The little things that make your day

All the problems make me wanna go
Like a bad girl straight to video

Little darling, welcome to the show
You're a failure played in stereo

No, above text really has nothing to do with the rest of this, just listening to Mindless Self Indulgence's 'Straight To Video'. Good stuff, that.

So this day has been strange. Strange, as in multiple incidents that, on their own, would have made me raise my eyebrow.

Okay, bad metaphor, since I seem to have a constant arrogant frown anyway.

So, here's what's up:

1) Work. My former teamleader (whom I've had since I started at my job mack in march) quit in end january, to move to Australia. It's a pity, since I honestly respected him. Sure, he might have been marginally influenced by the weed he homegrew, but honestly I always considered him the example that you can indeed smoke a reasonable amount of joints and still be sharp. Also, he was considerate and willing to find solutions to most any problem that might arise at work, from work schedules, to strange solutions to strange problems. Most of all, he cared for the people that worked under him.
The new teamleader I got, was an old friend of him, and initially I considered him the complete opposite. Streamlined, goal-oriented and utterly professional. I was wrong about him, which took less than a week to discover. He had almost the same traits as my former teamleader, except he smoked a good deal less weed. I had a talk with him today, from my side because I wanted to explain why I have some trouble meeting on time. Meeting at 2 in the afternoon doesn't help one bit if you're still not asleep at 8 AM, or have already woken up multiple times due to nightmares. He listened, thought, and came with suggestions. He cared, and wanted to help find a workable solution.

Moreoever, after having been teamleader for less than 3 weeks, he also told me that he's leaving the company at the end of the month. He's been offered a position in another company that he felt too good to pass up on. Naturally, he felt somewhat bad about having just taken over this job, and then leaving, but one has to do what's right for one self. I understand him, and wish him all well the new place.

And then he said something that I wasn't entirely prepared for;

"If I was in your situation, I would file an application for the position".

In truth, I want that position. I am not entirely certain if I'd be qualified for it, having had no formal management training, but he struck a nerve. I considered applying for the position when my former TL left us, but turned it down on the grounds that I wasn't sure what I actually wanted to do. I do now.

I'll need to mull over this for a while, because I'm worried how I'll react to the rejection in case I apply and get turned down. It's obviously not the end of the world, but it's easier to slack and set the goals low, because that way you don't get disappointed. Problem is, I've done that for a long time, emotionally as well. Maybe it's time for a change.

My qualities?

1) I know what I'm doing as it is now, so I know what to expect of those who'd work under me.
2) I wouldn't ask them to do something I know I couldn't. Easy, since pretty much anything we can get tossed in our face, I've already had happen, from Backbones tilting, gateways dieing horribly and mailservers discarding usernames + passwords.
3) I care for the workplace, and those working there.
4) It'd be one fuck of a PR-stunt from their side, to show that they encourage development and growith internally in the department. God, I'd feel nauseatingly good about being the poster child for the company *coughs*.
5) I have informal management experience from work, from several occasions where things simply were going to fall apart unless I intervened.

Cons:
1) No management diplomas.
2) Not sure whether leadership experience from EVE Online really counts that much, although I could point out that I have people skills.
3) It could be strange having colleagues that'd now take directions from me.
4) Morning shifts.
5) Would you be able to take directions from a guy with purple hair?

All in all, it's started a minor avalanche of thoughts in me. Would I be able to streamline and lead people I consider more than colleagues? I actually don't know. But admitting to myself, I want to find out how I'd handle it.

That was the first thing.

Second off; going for an after-work beer with one of my good colleagues, went to the local bar. Ran into some semi-colleagues that work on the Dell Dimension assignment. One of them, whom I periphally know (from having run into him a few times), greeted me as I walked in. My glasses were fogging a bit, so I looked around a little confused; for some reason he took this as a sign to jokingly say "Hey, don't look at me like you don't know me, we've run into each other enough times!". He sounded like he was joking when he said it.
Honestly, I only know what assignment he works on, never even heard the guy's name before, and looking through fogged glasses makes it pretty damn hard to discern anything but rough size and possibly gender of the person in front of you.
Picking up on the joke, I asked him to repeat what he said.

And that's when things took a turn for the strange.

Being confronted with what he said, although I honestly did not even stab it in his eye or sneer at him, I apparantly had mortally insulted him? He began inquiring as to why I thought he'd said that, and how he would never have said anything like that. The more he proclaimed, the more agitated and wounded he became. After about 30 seconds of rambling, he stated that if I indeed thought he had said that, then I had issues trusting people, since he would never say something like that. Odd thing is, the guy standing next to me (both of us sober, while the Dell guy was heavily inebriated) had also heard him saying it. I tried to tell him that it was indeed what I had heard, but I had thought he had meant it as a joke, which for some reason infuriated the guy even further. At this point I considered simply turning around and walking away, but stubbornness, and to some extent, annoyance that a sober person apparantly hears *worse* than a drunk-off-his-ass person does, made me force the issue and tell him that I did indeed hear him saying so, and that I had taken it as a joke.
This was the point where he began to look decidedly bitter and resentful, while mumbling through a sentence that I assume implied that I was a horrible person to even imply that he would judge people based on their looks...Where the hell he got that notion from, is beyond my reasoning. After a bit less than ten minutes of listening to him (while waiting for a beer), my patience was about worn out, and I intently turned away, ignored him and walked off to a nearby table.

I'm unsure as to whether I'm looking forward to seeing him at work on monday, or whether I hope he'll hide away from the abject nonsense he spouted.

Final straw: Sitting down at a table with my colleague, and setting up a dice game with some guy from the same building we work in. Nice guy with a white tie, no problems, but his colleague (whom I've blissfully never met) obviously had something to get off his mind. Staggering into the table, he started muttering about how he was going to get beaten up when he left the bar, and how we should follow him outside to help him. This guy looked like someone who got rejected for the casting of the "I must be Emo" video, and his rather whiny attitude made me want to toss my beer in his face and tell him to grow a pair and stop fucking whining.
Eventually, the tie-guy apparantly rejected this drunken excuse for an emo sufficiently, so emo-boy attempts to stand up, yells "you fucking owe me one, now I'm gonna get beat up outside!" and kicks a chair in towards the table.
Incidentally clipping my knee with it.

Not that it hurt significantly, but I was tempted to stand up and inform him that he wouldn't have to walk outside to get the snot kicked out of him.

God damn sufferjunkie.

Obviously, I have people skills. Especially how kindly I portray people when they annoy me even in the slightest.

And now? Off to bed, because in less than 7 hours, I'm going to be rising to greet the new day, and another glorious workshift. How fortunate I am.