Oddball Update

WHOA! I’M POSTING SOMETHING! …But seriously. The latest developments in the ongoing drama at Apple’s workplace have proven fascinating, so I thought I would clue you in.

Herein, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll introduce you to to the concept of the Malevolent Management Moppet, or “Connie” as I have nicknamed her, who plays at running the restaurant where Apple works. To say nothing of her professional ability, Connie is the worst type of person — socially — that you could ever dream of meeting. A classic, drama-infused, backstabbing bitch of the highest order, she can be satisfied with nothing less than total superiority, which she often gets by belittling each and everyone around her to prop up her own incompetence.

In recent weeks, the drumbeat of disdain at the restaurant has reached a fever pitch. According to reports, there is now not a single employee left who harbors any modicum of respect for Connie, and many of them are actively avoiding her altogether — including the restuarant owner. On a typical day, this owner can be found working at another branch of his business, but he calls the restaurant often to check in on things. Normally he asks for Connie, but lately, he’s been asking to speak to other employees instead, suggesting he no longer trusts anything that comes out of Connie’s mouth. Longtime employees note that this precedented behavior is a telltale sign that the owner has reached his last straw with the manager.

And it’s not hard to see why.

Connie spends most of her time infating her own ego and ensuring the perception of her social and professional superiority. She counts on a staff that’s dumber than herself so that she can control them, and as in Apple’s case, she cuts back the hours of any employees who are intelligent enough to threaten her facade of competence. She blusters about being the only capable person on the staff, no matter what the task at hand is — payroll management, customer handling, reservation booking, supply management, etc. — regardless of the fact that she is largely clueless about most of the above. In reality, Connie’s entire crew of employees are the ones who get things done, solve problems and generally help the restaurant owner succeed at his business. When Connie cluelessly throws up her arms and passes the buck to somebody else, which happens often, it’s these “somebody elses” who are there to save the day.

In return? Connie snarks about these employees’ perceived buffoonery behind their backs, at every chance she gets. With a straight face, she’ll tell Employee A that Employee B is an idiot and that anyone capable of breathing oxygen could fill their position. She’ll complain that her assistant manager and the office staff don’t know what they’re doing and cause all kinds of problems with payroll and accounting, when Connie is usually the one who doesn’t know what she’s doing with the topics in question. Her criticism spares no one, including Apple, the assistant manager, and the owner.

And me. Connie’s latest diatribe is that I screwed up the computer in the back office, and that when she tasked me with finding a replacement PC in two days’ time (over a weekend, to be precise) and with a drastically limited budget, the machine I chose was “incompatible” with their POS (point of sale) software. Apparently I’ve made her job harder and wasted the restaurant’s money.

Some points:

• When I was asked to procure a new computer, Connie herself told me that the restaurant owner was a tightwad and that she was sick of him, and didn’t care how we spent his money.
• Connie and the office staff never bothered to make any backups of the POS system, so that when their existing computer failed, there was no choice but to make a snap decision and buy a shitty, cheapass replacement machine locally in a store.
• I spent several hours a night over several days carefully scanning, recovering and transferring personal data from the failing hard drive of their old PC to their new one, when I could have just said “fuck it.”
• The hospitality consulting firm who created the restaurant’s antiquated DOS-based POS system personally told the office staff that there were no compatibility issues with the shitty, cheapass computer I bought for them.
• When the shitty, cheapass replacement computer started to crash and act in bizarre ways I’d never seen before, I spent several weekends of my personal time attempting to fix it, and being unsuccessful, presented the option to have the machine repaired by the vendor (as the return period had expired just a week earlier). Connie told us not to bother.
• Acting in good faith and doing my best to avoid disrupting the restaurant’s payroll operations, I replatformed my custom Falcon Northwest rig — the one that cost me $7,000 new — and gave it to them at no charge, along with one of my personal Windows OS licenses. They are still running payroll operations on that machine to this day.
• As a result of my due diligence, the restaurant’s POS and payroll operations were never disrupted.
• Connie’s job is not any harder than it was before the original computer crashed, because things now are exactly as they were then — just on a different computer. Not to mention that Connie herself can’t even figure out how to turn the goddamned machine off, much less work the POS system that she complains is so much harder to use, the stupid fuck.

Connie’s salvaging of her own reputation by tarnishing mine is just par for the course with her, and is even something which I had expected to happen, after all that Apple has been telling me about the sad old wretch. To be honest, I’m not even angry. I’m so beyond “not caring” at this point that it seems more comical to me than anything. To watch a rotted, stinking example of humanity follow the social example set by so many assholes before her is just an occasion to shake one’s head and say, “Well, there’s yet another shining gift to society.” Any further moments spent analyzing corrupt, doddering old Connie are moments you will never get back from your precious lifetime, and the oxygen you will suck during those moments would be better used to breathe life into the lungs of convicted criminals.

And so, the hijinks continue. Connie will keep plodding along on her usual course, shirking her responsibilities and then badmouthing the employees that pick up her slack and clean up her mess. She’ll continue to hire illegal workers on one hand (”Just use somebody else’s social security number”) and get the restaurant into an audit situation, and then on the other hand, she’ll elect not to hire a hardworking Hispanic man because, and I quote, “There’s enough Spanish here already.” A woman full of conundrums and contradictions, she has succeeded in making life so miserable for everyone else in the company that she no longer has any clout left.

That’s where the danger arises. I feel now that the owner has almost no choice but to fire Connie as soon as possible, because the gig really is up. Connie’s figured out that she’s on borrowed time over there, since no one, even her boss, will give her the time of day. Given her conniving ways — and the fact that she likes to threaten anyone of differing opinion with a visit by her “world-famous” defense attorney son — there’s no discounting the possibility that she might deliberately try to screw the restaurant, “taking it with her,” so to speak, if she suspects her firing is imminent. Before she has that chance, they need to kick her ass to the curb. As I understand it, the reams of records documenting the restuarant’s loss of revenue and other failures during Connie’s tenure provide a perfectly reasonable — and legal — demonstration of her incompetence, leading to a loss of employment.

Until then, the tale of the Malevolent Management Moppet marches on, and a conclusion — positive or disastrous — rapidly draws near.

Categorized as Life, Rants