More Lessons in Corporate Douchery: Bitch Soup

The day after taking a single day off is rough. And I have an attitude problem which culminated in a coworker commenting, "Seems like you had Bitch Soup for lunch today."Wait. Did he just say that? 

This is from 2003? Bitch Soup. And bad sunglasses. 

Sunday night I got an email from the CTO and my former boss, Marty. Marty can be an intimidating guy, but he laughs at my jokes and thinks I'm smarter than I really am so I like him. His email came in with the subject "Need an update on xxxxx by first thing tomorrow." As I was taking yesterday off, I prepared what he needed and sent it over, closing my email with:

I'm out tomorrow, so hopefully this gets you what you need. If not, give me a call on my cell, but I'll assume it's because you hate me, my birthday, and happiness.

He responded within about 30 minutes asking more questions and closing his email:

I don’t hate you, I just need you. I just sent an audit memo to DT- we have a SPOF (you). 

He uses the acronyms to annoy me. He knows I have no idea what he's saying so I will make it up.

I don't know who DT is....
Or what SPOF means. Supreme Promoter Of Fun? Sassy Purchaser Of Flan?
Are you calling me a Single Point of Failure?  

I know that my personality at work can be abrupt. I get very busy and I don't take the time for email pleasantries. I say "please" and "thank you" but I rarely ask how your weekend was or what you like to do for fun. It's not that I'm unfriendly, it's that I'm busy and I don't know why I need to coax someone into getting down to business.

The manager of another department has given me a hard time for frightening her people. I always explain that I don't have time to hug everyone when I get to work. I really thought she was mostly joking until today she basically asked me not to talk to her staff about anything except their basic job function anymore. I'm absolutely over-reacting, but here are snippets:

Me (to one of her employees, with her cc'd): Do you think instead of sending everyone to me when they have a problem you could help train them? blah blah blah Please don't misinterpret my tone as snotty. I'm not being snotty. I'm asking for help. 

<insert annoying exchange of emails and conversion where I try to explain that I'm just awkwardly asking for help>

Manager: If you have to put "I don't mean to be snotty" in an e-mail to someone on my team, don't send it to them, send it to me instead and I'll deal with the issue.... you knew you were coming across snotty and I just think it's better to treat people in a "not" snotty way. :-) 

Pot? This is kettle. Kettle used a smilie emoticon. Noted. Which is how I replied: "Noted." No smilie.

While "snotty" isn't the worst thing I've been called (nor wholly inaccurate), it was the exact opposite of what I was aiming for which is what made it all the more infuriating. (I know I failed. I can read what they're reading, but I couldn't come up with the words that conveyed the message so I tried to convey the tone.)

That leads into my call with Emmett at the end of the day. Emmett and I have worked together for 10+ years and he's one of my favorites. I was trying to keep the conversation on track so I could get off the phone and I heard my impatient tone so I apologized. "I'm sorry. Rough day." Followed by his response, "Seems like you had Bitch Soup for lunch today."

And I paused. Quietly indignant.

And then I laughed. Waaay too loudly for cubicle-land. And I asked him what was in Bitch Soup and it lead to an extended joke that was definitely inappropriate for cubicle-land.

Because when the pot calls the kettle black, you make Bitch Soup.