a similar sense of humor, but not near as dark. Though she finds this blog funny, so there’s that.
All I know is that at least you get to write. It would just be cool to write about stuff more creatively. Yeah, customer service sucks. It’s even harder, when you are a bitter person like me. That’s why I got the idea to start a 1-900 line where people would just call and complain about anything and the customer service rep could complain right back. It lets people whine and complain back and forth and it would make me more money, because who doesn’t like to rant and rave to total strangers on the phone?
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Yeah, that’s definitely The Goal — getting to write more creatively.
I LOVE your 1-900#. It was one of the first things I glommed onto about you. BRILLIANT!
There was another guy who used to call people and for 2 minutes, pretend that he was a turtle calling. It was pretty amusing watching people get the call.
I’ve been thinking about how I could sell 1 minute of adorable on the phone. <– dreaming BIG!
Thank you for always writing back. You are an awesome blogger.
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I think the reason the 1-900 thing wouldn’t work, is the fact that I haven’t heard one advertised for years now. But it would still be fun to be one of the first complainer-complainee phone lines.
That turtle thing sounds like a lot of those shows in the 90’s where they would prank people.
Yeah, I always write back. I think it is the key to getting people to comment on your blog in the first place, if they see comments going back and forth. Either that or I just like annoying people that don’t want me to write back.
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haahha. yeah, personally, i’m into people actually talking to me when I talk to them. so, you’re def. not annoying me.
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Yeah, I’m kind of into getting answers when I ask questions. But whatever, some people are weird.
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Hi Ben,
I wanted to give you a bitter blog award. Well, it’s actually not bitter, although I think it might be kind of neat if you had one of those! Unless, you do, and I missed it because I am bitterly blind. Anyway, here ya go 🙂
http://luckywreck.com/2015/02/24/screw-the-oscars-i-got-this-blog-award/
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I actually thought of doing a Bitter Blog Awards a long time ago and was about to do a post about it so many times, but couldn’t think of enough worthy people to recieve the award. I even had a bitter looking logo people could have put on their blog if they wanted, but I think so few really get this blog like you do. You would definitely been worthy of it, despite your upbeatness!
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Thanks Ben! 🙂 I think people would be receptive to a bitter award from you! There has been so much talk of positive thinking and positivity over the past several years. There may just be a bitter backlash!
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Well maybe what I will do is resurrect the idea and just end up giving it to you and making everyone else insanely jealous.
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This could start a bitter bandwagon 😀 (I’m having some fun with the alliteration on these!)
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I’m all for starting a bitter bandwagon. People will roast me as the host of the awards like they did to Neil Patrick Harris of the Oscars.
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Hahaa. That would be so awesome if you bitter hosted the Oscars. 😀
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Actually what we should do is co-host it and call it the Awkward Awards. Everyone would be so uncomfortable, it would end early. So the same as it is now, except it would end early.
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HOLY CRAP! That sounds awesome. I’m starting see an SNL-type skit developing here…
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It would be such an awkward time, the people would love it. And with your infographics, we would make awkward an all time favorite. Let’s do it!
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Yay!! Okay!! I will message you on FB and we can figure it out!
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Awesome. Sounds good!
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Maybe next year, we should co-host a blog post for the Awkward Awards, and give out awards called Bloscers…(or BLAHscers), and people who don’t like to leave their rooms could accept awards in their sweatpants or pajamas. And, it would end early. 😀
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I love the idea, but why wait until next year? That is so many days away. I think we should do it this year. I could write some sort of post and you could do the graphics because you are so amazing at those things. It would be great!
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Yay!! That would be great!!
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Did you read my post from today? I got nominated for bloggy of the year. Can you vote for me? and possibly let others know about it? You know..if it isn’t too awkward for you.
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Yay! I just read it, and it was AWESOME!! So, I voted. And will share, too!
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Awesome, thanks, you’re the best!
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It actually took me closer to 5 minutes to read this blog and I’m certainly not spending another second thinking up a clever comment!!
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Now that is way too much time to spend on this. But at least you didn’t have to read some boring owner’s manual. That would have put you to sleep.
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Zzzzzzz….huh?
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I’ve got a whole slew of other boring posts you can read to put you to sleep tonight.
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Bitter Ben…the cure for insomnia!
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And the cure for overjoy.
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The first .gif picture got my attention. 🙂
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Bosh did that in a interview so I think it was a great idea for someone to put him in that gif. And yeah, I think if I only had more gifs like that, people would read my blog.
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You’re hilarious! I am going to look for the bitter in every situation. Oh and sarcasm. I love it.
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I appreciate you looking for bitterness in all situations. It is a hard thing to, almost as hard as looking for the good in everything, but it is way more fun to be bitter.
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