I hate [over-testosteroned] coworkers

It's the same with every male who sees all of life's tasks as an opportunity to prove how big their sack is.

Last Tuesday I was greeted by an e-mail in my company inbox alerting me to the fact that I had not yet turned in stats for the month of August:

Brian,
August Stats? – Routinely asking for a routine responsibility is something I do not relish.
-J/M

Just so the back story is clear, at my program I wear many hats that are commonly worn by at least four people in other [similar]ageny programs: Coordinator, Operations Mangager, Secretary, and ADL Specialist. For whatever reason, as time passes this list of responsibilities becomes longer and longer. The result is that new tasks may take a bit to become integrated into my routine. Such is the case with this census.

Weighing the options of addressing the author of this e-mail directly or reporting it to our administrator, I decided that the best option would be to forward the e-mail with an explination of my error to our boss and let it play out in her office.

Soon after recieving the forwarded message, my boss called and appologized for the condescending tone of my co-workers e-mail. As an administrator, she is very effective in chanelling criticism in an effective way so I was confident when she told me that she would address the situation. I voiced my concern that the feedback I recieved from Mr. Condescending is counter-effective and pointed out that this is the second time since June that I have received such treatment from this specific co-worker; the first being the hateful comment: " I just don't understand why Gays had to take a great English word to identify with. I mean Lesbians made up their own word, now I can't use the word gay without sounding like a bigot. Get your own word." Right. The gays made you a bigot. And lesbians made up the word. Right. Great logic Mr. Robertson.

I digress.

I became aware on the following Thursday that Mr. Testosterone had received a tongue lashing from the Boss-lady. The result was him storming off and hitting another co-worker's parked car in the company lot. Karma is a real bitch and her timing is impeccable because this little deboccle prevented him from addressing my whistle blowing. Until yesterday.

I was high on anxiety when he asked me to stop by his office. I was expecting something along the lines of an appology. I should've realized it was too much to ask from a man so chock full o' testosterone that he can shit standing up.

What I recieved was: "Brian... I was suprised when I found out that you had forwrded that e-mail to LM. You always claim to hate passive-agressive tactics. What you have effectively done is made it nessecary for me to go directly to LM everytime that I find you not doing your job."

When I picked my jaw up off of the floor, I let the a-hole know why I thought the e-mail was offensive and why I had made the decision to involve our administrator. His reply: "Well, not even speaking as a manager or co-worker, some advice that I can give you is to grow thicker skin." He then proceded to explain to me what sarcasm was and that it was not the intention of his original message to be sarcastic, followed by the editorial that the method of education of which I am a product ("touchy-feely") is slowly being shown to be ineffective.

So it looks like growing a thick skin is the only answer.

I think, had my blood pressure increased anymore, that my heart may have exploded. Instead of continuing to talk to this brick wall, I let him know that we should agree to disagree.

What I didn't say: "Everyone here hates you because you're a pompass asshole whose 'experiential' anecdotes are the reason you've been stuck in middle management you entire life!"

The more I revist the conversation in my head, the more I am tempted to file the formal complaint that I didn't when he made the "gays" comment.

It's scary to have people in the world that are full of themselves they fail to see other ways of doing things. Very scary.