I Get a Link! Work-Friendly and Work-Angry

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From Work-Friendly


Over coffee last week, a guy I know was describing his separation from a startup. At first he called it “friendly.” When we went into more detail, he elaborated with “Well, it was only work-friendly.”

I just found myself using work-angry in a post, and it took me a second to figure out where it came from.

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Pissed: Day Seven, or Revenge is a Dish Best Served with a Merlot (Which Means It's Not Much of a Dish)

Don't get mad, get even. Right?

Not really. I suppose if one is actually injured, one's career derailed, one's character defamed as clearly defined under law, then well yes:

Wait by the trail and pounce.

But, if as in my case last week, it's really just a bruise to the ego, a moment of disrespect, better to concentrate on grading stories and preparing for the fantasy league draft. One mustn't let all that testosterone go to one's head. (Make that "ascend." Good to remember where it originates.)

So many of these "man" moments just get you into trouble. I was talking with E. this morning about the football players missing in the Gulf of Mexico. She wondered why they didn't turn toward shore once the wind started to kick up, and the waves to rise.

"Well," I said, "when you've got a small group of guys, the courage of the most courageous is the courage of the group."

And then I thought and then I said. "Or, to put it another way, the foolishness of the most foolish is the wisdom of the group."

Because who wants to be the wuss who says I'm getting a little scared; let's get the hell out of here.

It's a man thing. You wouldn't understand. Wait a minute. Yes, you would, my very darling dear.

So we circle back to the notion of the absence of anger and the concomitant necessity for revenge. Heck, I'm not even angry, just pissed off, and the latter phrase makes a fine distinction, rich in connotation of the maleness of the impulse, the hyper-sensitivity.

"You talkin' to me?" That kind of thing.

Also, how many of us have carefully and obsessively planned on handing it back, slight for slight, and then actually carried out that plan? Sounds like work to me. Better just to behave in a generally disagreeable way to everyone, always staying just a little bit ahead of the game.

Postscript:

Yeah. Yeah.

Pissed: Day Four

I got my first Cool Greeting out of the way today: a quick walk-by, a clipped expulsion of surname only.

There's an etiquette to being pissed, or perhaps I should say a range of options. Oh, you want it out there. Having it out there avoids the need for clarifying emails. There's the Look Away or the Cold Stare, but they are a little more melodramatic than I can easily manage. If you can't nail it, forgo it, I say.

Indeed, I'm stuck with the Cool Greeting because I can't manage the more substantial Cold Greeting, nor the stinging Derisive Greeting so ably practiced by Jerry Seinfeld, which was only a counterfeit after all, an actor's trick.

Heck, saying someone's last name the way Jerry said, "Newman" is an invitation to share the joke, absolutely collegial.

So it's a fine line, but I'm doing my best. Or to put it another way: still pissed.

Pissed

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Some people can't hold their liquor. I can't hold my anger. Yesterday I became very very angry with ....

It doesn't matter. Not with my wife. She's the one saying: "Rage, rage, my king. In some instances, anger is simple self-respect. Turn the other cheek, but as the country preacher said, 'That third lick is yourn.'"

But this morning I've lost my head of steam. Still, one recalls Frost.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.