You'll find them almost anywhere you need to interact with people: Grocery stores, College registrar's offices, beached like a sunbathing elephant seal in front of your boss's desk. Yes, I'm talking about secretaries, or as they're known today, "executive assistants."
Their job is supposedly to make shit easier. Organize business flows, facilitate meetings, blah blah fucking blah. All this exposure to people who actually matter seems to get to their heads though, and after a while they suffer the persistent delusion that THEY are actually the one's responsible for quality checking the targeting modules of ballistic missile systems (or something like that)--To this I say: "No bitch! you're not! Now go get me a fucking cup of tea!"
Please don't misunderstand me, some secretaries rock. Particularly the ones who bond with me-- the IT guy who doesn't share some of their fellow secretarial delusions of grandeur and realizes my only role in this big shadowy game we play is nothing more than a digital maintenance man-- and go to lunch with me to bitch about the assholes we work with. Sadly, this particular species of self-aware woman (and yes, secretaries are almost 100% women. Welcome to the glass ceiling corporate culture, now shut up and make me a sandwich) is all too rare. As a rough order of magnitude, i'd place the cool secretaries at 1 out of 10. This indicate that 9 of those 10 are vapid vacuums of food, intellect, and common courtesy. Take for example this recent episode:
I arrive at an office to drop of three, count 'em THREE, cardboard boxes of backup tapes. Not very large, and not very heavy for one of the local executives (read: someone who matters) to pick up at her convenience. Of course, one secretary is on the phone jabbing like an evangelist at a revival meeting, totally ignoring the fact that i'm right in front of her on the other side of a glass door, frantically stabbing my ineffectual finger into the door bell. 5 minutes pass, useless bitch #2 walks to the door, swings it open, and points a small device at me. "that buzzing means it's open!" She shouts, angered that she had to rouse herself from her nest in the burrows of the cubicle farms. Little did she know that I was quickly able to identify the small device as a remote door trigger, otherwise i would've had to disable her ninja-style (instant decapitation followed by punting the head into the closest waste-basket).
Rather than face further interaction with the she-beast, i cocked my head to the side, said "that's nice" and carried the boxes away from her to the other secretary who quickly got off the phone.
"these are for someone who matters, which is neither of you. tell me where i can deposit these so i can go away and purge the images of you from my memory with alcohol before they set in too deep." Okay, this probably wasn't the best way to put it, but i was understandably upset.
The she-beast doesn't go run away like a smart bottom-of-the-food-chain mammal in close proximity to the Lion of the executive support veldt (that's me). Instead, she interjects her fat ass and tells me "we don't have room for those."
DING DING DING!! We have acquired target. Engines at full, load all torpedoes, engage motherfucker, ENGAGE!!!
"These boxes each takes up 32 cubic inches. Somehow, in that small space, they manage to perform more activity to the company's benefit than you have ever or will ever do. You are a waste of flesh and precious oxygen. You will find the space, even if it displaces you from your underground lair. Now go away before i have to scrape your remains from the bottom of my shoe."
Thank god i'm smarter than everyone else.
--HK_Newbie
