Audio Transcripts
06/13/107
[Start Program]
(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)
Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.
Well my friends tonight I have another one of those unusual subjects on my mind.
Tonight I want to talk about JERKS.
Not knee-jerks, not beef jerky, but JERKS. Incredibly offensive people who by their words or actions really make your skin crawl every time you see them or hear their names. You know the kind. Can’t live with them, and… as much as we all want to… you can’t shoot them.
Now some people are naturally-born jerks. They instinctively know what to say or what to do that will guarantee pissing people off, or at least rubbing them the wrong way. Bill O’Reilly quickly comes to mind, but there are pretty of people who also qualify, and some of them are real journalists and not pretend ones like O’Reilly.
The rest, though, have to actually WORK at being a jerk. It’s not in their better nature. They try to be a jerk, but they’re not really good at it because they don’t know how to do it.
So for those people, they need a little help. That’s where I come in. I’m here to show you what it takes to be a REAL jerk.
You’re probably wondering WHY anyone would consciously want to be a jerk, right? Well, I’ll get into that in a bit. Sufficient to say, though, once I do explain it, you’ll understand why being a jerk is so prevalent in our society.
Now before we go any further, a little disclaimer: despite what some people may think, I’m really not a jerk. I’m willing to play one on TV if the price is right, but being a jerk is just not in my nature. It’s one of those rare times where being a nice guy has its advantages. But I’ve been in this horror show that I call a life for forty years now, and I think at this point I’ve picked up enough observational tips from other people about how to be a REAL jerk that I can pass along to those of you who need a little help.
First of all, being a jerk is all about self-importance. This is more than just being self-centered or selfish. Being self-important means promoting yourself through your words and especially by deeds as being the end-all-be-all in society. You’re not just in your own world… you’re forcing everyone else to live in it too.
Paris Hilton and the rest of the “celebutantes” are the best examples of this. What do they do? Seriously, what the hell do they do with their lives? Apparently their whole day revolves around being seen and being photographed by the media. Why the hell do you think that Paris Hilton flipped out when she went to jail? It was because it was the first time in her life that she wasn’t the center of attention. Her world essentially ENDED behind bars.
Now obviously Paris Hilton is the most extreme case, but hers is also the best example of this idea of self-importance.
Okay, some of you are well on your way to being a jerk if you have either a truck or an urban assault vehicle. Once upon a time the sports car was a guaranteed sign of jerkiness, but today’s jerks are more turned on by POWER and SIZE than with speed. They learned that you can be an even bigger jerk inside a bigger vehicle.
But it’s not enough to simply have the vehicle. Anyone can get a jerk-mobile. It is how you USE that jerk-mobile that makes it one. You have to actually use that vehicle’s size to your advantage. Be intimidating. Start edging up behind smaller vehicles as a way to get them to move faster. You don’t have to actually hit them. Just scare them a bit. Rev up the engine while waiting for that light to change. Let them know that they have a MONSTER on their ass!
Add in the ear-shattering sound system and crank it up until everyone in a five-block radius can hear what kind of music you like. And then roll up the windows so that there is only the vibration from the beat. Guaranteed they’ll notice you then!
Be quick on the horn! If the light is green and the people in front of you haven’t moved yet, they certainly will afterwards. That is what the horn was meant for, right? To piss people off so they will get the hell out of your way!
Be an aggressive driver. Go dodging and weaving through those lanes like you’re in NASCAR. Don’t get into the appropriate lane to make your turn until the very last moment. Oh, and be sure to take full advantage of all of the technological goodies while driving. You have to show people that you’re important by doing multiple things while driving! Sure it causes other people around you to have accidents, but, hey, they’re not important. You are! Besides, you have the bigger and safer vehicle! You’ll survive the wreck. And isn’t that what INSURANCE is for anyway?
The other reason why you need the larger vehicle is to take full advantage of its size when you go looking for a parking space! Why worry about other people dinging your doors when you can have TWO spaces all to yourself? That’s not hard to pull off either as today’s pickup trucks and urban assault vehicles are as wide as or wider than most parking spaces.
Here’s the trick: when you find two adjacent empty parking spaces, don’t pull FORWARD into one of them. Go past it and then BACK into it! And be sure to straddle both spaces when you do. But don’t pull it right over the middle of the stripe. Make it look like you “tried” but just couldn’t do it. That way you have all the space in the world to open those doors and climb out of your large vehicle. Oh, and extra credit if you can do all this while chugging a Frappuccino and chatting on your cellphone.
I’m sure you’ve caught the natural-born jerks in the supermarket. They’re the ones who will treat the free samples as an all-you-can-eat buffet. They’ll hit up the fresh fruit section and “sample” the grapes and cherries, putting some of them in their hands so they can make their way over to the next isle. They will also be the ones to let their kids roam around with their little “heelie” skates. They’ll show up at the express lane with a full cart of groceries AND will want to pay by a third-party check when the sign clearly says “CASH ONLY”.
As I mentioned earlier, jerks love playing with techno-toys. Cellphones, blackberries, Bluetooth headsets, GPA devices… if it looks cool, they want it. They really don’t know how it all works, and they usually don’t bother to read the instructions that come with the toys. That means they usually call on someone like me to help them… and then I have to tell them to read that frigging manual of theirs! But when it does work, they are pretty much oblivious to everything else around them. They’ll carry on with cellphone calls like the rest of us are just annoyances to their lives. I’ve seen one jerk carry on a full-blown screaming and cursing argument with his family through his cellphone in the middle of a crowded restaurant, and then he acted like WE were the ones intruding on HIS life! Now THAT is some serious jerkiness!
Now, a lot of really good ways of being a jerk exist at work. Again, I’ll explain why in a bit.
The best way of being a jerk at work is to do there what you do on the roads… OWN the passageways! Make sure as you’re walking down the corridors with your friends and coworkers that you take up ALL the available space in that passageway. Don’t move into a single file just because some peon is coming up the opposite way. Let THEM move out of the way for you!
Hey, if you and your buddies can saunter down the hallway like the Magnificent Seven and force someone coming the other way to duck into a nearby cubicle or into the nearest office or bathroom, then you’ve clearly attained jerkiness! And bonus points for you if you can force them into the bathroom of the opposite gender!
Oh, and speaking of roads, real jerks know that the best parking spaces at work are the ones that say “Visitors only”. Well, unless you can forge a handicap permit. Real jerks don’t park out in the boonies when there are plenty of open visitor’s parking spaces just waiting for them to use.
Jerks, of course, love to talk about family achievements to anyone who is nearby. Their children’s causes are THEIR causes, and thus they become the #1 cause at work. Girl Scout cookies sales, magazine subscriptions, hey, you’re going to make sure that your child gets that pizza party if you have to browbeat every employee in the building three times to do it!
Jerks are ever the office diplomat. They can share and confide in every secret they get their hands on. If they hear something about you, then guaranteed they will not only make sure that YOU know about it, but they’ll make sure that everyone else knows it too. Oh, but it wouldn’t come “from them”!
Jerks are also very frugal. They know a really great way to save some extra cash. Instead of spending money on lunch, they just raid the little refrigerator that always seems to be full of food. Granted, the food has other people’s names on them, but, hey, if they REALLY wanted to make sure that nobody else would eat their food, then they should get their own little refrigerator for their cubicle or office! Communal refrigerator, communal food; how hard is that?
I hope you guys are taking notes on all these things…
Oh, and when dealing with support people, such as technical support, ALWAYS impress upon them the absolute URGENCY of your problem, no matter how slight the problem really is. You see… in world of a real jerk, EVERY problem is a priority one problem! That’s the only way that things get done. And NEVER let them downgrade your priority one problem! Take it up the executive ladder if you have to but make sure that your problem is resolved before anything else is.
Be sure to ask a lot of really simple and really stupid questions too. Make sure that your support people have a COMPLETE understanding of every nuance of the item in question, what it does, and how it works, so they can explain it to you as they’re busy trying to fix that priority one problem of yours.
And be sure to demand an immediate ETA of getting your priority one problem finished! You don’t want to hear vague terms like “as soon as we can”. No, you want a SPECIFIC time. Say, for instance, by 1pm, and not a second later! And you don’t want to hear about variables, such as when other people can do certain portions of the task. Real jerks don’t believe in middlemen… unless, of course, they’re middlemen themselves. As soon as you hear about middlemen, you should talk openly about how if you were in charge of things that you would FIRE all of the middlemen and have people work directly for other people… well, unless you are a middleman yourself, in which case YOUR job would still be intact, but the OTHER middlemen would be out of a job.
Now there’s one other crucial element with being a real jerk in the workplace. You have to make sure that you are not a jerk in front of your boss. This is what separates the posers from the real thing. It’s one thing to be a jerk in front of coworkers and subordinates. It’s another to do so in front of the people who are responsible for signing your paychecks and who hold your future promotions in their hands.
Okay, so you’re probably wondering at this point WHY someone would actually WANT to be a jerk, right?
Well let’s get brutally honest here… the reason why people are jerks is because jerkiness is REWARDED in our society!
We actually promote jerks for their diligence. Executives mistakenly equate the aggressive tendencies of jerks as sound management skills. Heck, many of them are jerks themselves! Jerks get promotions. Nice guys get layoffs.
Jerks get reality TV shows. Nice guys just watch as the jerks get transformed into superstar status and keep on hoping that those jerks will someday get their “just deserts”… and then wonder why that never happens.
Despite the endless complaints made about them, jerks have no problem whatsoever getting into relationships. The jerks get laid, and the nice guys just get screwed over.
Look at all the primadonna jerks in entertainment that make unrealistic demands for their brief appearance. Singers and starlets alike. Some of them request enough food, flowers, and electronic equipment to start their own hotel chain, and that’s all for a lousy thirty-minute appearance at best, and 99% of the stuff will go unused. But they’ll get all of that and then some, and then we will fawn over their appearances and still buy their albums, watch their movies, and pay obscene amounts of money for their concerts without even a second thought about it.
We tolerate jerks. We have to… we can’t shoot them on sight. We’d call it justice, but the law would call it murder. Plus we can’t really shoot the jerks that sign our paychecks and keep our jobs intact.
And then, of course, there is the ultimate of twists… the only way that you can really BEAT a jerk is to become an even BIGGER jerk! Talk about hypocrisy. And even then you can’t really win, because the only jerk that ends up getting punished at that point is you… because you’re not used to being a jerk, and the other guy probably has YEARS of experience at it.
But the truth of the matter is that we NEED jerks for a few things. We need jerks to be our investigators and our consumer reporters. They’re the ones who cut through the crap and see through the lies. We need jerks to fight for us when we are screwed over… usually by other jerks. We need them to represent us in our screwed-up legal system and to fight for us against the bureaucracy created by other jerks. Whether we like it or not, jerks ARE a necessary evil in our society…
… We just never established when they are no longer “necessary”.
(Computer – some stuff… if you never heard it, you might as well start now…)
(Fade Music In – “In Amber Clad” by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori)
The purpose of this rant, of course, was not to glorify jerks, but rather to remind us all of how the little things we do turn us into jerks. It happens to us all at some point, and while most of us eventually back away from the edge, there are a few who relish role and make it a habit in their daily lives to be annoying and abrasive.
We are the ones who foster the idea that jerkiness is okay when we condone their actions instead of confronting them when they happen. The problem, of course, is that being nice guys we are, we naturally expect the system to correct these things. We don’t realize that the system can’t correct these things when jerkiness is considered the norm. And it gets that way when we condone and even reward their actions.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.” Or so said a certain carpenter’s kid.
Unfortunately for us, that same man was later taken away, whipped like a company mule, stripped to his skivvies, and then nailed to a huge wooded “T” until he died. And all of it was done at the hands of and the specific request by a bunch of real Grade-A JERKS!
(Pause)
Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!
(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)
[End of program]
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