left in the wrong world part 24

this is my last monday in columbus. and i think i might actually be a little sad leaving here. most notably, i'll miss comments like this:

“liberals are fucking crazy – they’ll come up to your car and punch your window in! so I don’t dare put any bumper stickers on my car.”

left in the wrong world part 23

i'm so happy that there are people out there who never see the bad side of things... never see poverty and addiction and lack of education and failure. they don't know heartache and loss and trauma and understand mental illness. i have always said i wish i was dumber. i wish i knew less and thought only of myself. maybe then hearing people say things like this won't upset me:

"You have to work hard and give all that money to losers who can’t make it on their own."

left in the wrong world part 22

this is a train wreck and i can't stop watching it - thanks to boingboing. it is from, of course, the borders here in columbus - last week sp was in town to sign her new book. tell me if this doesn't make you sad...

its a bit long, but worth every second...

left in the wrong world part 22

overheard at work the other day, discussing obama and his administration in washington:

"He’s gotten everyone to be programmed to think like him. Now no one thinks for themselves. They’re just programmed robots."

"Yeah, it’s all this group-think shit."

can we say no more arigato, mr. roboto?

left in the wrong world part 21

overheard at work yesterday evening:

“By the time Obama gets done with this economy, we couldn’t get into the EU!”

“You know how we say that we don’t want to be Western Europe? Pretty soon people will say they don’t want to be the US!”

i'm pretty sure no one said that for the previous 8 years...

left in the wrong world part 20

admittedly, i overheard only the end of this conversation:

coworker 1: "...every actor is liberal – what do you watch?"
coworker 2: “yeah, like george clooney. i can’t watch him. i can’t watch 30 rock because of tina fey.”

believe it or not, i actually respect this. at least he has some principles. or is it principals? your principal is your PAL. i know that much... i'm just sad they're not watching 30 rock.

left in the wrong world part 19

imagine i work at a bakery. so the head guy is the head chef. and other important people are sous-chefs. i felt a little awkward yesterday when the head sous-chef (read: second in charge) handed this out to all the employees - yes, i do mean printed an individual copy for everyone.

Subject: LETTER FROM AN EXCELLENT BOSS

Dear Employees:

As the CEO of this organization, I have resigned myself to the fact that Barrack Obama is our President and that our taxes and government fees will increase in a BIG way. To compensate for these increases, our prices would have to increase by about 10%. But since we cannot increase our prices right now due to the dismal state of the economy, we will have to lay off sixty of our employees instead. This has really been bothering me since I believe we are family here and I didn't know how to choose who would have to go.

So, this is what I did. I walked through our parking lots and found sixty "Obama" bumper stickers on our employees' cars and have decided these folks will be the ones to let go. I can't think of a more fair way to approach this problem. They voted for change... I gave it to them.

I will see the rest of you at the annual company picnic.

THE BOSS

i can't make this stuff up.

left in the wrong world part 18

overheard at work:

"being american means voting conservative 100% of the time."

left in the wrong world part 17

last weekend i went out with a coworker and her friends. my main point to them was that no one WANTS a big government. but it companies are going to take advantage of people so that executives get richer and other people get poorer, something has to be done. i'm all for people making money. it's just that when they are stomping on people who can't defend themselves that i have a problem. in that vain, overheard at work:

"They want to dictate pay, credit card products, the cars you manufacture."

then later in the day:

"Obama wants the jobless rate to get over 10% so that then he can take over all these companies like Ford."

i could go on, but it gives me a headache...

left in the wrong world part 16

overheard at work:

"Typical liberal ideology that I’m smarter than you, you don’t realize that this is good for you. I will make the right decisions for you and for the environment and this is going to be an optimal society."

this is after hearing the same guy say this about an hour earlier in the day:

“I’m not even sure they’re very smart.”

left in the wrong world part 15

its sometimes funny to hear a conversation and summarize it in one sentence. when talking about ohio mandating car insurance and comparing that to the health insurance battle, i overheard this:

“They don’t say you have to own a car AND pay for insurance.”

and then on his way to the printer, still upset with liberals:

“they should fucking be all shot.”

left in the wrong world part 14

i don't know if i can stress just how much this guy at work went off yesterday - he was shouting and raising his voice and i seriously thought that if i brought up some counterpoints to all of the stupid things he says, he would've hit me or something. or maybe shot me. a different woman at work has lots of guns, and i'm all for gun ownership, but its still scary. anyway, this is not about that. this is about a hostile work environment and crazy things people say. here are a few more quotations for your enjoyment:

regarding senator o. snowe who voted for the finance committee health bill:

“She’s going to fuck up America.”

here is a made up statistic on the health reform bill that must be from fox news, which rachel maddow did an interesting piece on how inaccurate their reporting is and people are misquoting figures because of it:

"70% of Americans against it."

and then this one:

"They’ve voted to ban the bills from being put online so people can’t read them."

left in the wrong world part 13

it quickly became clear today that DC was doing something important when one of my co-workers started ranting for - what seemed like - hours all day about "fucking liberals." sure enough, there is a lot of news going on with the healthcare debate. for the record, most of the upcoming "left in the wrong worlds" are from today... here is the first gem for you:

"Obama is a slick guy trying to divert attention away from everything else."

left in the wrong world part 13

i woke up this morning and read the news before going to work. “Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize.” My first thought was “for what?” but I didn’t dwell on this issue – clearly there are people far smarter than I who decide these things. My next thought was a sigh of relief, “yes! There is nothing bad my coworkers at work can say about this. clearly winning an award is a good thing for whatever reason.” Am I naïve?

Said directly to me as she takes out her phone and we get in the elevator:
“my husband and I rag on Obama all the time. We love it.”
[Calling husband]
Overheard her talking on the phone:
“Honey, guess what a broker sent me today? He said that Obama was awarded the Cy Young award for throwing the first pitch at a game.” [Hysterical laughter follows]Also overheard at work:

“Being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize because he’s a liberal.”

And

[trying to discredit the nobel peace prize] “they gave it to Yasser Arafat. A KNOWN terrorist. Come on.”

left in the wrong world part 12

i tried reading this story today on cracked.com about 6 Beloved TV Shows (That Traumatized Cast Members For Life). when i went to the cracked.com website link here, i received this warning on my computer:

[Company] Internet use policy restricts access to this web page.
Reason: This Websense category is filtered: Tasteless.

this may or may not be the first time i've been called tasteless.

left in the wrong world part 11

overheard at work today (unfortunately i missed half the conversation, but this part was funny):

“he doesn’t know what a lefty is. I think he’s one of those lefties that wants to sit around and smoke pot all day.”

left in the wrong world part 10

overheard at work:

"don't use google. google is all fucking liberals. use bing."
"yeah, but that's owned by microsoft."
"microsoft is better than all those liberals."

left in the wrong world part 9

so it appears that in ohio, the biggest sport is college football. and at work they were discussing this fact:

"you can blame liberals for the fall of the big 10. it's a direct result of liberalism – all these people taxing people up here [in ohio] so people move down there [to the south] and that’s why football is so big in Georgia. all the good football players are moving down there"

left in the wrong world part 8

overheard at work:

"i dont understand why people are so upset with insurance companies. they just don't want them to make any money. kellogg's makes money every year and no one gets upset with them."

left in the wrong world part 7

overheard at work:
"i think obama has a larger plan for what he wants."
"hitler had a larger plan, too!"
[everyone explodes in laughter]

i have no words for how wrong this is.